Uncle John’s Facts to Annoy Your Teacher Bathroom Reader for Kids Only!

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Mulhall got her start in show business in 1899 when her dad took her to the St. Louis World’s Fair to star in his Wild West Show called “The Congress of Rough Riders and Ropers.” People there were amazed that such a small person (she was only five feet tall) could rope and wrestle huge steers to the ground. But Mulhall was whipcord-strong, and she worked as a headliner in rodeos and Wild West shows across the United States and around the world until 1917.

  THE GOVERNOR

  When she wasn’t starring in rodeos, Mulhall trained hundreds of horses, but her favorite was named Governor. She taught him to do more than 40 tricks, including shooting a gun, pulling off a man’s coat, and walking up and down stairs. Governor was so skilled that Mulhall joked, “He has received a good education, and does nearly everything but talk.”

  END OF THE TRAIL

  When World War I put an end to the heyday of Wild West shows, Mulhall went back to the family ranch in Oklahoma. She lived there until 1940, when she died in a car crash. She was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1975, and to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1977. Both places gave her the title “All-Around Champion Cowgirl.”

  * * *

  Slip ’n Slide: Ice isn’t actually slippery. Things slip on ice because a thin layer of ice melts when pressure is applied to it. That wet layer is what’s slippery.

  A snail’s average speed: 0.02 mph.

  THE PRESIDENTS’ REPORT CARDS

  Someone as successful as the president of the United States probably earned straight As from kindergarten through college, right? Not necessarily.

  •Woodrow Wilson’s teachers labeled him a “slow learner” because he was unable to read well until he was 11 years old. Yet Wilson went on to be the only president to date who earned a PhD.

  •John F. Kennedy’s sixth-grade teacher said that he was only an average student, and that his weakest subjects were spelling, science, and math. Two of his report cards from 1930 (when he was 13) show he struggled with foreign languages, too: at one school, he earned a D in French, and at another, a 64 percent average in Latin. One of his teachers wrote, “He can do better than this.”

  •Andrew Johnson didn’t go to school at all, and didn’t learn to read or write until he was 17 years old.

  •George H. W. Bush got many Cs in school, and some of his teachers were unimpressed with his intelligence. One said, “He just sat in class and handed in papers…He showed no imagination or originality.”

  The polecat is not a cat. It’s a weasel.

  •Ulysses S. Grant went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1839, but only because his father made him go. Grant wanted to be a tanner, someone who makes leather, not the military man his father wanted him to be. He struggled with the school’s math-heavy curriculum, but finally graduated in 1843, with a C average.

  THE HIGH SCORERS

  Not all U.S. presidents struggled in school, though. Bill Clinton’s classmates said that the only mystery about his grades was whether “he’d get a high A or a low A.” And Barack Obama’s fifth-grade teacher called him “a really smart student.”

  * * *

  PRESIDENTIAL WISE GUY

  One president definitely left an impression—not for his grades, but for his antics. According to his teachers, George W. Bush was a handful. He once threw a football through a school window, and in fourth grade, he entertained his classmates by “drawing an ink moustache, goatee, and sideburns on himself.” That earned him a trip to the principal’s office.

  John Quincy Adams was the first president with a pet reptile He kept an alligator in the East Room of the White House.

  MMMM…BRAINS

  Q: Why do zombies eat brains? A: Because they taste good. Here are some more brainy facts.

  •The average human brain weighs three pounds. (For comparison, all of your skin weighs about six pounds.)

  •Animals (including people) yawn to wake up their brains. When you’re tired or bored, your brain becomes less alert. Yawning brings a lot of oxygen into your body quickly, and that stimulates your brain.

  •The brain uses up about 20 percent of the blood and oxygen in the human body.

  •Your brain cannot feel pain because there are no nerves in it. That’s why neurosurgeons can poke around in the brains of patients who are awake. (A headache is caused by pain in the nerves and muscles in your neck and skull, not a pain in the brain.)

