Uncle John’s Did You Know?

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  • In the months after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. Army bought 25,550 bottles of sunblock.

  ROBOTS

  • A machine qualifies as a robot if it can a) get information from its surroundings and b) do something physical, like manipulate objects.

  • Nine out of 10 robots that exist today work in factories—more than half make automobiles.

  • Some robots “see” using ultrasonic sound, like bats do. But for a robot to have depth perception, it needs stereoscopic vision (two eyes) like ours.

  • The robot Robug III explores places where extreme radiation would kill a human.

  • In need of some underwater exploration? Sounds like a job for MIT’s RoboTuna.

  • The Mini-Andros is a robot programmed to locate and dispose of bombs.

  • Experts say that by 2010, robots will have the intelligence of a lizard.

  • By 2020, robots will be as intelligent as mice, and they’ll be able to learn on the job.

  • The 2030 robot will be as smart as a monkey.

  • Aaah! By 2040, scientists expect robots to be as intelligent, competent, and creative as humans.

  PLANT YOU NOW,

  DIG YOU LATER

  • Does Barbra Streisand smell better than former first lady Barbara Bush? Horticultural experts say yes, judging by the scents of the roses named after them.

  • The substance in poison ivy that makes you itch is an oil called urushiol.

  • Botany Bulletin: It’s possible to grow bananas in Iceland, in soil heated by underground hot springs.

  • The trunk of the African baobab tree can reach a circumference of 180 feet.

  • Average life span of a city tree: about eight years. (The same tree would live 20 to 50 years in the wild.)

  • An olive tree can live for 1,500 years.

  • What’s in a name? The Venus flytrap feeds primarily on ants—not flies.

  • Builders used 3,994 oak trees to construct Windsor Castle in England.

  • As many as 179 species of tree can be found in a 2.5-acre area of rain forest.

  • Where does vanilla come from? From a bean—the fruit of an orchid vine that is native to Mexico.

  • There’s a rose named for Whoopi Goldberg.

  ANIMAL ODDS

  & ENDS

  • Some scientists believe that cuttlefish communicate by changing their color.

  • Most orcas in captivity die before they reach their early 20s; in the wild they can live 80 years or more.

  • Where there’s a weigh: 250 hedgehogs = 1 lion.

  • The Sumatran tiger has the most stripes of any tiger species; the Siberian tiger has the fewest.

  • Baby birds have an “egg tooth”—a notch on the front of their beaks—that helps them peck out of the egg. The egg tooth falls off after they’ve hatched.

  • Lions are the only cats that have a tuft on the end of their tails.

  • A tiger’s paw prints are called “pugmarks.”

  • The life span of a black rhinoceros is 30 to 35 years in the wild and 35 to 45 years, or even more, in captivity.

  • One bird sings lots of different songs about different things: food, a nest, flying, or pretty much anything.

  • The elephants that helped Hannibal’s army cross the Alps in 218 B.C. had platforms on their backs that carried four soldiers each.

  • A cow can produce nearly 50 gallons of saliva a day.

  • The chicken is the closest living relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex.

  • Lions and tigers and…oh, my! A “liger” has a lion father and a tiger mother; a “tigon” has a tiger father and a lion mother.

  • Don’t feed your cat milk—most adult cats are lactose intolerant, and drinking milk will give them diarrhea.

  SPACE TRAVELERS

  • Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite in space, weighed 185 pounds.

  • At liftoff, the U.S. Space Shuttle weighs about 4.5 million pounds.

  • No one knows why, but the Moon smells like exploded firecrackers and, therefore, moondust smells like gunpowder.

  • In 1959, Able and Baker became the first monkeys to survive spaceflight after 16 minutes in a missile going at a top speed of 10,000 miles per hour.

  • If you want to imagine the dramatic view of Earth that the Apollo astronauts had from the Moon, visualize the sky turning utterly black—while the Sun continues to shine brilliantly.

  • Because there’s no wind or water on the Moon, the footprints left by the Apollo astronauts will not disappear for at least 10 million years.

  • Techno-trivia: The technology used in one Game Boy in the year 2000 was more advanced than all the computer power used to put the first man on the Moon.

  • Alan Shepard was the first American astronaut, and he flew only 116 miles into space on that first trip.

  • Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon, spent only 152 minutes there.

  ON SAFARI

  • Rhino horns are made of compacted hair.

  • The only animal that’s a danger to an adult gorilla—aside from humans—is a leopard. But the two animals rarely mess with each other.

  • Hippopotamuses kill more people in Africa than any other wild animal does.

  • Here’s how African buffaloes decide which direction to move: Individuals face the direction they want to go, and when enough of them are facing one particular way, the entire herd takes off in that direction.

  • The good old days: Herds of springbok antelope were once the largest in the world, containing more than 10 million animals and covering an area 100 miles long and 15 miles wide.

  • Scientists are still trying to figure out why only one dominant female in a colony of naked mole rats produces eggs, and why the other females don’t start to produce eggs until she dies. (By the way, they’re not really naked, they just don’t have very much hair.)

