Q: You have a ZIP code, but do you know what “ZIP” stands for?
A: Zone Improvement Plan.
WILLIAM WHO?
His name was always pronounced the same, and the differences in spelling had to do with the different ways people wrote the same sounds. For example, “ck,” “ks,” “kes,” and “x” all made the same sound, and in some accents, “berd” could even sound like “peare.” Why? In Shakespeare’s day, there was no authority on how to spell words, and no common dictionary to look them up in, so spellings always varied.
Without further ado, here are the 25 different ways to spell “Shakespeare”:
1) The most common spelling was “Shakespeare.”
2) Shakespere
3) Shakespear
4) Shakspeare
5) Shackspeare
6) Shakspere
7) Shackespeare
8) Shackspere
9) Shackespere
10) Shaxpere
11) Shexpere
12) Shakspe-
13) Shake-speare
14) Shaxberd
15) Shak-speare
16) Shakspear
17) Shagspere
18) Shaksper
19) Shaxpeare
20) Shaxper
21) Shakespe
22) Shakp
23) Shaksp.
24) Shakespheare
25) Shakspe
WRONG FACTS
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue… well, at least that much is true.
FACT? Italian Christopher Columbus sailed under the flag of Spain because he couldn’t get financial backing at home for his voyages. Everybody thought the world was flat and worried that he would sail off the edge.
WRONG! Columbus wanted to sail west to Asia. Everybody else had sailed east, but Columbus thought a trip west would be faster and easier. He did have a hard time getting money for the trip, but it wasn’t because people in the 1400s thought the world was flat. Educated people knew the world was round. Investors and the Italian government thought Columbus was underestimating how far away Asia was. They didn’t want to fund his voyage because they thought he’d run out of supplies during the trip.
FACT? Christopher Columbus discovered America.
WRONG! He was looking for India, but he actually landed in the Bahamas, not what’s technically North America. And he was definitely not the first person to “find” the Americas. Native American tribes had lived there for thousands of years, and Icelandic explorer Leif Eriksson established a colony in Newfoundland (now part of Canada) around AD 1000.
Q: What should you say to a vampire who wins an award?
A: “Con-dracula-tions!”
ANOTHER REAL TREASURE HUNT
On page 50, we told you about the gold hidden somewhere in the British Virgin Islands. Here’s another hunt. Arrgh…do you have your pirate ship ready?
SEEKING: More than 50 tons of gems, pearls, gold, coins, and silver bars worth around $50 million today.
LAST SEEN…80 to 90 miles north of the Dominican Republic, in an area of the Atlantic Ocean known as the Silver Bank. The place got its name because so many treasure ships sank there.
THE LEGEND: In 1641, the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción was loaded with treasure and headed back to Spain from Mexico when a hurricane struck. The ship lost its masts, flooded with water, and then drifted for a week before it smashed into a reef. Most of the crew was killed in the wreck. Soon after, pirates came and stole many of the riches from the disabled ship. But they didn’t get far before they hit a nearby reef and went under, too.
The average human bladder can hold two cups of urine for up to five hours. (Yuck!)
Forty-six years after the Concepción sank, the British government sent a man named William Phips to find it. In 1687, Phips and his crew started to search hundreds of miles of reef in the Atlantic. Finally, one of his men swam down to admire a coral formation and saw guns—a shipwreck! Another look revealed a chunk of silver.
In all, the Phips crew salvaged 32 tons of treasure—in the process, they had to fight off pirates and other treasure seekers. After a few weeks, though, they ran out of food and water and had to leave the Concepción behind.
KEEP LOOKING
Phips kept only a sixteenth of the riches he found—he turned the rest over to England. King James II eventually made him a knight and the governor of the Massachusetts colony. But he never recovered the remaining Concepción loot.
Three hundred years later, another American tried. In 1978, a treasure hunter named Burt Webber found Phips’s site. Amazingly, some treasure remained, including 60,000 silver coins, gold bullion, and expensive Chinese porcelain. Even though the shipwreck had been plundered many times over the years, the Concepción’s leftovers were still worth $14 million!
Want another treasure tale? Sail over to page 220 to read about Blackbeard and his lost loot.
Number of Etch-A-Sketches sold every day: About 8,000.
TO THE NINES
In honor of page 99, here are some lists of 9s.