  •Your brain is made up of about 75 percent water. The rest is mostly protein and fat.

  •Some animals—like sponges, jellyfish, and starfish—don’t have a brain.

  •The human brain keeps growing until a person is about 18 years old.

  •If you could spread your brain out flat, it would be the width of a pillowcase.

  •Your brain is about the same consistency as Jell-O.

  STING AND BITE

  If you’re the student who’d be voted “most likely to put a rubber spider on your teacher’s desk,” you might like these creatures.

  JUST SHOOT ME!

  There’s a good reason that the bullet ant, found in South American rain forests, is called that—people say getting stung by one of these creatures hurts as badly as getting shot. Biologists rate insect stings from 0 to 4 on the Sting Pain Index. A honeybee sting rates about a 2, but the bullet ant is a 4+! A bullet-ant sting won’t kill you, but you may feel nauseous, with burning and throbbing at the spot of the sting. And the pain can last for up to 24 hours.

  But for many boys of the Satere-Mawe tribe in Brazil, the agonizing bullet-ant sting is just a part of growing up. During a ceremony that marks the passage from boyhood to manhood, many young tribesmen stick their hands into gloves filled with about 400 bullet ants—and their hands stay in the gloves for a full 10 minutes. After going through the ritual 20 times over the course of many months, the boys are finally considered men.

  EIGHT-LEGGED DEATH

  Bullet ants are wimps compared to the Sydney funnel-web spider—this creature can kill you in as little as 15 minutes. Often considered the world’s deadliest spider, the funnel-web’s fangs look kind of like a cat’s claws, except that they’re also coated with a deadly poison. When threatened, the funnel-web stands up on its back legs and bares its fangs. And those chompers are powerful. Bites have been known to pierce a person’s toenails. Once bitten, victims can expect to experience pain, drooling, vomiting, sweating, and unconsciousness, and the male funnel-webs are more dangerous than females. Not only that, but the spiders’ venom seems to affect apes, monkeys, and humans more than other mammals. Fortunately, an antidote is now available to counteract the funnel-web’s bite.

  A bidet is a toilet-sized sink used for washing your behind.

  SWIMMERS BEWARE

  Bearded fireworms grow to be between two and six inches long, and they slither underwater along reefs and under rocks, mostly in the Atlantic Ocean. They’re slow, so they only pose a threat to humans who touch them. These worms are colorful creatures (usually bright orange) and are covered with fuzzy white bristles. They look cool, but their bristles are full of poison that will burn your skin. And the pain lasts for days, so if you’re exploring tidepools along the coast and you see a pretty, fuzzy worm, you might want to admire it from a distance.

  About two million tons of rock were blasted away to create Mount Rushmore.

  WRONG FACTS

  Just because you learned it in school doesn’t make it true.

  FACT? Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.

  WRONG! In 1862, in the middle of the Civil War, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that made slavery illegal in the United States. But it didn’t really accomplish much. Slavery was already illegal in the North. In the South, where it was legal, the states had withdrawn from the country, igniting the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation specifically banned slavery in the southern states, which Lincoln no longer had authority over. Slavery wasn’t officially outlawed until the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in
December 1865, after the end of the Civil War, the reinstatement of the southern states, and Lincoln’s death.

  FACT? Slavery is illegal in the United States.

  WRONG! The 13th Amendment banned the private ownership of slaves and the practice of slavery. But slavery isn’t absolutely illegal. It’s never been acted upon, but according to the 13th Amendment, the federal government can still make someone a slave as a punishment for a crime. And get this: Mississippi didn’t approve the 13th Amendment until 1994, meaning it was legal to own slaves there until that time. (Nobody actually did, though.)

  A horse’s teeth take up more space than its brain.

  THUMPER MEETS BUMPER

  Tired of the same old cafeteria lunch? Try one of these food festivals or cook-offs.