  • Almost human: Older chimpanzees teach their youngsters how to use tools like sticks to extract termites from their nests, rocks to crack open nuts, and leaves to clean themselves.

  LIFE

  IN JAPAN

  • In Japan, people dial 110 in an emergency, not 911.

  • Calpis is a popular yogurt-flavored soft drink in Japan, though to English speakers, the name sounds like something you might find in the corner of a barn.

  • More funny drink names: Pocari Sweat (sports drink), Mr. BM (canned coffee), Sourpis (another yogurt-flavored drink).

  • In Japan, the trains are so crowded that the station employees sometimes have to p-u-u-u-u-u-sh the passengers inside. And they wear white gloves to do it.

  • Japanese people wash their hands and feet before going to bed.

  • In public restrooms, modest Japanese women used to flush the toilets several times to cover the sound of their activities. So now many stalls have recorded “flushing” sound effects to conserve water.

  • Public restrooms in Japan don’t have paper towels. Everyone carries handkerchiefs around instead.

  • Most Japanese homes have combination sink-toilets. When you flush, water flows out of a faucet and into the tank so you can wash your hands as the tank fills.

  • Westerners see a man in the moon. Japanese see two rabbits making rice cakes.

  • When Japanese people see a hearse drive by, they hide their thumbs to protect their fathers. That’s because the word for thumb is literally “parent finger.”

  • In Japan, the first dream of the new year is considered very important. If you dream of an eagle, an eggplant, or Mt. Fuji, it will be a good year.

  • 25 billion pairs of chopsticks are sold every year—about 200 pairs per person.

  • Japanese people wash themselves before they get into the bathtub. (The bathroom floor has a drain.)

  • Western people point to their chest when talking about themselves, but Japanese people point to their nose. The Japanese character for “me” is a combination of the characters for “nose�
� and “rice.”

  • Japanese taxis have remote-control back doors that the drivers can open without getting out of their seats.

  • In Japan, store clerks hand you your change on a tray lined with what looks like Astroturf. That makes the coins easier to grab.

  HISTORY QUIZ

  • Q: How long was the Pony Express in operation?

  A: Based on Hollywood movies, most people believe it was around for years. Wrong. The Pony Express was in operation only from April 1860 to November 1861. (It was put out of business by the telegraph and the transcontinental railroad.)

  • Q: Who was the first president of the United States?

  A: George Washington? A few historians actually consider John Hanson to be the first U.S. president. As the presiding officer of Congress under the Articles of Confederation (a precursor to the Constitution), Hanson’s official title was “President of the United States in Congress Assembled.” And everyone—including George Washington—called him “Mr. President.”

  • Q: Was Albert Einstein ever considered a candidate for the presidency of Israel?

  A: On November 18, 1952, Israeli officials asked the world’s most famous scientist to become president of Israel. Einstein declined, saying he was too old (he was 73) and that he lacked the “natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people.”

  • Q: Who founded the Boy Scouts?

  A: In 1908, a secret agent for the British Military, Robert Baden-Powell, started the Boy Scout movement.

  MUSICAL

  MISCELLANY

  • In England, an eighth-note is called a quaver. A 64th-note is called a hemidemisemiquaver. Now, hang onto your hat: A 128th-note is called a semi-hemidemisemiquaver or quasihemidemisemiquaver.

  • On a 1907 visit to Brandenburg, Germany, it took England’s chubby King Edward VII so long to squeeze into his ceremonial uniform that the band had to play his national anthem 17 times—a world record.

  • Qatar has the shortest national anthem of any country; it can be sung in 32 seconds.

  • It would take 120 hours to listen to all the music composed by Beethoven, 175 to listen to Bach’s, and 240 hours—that’s 10 full days—to listen to Mozart’s.

  • The average American listens to recorded music for about 45 minutes a day.

  • At a recent soccer match between teams from China and Greece, each team stood respectfully, thinking a song on the loudspeaker was the other team’s national anthem. What were they really listening to? A toothpaste commercial.

  • Most people know that a piano has 88 keys, but most do not know that a harp has 47 strings.

  • Greece’s national anthem has 158 verses.

  MORE ABOUT

  EARTH

  • The tallest iceberg measured 550 feet above the water level.

  • Earth is 4.55 billion years old (give or take 10 million).

  • Air temperature goes down about 3.5°F for every 1,000 feet you go up in altitude.

  • Fifty of the 221 volcanoes in the Philippines are active.

  • About half the Sun’s radiation is absorbed by the Earth’s surface. (The rest bounces back into the atmosphere.)

  • In November 1992, a thunderstorm was reported on St. Paul Island, Alaska—the first one there in 40 years.

  • Earth’s northernmost point—the geographic North Pole—is in the Arctic Ocean. The northernmost point on land is Kaffeklubben Island, east of Greenland.

  • How many colors in a rainbow? As many colors as you can see; all the colors of the rainbow are there.

  • The pull of gravity on Earth is six times stronger than it is on the Moon.

  LIGHTNING

  • At any given moment there are 2,000 thunderstorms happening in the world. Lightning strikes somewhere 100 times every second.