9 WORDS FOR “FART”
Onara (Japanese)
Pête (French)
Pongu (Korean)
Pedo (Spanish)
Pierdziec (Polish)
Furz (German)
Szellentés (Hungarian)
Fasia (Arabic)
Todt (Thai)
HIGHEST-GROSSING MOVIES
Titanic
The Dark Knight
Star Wars: A New Hope
Shrek 2
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
Phantom Menace
Pirates of the Caribbean 2
Spider-Man
Revenge of the Sith
9 LARGEST CITIES IN THE WORLD
Tokyo, Japan
Seoul, South Korea
Mexico City
New York City
Mumbai, India
Jakarta, Indonesia
São Paulo, Brazil
Delhi, India
Osaka, Japan
9 DEADLIEST SNAKES
Inland Taipan
King Brown Snake
Malayan Krait
Coastal Taipan
Tiger Snake
Beaked Sea Snake
Saw-Scaled Viper
Coral Snake
Death Adder
9 FASTEST ANIMALS
Cheetah (70 mph)
Antelope (61 mph)
Wildebeest (50 mph)
Lion (50 mph)
Gazelle (50 mph)
Quarter horse (47 mph)
Elk (45 mph)
Cape Hunting Dog (45 mph)
Coyote (43 mph)
9 HIGHEST PAID SPORTS STARS IN 2008
Tiger Woods
Phil Mickelson
LeBron James
Floyd Mayweather
Kobe Bryant
Shaquille O’Neal
Alex Rodriguez
Kevin Garnett
Peyton Manning
Except for royalty, ancient Egyptians didn’t bother recording birth dates.
BAD ADVICE
You’ve been told not to do these things because they’re “bad” for you (or others). But as it turns out, they’re all perfectly fine.
Don’t read in dim light—you’ll hurt your eyes.
According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, good light makes reading easier and limits eye strain, but using poor light “causes no permanent eye damage.”
Don’t touch a baby bird—its mother will abandon it.
Whether or not a mother can detect the scent of a human depends on the animal’s sense of smell. Most birds have a poor sense of smell, and would never be able to tell if a human had touched their nest. (Still, it’s best to leave birds’ nests alone.)
Don’t crack your knuckles—it’ll make them bigger and you’ll eventually get arthritis.
Go ahead and crack them. It’s harmless.
Don’t watch TV in the dark—it’s bad for your eyes.
T
his is also a myth. Watching TV in a dark room doesn’t cause any eye damage at all. (Brain damage is another matter.) The idea came from an advertising executive in the 1950s named J. Robert Mendte, who spread the fiction in commercials on behalf of one of his clients—a lamp company.
Actual label on a Sears hair dryer: “Do not use while sleeping.”
MISCHIEF MAKERS
Didn’t do your homework? Blame it on a faun, Menehune, or another mythological character.
MENEHUNE
According to the Hawaiians, the Menehune are an ancient race of pixies who live in the islands’ jungles. The Menehune are usually said to be about two feet tall, but can be as small as six inches. Legend has it that they are wary of humans but like to play tricks on them (like sneaking into houses to hide people’s shoes or car keys).
And to ensure they’re never seen, the Menehune make all their mischief at night.
They also love to eat fish and bananas, and enjoy diving from cliffs. Hawaiian parents often tell their children that splashes heard outside at night are just the Menehune having fun.
KAPPA
These are water spirits that supposedly live in lakes and rivers in Japan. They are the size of children, but have froglike bodies, the faces of monkeys, webbed hands and feet, and scaly green skin. On top of their heads is a small depression filled with a liquid that’s said to give them their mischievous powers. The kappa like to cause trouble, and Japanese children blame them when something—anything—goes wrong. (Did somebody fart? Nope. It was a kappa.)
In case anyone asks: filibeg is another word for “kilt.”
The kappa are considered devilish creatures, but they’re also curious about humans. So if you happen to see a kappa, you’re supposed to do one of two things:
•Bow to him. The kappa will have to return your bow (it’s only polite) and, in doing so, will spill the liquid from its head. That will make him weak, and he’ll have to go back to his watery home.
•Befriend him by offering a cucumber (the kappa’s favorite food). Once a kappa is your pal, he can be very useful. Legend says the kappa taught the Japanese how to water their crops and how to set broken bones.
FAUNS
Ancient Romans believed in genies, ancestral spirits who kept watch over different places. The genies of forests and woodlands were called fauns. From the waist down, fauns were goats, with hooves and fur; from the waist up, they were human, but had goatlike horns and whiskers. Fauns liked to play music and play games in the woods. Humans, however, were their enemy, and to protect their forests, fauns would do just about anything…including kidnapping children who wandered too far into the forest. (So be careful not to wander too far into any ancient Roman forests.)
Q: A farmer has 17 sheep. All but 9 die. How many sheep are left?
A. 9
NUTS!
Uncle John loves peanut butter and prefers his PB&JB (peanut butter and jelly bean) sandwiches toasted. Quick—read this story before he finishes the last bite!
PASTY PEANUTS
People have been eating peanuts for thousands of years, but peanut butter is a fairly recent development. It didn’t appear until the late 1800s, and no one knows who deserves credit for its invention. That’s because two men in different states both came up with an idea for peanut butter around the same time.
In 1890, a doctor (his name has been lost to history) from St. Louis, Missouri, talked a local food manufacturer into making a ground peanut paste. He thought it would be a great source of protein for patients who had lost their teeth and couldn’t chew meat. About the same time, another doctor (this one was from Michigan) did something similar because he worried that his vegetarian patients weren’t getting enough protein.