  Food Festival: Waurika Rattlesnake Hunt

  Location: Waurika, Oklahoma

  Explanation: Contestants compete for a $150 prize for the longest rattlesnake caught in the woods. Afterward, everybody eats deep-fried rattlesnake (which tastes like stringy chicken).

  Food Festival: The Roadkill Cook-off

  Location: Marlintown, West Virginia

  Explanation: Each September, chefs gather to cook “found” meat. Don’t worry—people aren’t running over animals just so they can cook them. In fact, the festival doesn’t even allow “actual” roadkill, just the meat of animals most commonly killed in traffic. Past winners include “Stir-Tired Possum,” “Rigormortis Bear Stew,” and “Thumper Meets Bumper.”

  Most of the sweaters Mr. Rogers wore on TV were knitted by his mother.

  Food Festival: National Baby Food Festival

  Location: Fremont, Michigan

  Explanation: Fremont is the home of Gerber, the world’s largest baby food manufacturer. Every July, the city and company hold this festival, which includes a baby crawl race, a baby food speed-eating contest (for adults) in which two people simultaneously feed each other five jars of food, and a cooking contest in which some of the ingredients have to be Gerber baby food.

  Food Festival: Waikiki Spam Jam

  Location: Waikiki, Hawaii

  Explanation: Spam (it’s mostly ham, pork shoulder, and spices) is extremely popular in Hawaii. American troops introduced it to the islands during World War II, and the people there embraced it. Today, Hawaii consumes more Spam than any other state, and it’s such a part of the culture that it has its own festival. Past dishes have included barbecue Spam, seaweed-wrapped Spam, and Spam pizza. Don’t forget to get your picture taken with the walking Spam-can!

  Food Festival: Gilroy Garlic Festival

  Location: Gilroy, California

  Explanation: More than 2,000 tons of garlic are used to feed the festival’s 20,000 visitors, who feast on garlic bread and pasta, garlic chocolate, and garlic ice cream.

  Most successful video game system ever Nintendo’s Game Boy has sold more than 100 million units worldwide.

  THE GREAT RAILROAD RUSE

  For many years, history books said that the first railroad to cross the United States was completed in Utah in 1869. The National Park Service even has a historic site there dedicated to the event. But we investigated and found out that it didn’t happen quite the way most people believe.

  THE TALE THAT’S OFTEN TOLD

  American politicians had been wanting to connect the East Coast with the West since the 1840s, when gold was discovered in California and Oregon. That event brought a stampede: thousands of people crossed the United States, hoping to find their fortunes. But pioneers could get only as far as Missouri by train; they had to take a covered wagon or stagecoach the rest of the way. That took a long time (up to six months), and it was dangerous. The travelers could be attacked, robbed, or even killed by outlaws or Indians. So by the 1860s, the government had decided to build a transcontinental railroad across the United States. Actually, they decided to build two railroads—one heading west from Omaha, Nebraska, and the other going east from Sacramento, California. And the plan was that they’d meet in the middle.

  Construction officially began in 1865, and four years later, the two lines met in Promontory Summit, Utah. On May 10, 1869, the railroad companies invited newspaper reporters to a celebration and marked the occasion by pounding in a golden spike, which connected the two ends of the line.

  THAT’S REALLY GREAT, BUT…

  It is true that on May 10, 1869, the two lines met in Utah and joined together to create one long railroad line. But the railroad was not “transcontinental”—it didn’t cross the entire continent. It only ran from Omaha to Sacramento; travelers still had to ride in stagecoaches from Sacramento to San Francisco (about 87 miles) to reach the Pacific Ocean. And to get to the Atlantic from Omaha, they had to get off the train, cross the Missouri River by boat, and then get on another train to the eastern cities.

  In November 1869, a rail line from Sacramento to San Francisco opened. But it wasn’t until August 1870 that the first true cross-country railroad was completed. It connected the Sacramento–Omaha line to an East Coast railroad. Finally, people could ride one train from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

  TRANSCONTINENTAL FACTS

  •It cost more than $50 million to build all the lines of the Transcontinental Railroad.