  • Lightning causes an average of 93 deaths and 300 injuries in the United States each year.

  • The Empire State Building was designed to be a lightning rod…and it sure is: It’s struck by lightning about 100 times each year.

  • Your chances of being struck by lightning are only one in 600,000, but those chances go up if you live in Florida, the lightning capital of America.

  • The safest place to be during a thunderstorm is in a building with a lightning rod. Next safest: a car with the windows rolled up, as long as you don’t touch any metal parts.

  • If lightning strikes a car, the metal body will conduct the charge into the ground. The car’s rubber wheels offer no protection, and rubber soles on your shoes won’t protect you either.

  • Scared of lightning? Avoid open spaces, including fields, ballparks (location of 28% of lightning deaths and 29% of injuries), and shelter under trees (18% of deaths, 13% of injuries).

  • Lightning’s not all bad: It puts nitrogen into the soil, which plants need to survive.

  MORE

  REPTILES

  • There are lizards with very small legs or no legs that look like snakes. You can tell the difference because most lizards have movable eyelids.

  • Snakes have 200 to 400 segments in their backbone; humans have 32 to 34.

  • Crocodiles’ nostrils are on top of their heads, so they can breathe while the rest of their bodies are underwater. Some alligators can survive all winter with their heads frozen in ice and their noses out to breathe.

  • Gila monsters can survive for months without food.

  • Here’s how a snake “smells”: Its forked tongue collects chemicals from the air, which it then pulls in and holds against the “Jacobsen’s organ” in the roof of its mouth.

  • There are more than 7,000 reptile species on Earth.

  • Chameleons change color according to their mood, not to blend into their surroundings.

  • Lizards, tortoises, and salamanders move like fish, by swishing their bodies from side to side. The movement compresses first one lung and then the other, so they can’t run fast and breathe deeply at the same time. That’s why lizards run in short bursts—they have to stop to catch their breath.

  WEIRD WORLD

  HOLIDAYS

  • Mexico’s Cinco de Mayo is not an independence day celebration. It commemorates an 1862 military victory over the French.

  • In China, September 20th is “Love Your Teeth Day.”

  • In Italy, Santa Claus is called Babbo Natale (Daddy Christmas). In Russia, he’s Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost), and Norway has a Christmas gnome called Julenissen.

  • In 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the British Parliament. Even though he was executed for the crime, the British gave Fawkes a holiday—he was “the only man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions.” Every November 5th, Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated with bonfires and fireworks.

  • At the beginning of every February, Japanese communities gather at temples to celebrate the Bean Throwing Festival. Evil spirits are driven away by hurling beans into the crowd.

  • The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival is an ancient event celebrating the poet Chu Yuan, who drowned in 277 B.C. Dragon-shaped boats race each other while fans throw rice and bamboo leaves into the water.

  THAT’S THE MOST

  DISGUSTING…

  • The Romans used crushed mouse brains as toothpaste.

  • Strange but true: Picking your nose is good for you—the inside of your nose stays cleaner. Bonus: Swallowing dry snot strengthens your immune system.

  • When Eskimo babies have colds, their mothers suck the snot out of their noses.

  • Which is cleaner, spit or pee? The urine: it’s sterile.

  • The longest tapeworm ever found inside the human body was 35 meters long, or about 115 feet. Picture a worm 11 stories high…

  • According to studies, every year, 14 bugs find their way into your mouth while you sleep. And, yes, you do swallow most of them.

  • How much snot does the average person produce each day? About one quart. How much snot does the average person swallow each day? About one quart.

&nb
sp; • How Frogs Throw Up: Step 1) The frog “tosses” its stomach, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. Step 2) The frog uses its forearms to dig out all the stomach contents. After that it swallows the nice clean stomach back down again.

  FAMILY TIES

  • The average American family is 3.14 people.

  • Until 1993, the names of all French children had to be chosen from an official list.

  • There are more children in India working to support their families than in any other country in the world.

  • Why? Why? The average four-year-old child asks more than 400 questions a day.

  • Almost one in three families in the United States and France has a dog.

  • Assam tribespeople of Africa call their families maharis, meaning “motherhoods.”

  • A penny saved: The typical American family has about $3,800 in the bank.

  • Younger brothers and sisters in Nigerian families refer to their older siblings as “Senior Brother” or “Senior Sister.”

  • The odds of having quadruplets are 1 in 729,000.

  • On Tomb Sweeping Day, Chinese families visit the gravesites of family members to worship their ancestors and clean and repair the tombs.

  • The average American family of four spends more than $13,000 on medical expenses in a year.

  • Your first cousin’s daughter isn’t your second cousin—she’s is your first cousin, once removed.

  IT’S A

  CORNY WORLD

  Corn shows up in the most amazing places.

  • Without corn, frozen pizza would be a soggy mess. Cornstarch protects the crust from soaking up the sauce like a sponge.

  • Corn keeps wallpaper from sticking to the wall too quickly. Cornstarch in the glue slows down the stickiness of the paper, giving wallpaper hangers time to arrange each strip in the right place.