English astronomer Fred Hoyle coined the term “Big Bang” in 1949.
The second doctor was John Harvey Kellogg. He never did much with the peanut butter. Instead, he went on to make a fortune in cereal. But one of his employees, Joseph Lambert, took the idea and turned it into a success. Soon he was selling hand-operated grinders to make peanut paste, and in 1899, his wife published a book that included one of the first recipes for peanut butter.
IT’S GOTTA BE SMOOOTH
Early peanut butter didn’t taste very good. That’s because Lambert used boiled peanuts (not very flavorful) instead of roasted. It was also gritty because the grinders couldn’t completely smooth out all of the tiny peanut pieces and left behind grainy bits.
In 1904, that all changed when a man named C. H. Sumner introduced peanut butter made from roasted peanuts at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Sumner sold more than $700 worth of his peanut butter at the fair—more than most people at that time made in an entire year.
Then, in 1922, a Californian figured out how to stir the peanut paste until it was creamy. The first company to buy the technology: E. K. Pond, which in 1928 renamed itself Peter Pan. By the 1950s, brands like Jif and Skippy had also been created, and peanut butter had become a staple in American diets. Today, people in the United States buy a jar of peanut butter every three seconds, about 90 million jars each year.
Time it takes a marble factory to turn out 1,000 glass marbles: 5 minutes.
BRAINTEASERS
Can you figure out these twisty, turny word puzzles?
(Answers are on page 241.)
1.
MILL1ION
2.
PANTS
PANTS
3.
BILLY
4.
5.
T _ RN
6.
DEATH
7.
THUS
8.
hijklmno
9.
10.
11.
TOUCH
12.
VISION
VISION
13.
VA DERS
14.
CLOUD
TH
15.
STEP
SPETS
SPETS
Tongue twister: I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit.
READY, SET, FLY!
People have been imagining themselves as paper pilots ever since the first trees were pressed into paper. Here is how to make a simple, classic paper airplane.
1. Start with a piece of rectangular paper. Photocopier paper seems to work best…but your old homework may work, too.
2. Fold the paper neatly in half, lengthwise. Open it up again, and lay it flat.
3. Fold each of the top two corners in to meet the center crease.
4. Now you’ll narrow the plane by folding in the edges at the top to meet the center crease. Keep the point sharp, and make sure the creases are neat.
5. Fold the plane in half lengthwise so it looks like a triangle.
The ancient Chinese called eggplants “mad apples,” believing they caused insanity.
6. Fold down one top edge to create a wing. Repeat on the other side.
7. Hold the paper horizontally and open the wings so they stick out flat on either side.
8. Hold the body of the plane and give it a gentle toss. Now you’re flying!
DID YOU KNOW?
•A paper airplane flies because your throw gives it power. It speeds up because of kinetic energy—that’s the energy or force an object gets as it accelerates. After that, your airplane’s wings keep it airborne by pushing the air around them backward and down. This is a lot like what makes a real airplane fly.
•In space, because there’s no air for it to navigate through, a paper airplane would just float in a straight line until it ran into something.
•Longest paper airplane flight: 27.6 seconds.
•Longest distance: 193 feet.
•Largest paper airplane wingspan: 40 feet, 10 inches.
Rough ride: A “corduroy road” is a road made of sand-covered logs.
CRAZY CONTESTS
Tired of watching your dog chase his tail?
Then check out these be
astly games.
BEETLE WRESTLE MANIA
Rhinoceros beetles are huge insects. They can grow to be up to six inches long and have a tough outer shell and horns. And for their size, they are the strongest animals on earth—they can lift more than 850 times their own weight. (An elephant can lift only about 25 percent of its body weight.) They’re popular pets in Japan, so to give the beetles a workout (and have some fun in the process), kids enter their big bugs in local tournaments. The rules go like this: two rhino beetles fight each other in a 20-inch-wide ring, and one emerges victorious when he throws his competitor out of the ring…or the competitor walks out by himself.
WHAT A LOVELY CAMEL YOU HAVE
People say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that’s definitely true in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Every spring, camel breeders from all over the Middle East bring their beasts to the UAE’s capital city of Abu Dhabi to compete in a…beauty contest. Camels have been an important part of Middle Eastern culture for thousands of years because they’re perfectly suited for life in the desert. They can go for months without drinking water, can carry heavy loads, and are a source of milk and meat. So as a way to honor them, the UAE’s government organized the first Abu Dhabi Camel Festival in 2002. Today, more than 10,000 camels compete each year to win a variety of prizes—about $9 million and 100 new cars. One judge says, “It’s just like judging a beautiful girl. You look for big eyes, long lashes, and a long neck—maybe 39 or 40 inches.”
Uncle John’s Facts to Annoy Your Teacher Bathroom Reader for Kids Only! Page 8