  •Chinese immigrants made up the majority of the workforce. By the time the railroad was completed, more than 11,000 Chinese laborers had worked on it. They weren’t paid very well, though, only about $25 a month. (White workers made $35 per month.)

  In China, the movie Kindergarten Cop was called Devil King of Children.

  •The Sacramento–Omaha line was supposed to have been completed on May 8, but bad weather and arguing between workers and managers held things up. The newspaper reporters who’d been invited to the golden spike ceremony didn’t want to wait to write their stories, though—some other news item might come in, and they’d need the time for that. So by May 10, many reporters had already written their accounts of the event, even though few of them actually saw it.

  •No one “pounded in” a golden spike to connect the Sacramento–Omaha. There were two golden spikes crafted just for the ceremony, and some railroad company bigwigs gently tapped them into holes in the rails with a silver hammer. But both spikes were immediately removed and replaced with iron ones so they wouldn’t be damaged.

  •In 1869, if you wanted to travel first-class across the country in a sleeper car (a train’s most comfortable accommodations), the five-day trip on the Transcontinental Railroad cost $150 per person.

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  BIG APPETITE

  President Theodore Roosevelt often ate 12 eggs for breakfast.

  Ever hear of filk? It’s folk music with a science fiction or fantasy theme.

  COOL CARD TRICKS

  Not only is Uncle John the King of the Throne Room, he’s also a master of card tricks. These two always amaze the crowd.

  ALL HANDS ON DECK

  Setting up: Get one deck of cards. Hold the deck in your hands. Make sure all the cards are facedown. Then flip the bottom card over so that, if you turn the deck upside down, it looks like the top card.

  1. Now, gather an audience. Hold all the cards facedown. Fan out the deck, and have someone pick a card. Make sure you keep holding the rest of the cards.

  2. Turn your back as your friend shows his card to everyone else. Make sure you do not see the card.

  3. While the group is looking at the card, flip the deck over. Since you already slipped the bottom card upside down, when you turn the deck over, that bottom card will look like the one on the top.

  4. Have your friend put his card back in the deck. (Be very careful that no one sees that most of the cards are facing the wrong way.) When your buddy puts the card back in, it will be the only one flipped that way.

  5. Search the deck and find the card. (Again, do it carefully so that no one sees that most of the cards are facing the wrong way.) When you find it, show it to your audience and watch their jaws drop!

  Superstitious
? For good luck and long life, you should carry an acorn.

  BLACKS AND REDS

  Setting up: Before you perform this trick, take a full deck of cards and separate it into two piles: one with the red cards, and one with the black. Place the two piles facedown on a table.

  1. Bring in your audience. Ask a friend to choose one card from each pile. Tell her to memorize the cards and remember which pile they came from. Next, ask her to put the cards anywhere she wants in the opposite pile.

  2. Ask another friend to shuffle each pile separately, keeping them facedown. Now, take the two piles and put them one on top of the other. Be careful not to mix up the cards.

  3. Now tell everyone you can identify the two cards your friend picked out. (If they doubt you, scoff at their ignorance.) Search through the deck and pull out the two cards that are different colors from the surrounding cards. Amazing!

  It takes about 15 tomatoes to make one bottle of ketchup.

  THE SMALLEST

  Bigger isn’t necessarily better. Want proof? Have a look at these cool things in really small packages.

  …HORSE

  In 2006, Guinness World Records officially named Thumbelina—a 17½-inch-tall horse from Missouri—the world’s smallest. She weighed only 8½ pounds when she was born (about the size of a human newborn) and today is so small that she sleeps with the family’s dogs…in their doghouse.

  …FROG

  When they’re fully grown, Gardiner’s Seychelles frogs are only about half an inch long. And newly hatched babies are just a tenth of an inch long. These tiny amphibians live on the Seychelles, a chain of islands in the Indian Ocean, and they come out mostly at night to hunt for food. Their favorite prey? Mites—microscopic insects that live in soil and water.