Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up!

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  5. Rue Foucault. Named for Jean Bernard Léon Foucault, a French mathematician and astronomer who invented the gyroscope and a pendulum that demonstrated that earth rotates on its axis.

  Biblical Facts

  Worldwide, about 50 Bibles are sold every minute.

  The Old Testament mentions almonds 73 times.

  According to the Bible, King David played the harp.

  The Bible is stolen more often than any other book in the world.

  The word “and” is used 46,277 times in the King James Bible.

  The five animals most often mentioned in the Bible are sheep, lambs, lions, oxen, and rams.

  The word bible comes from the Greek biblos, meaning “book.”

  The bagpipe is mentioned in the Bible (Daniel 3:5).

  Saint John was the only one of the 12 apostles to die of natural causes.

  The first man to translate the entire Bible into English was Englishman Myles Coverdale, in 1535.

  The seven deadly sins: lust, pride, anger, envy, sloth, avarice, and gluttony.

  According to the Bible, Noah invented wine and was the first person to eat meat.

  Number of words in the King James Bible: 783,137.

  Nowhere in the Bible does it say that there were three wise men.

  Salt is mentioned more than 30 times in the Bible.

  There are two talking animals in the Bible: the serpent and Balaam’s ass.

  The final word in the Bible: “amen.”

  Women in Politics

  In 1922, 87-year-old Rebecca Felton from Georgia became the first female senator. Time in office: two days. (It was a temporary appointment.)

  Abigail Adams, the second First Lady, often expressed her political views openly, for which she was widely criticized as being “unladylike.”

  Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed the first female member of a presidential cabinet: Frances Perkins of New York was Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945.

  Susan B. Anthony founded America’s first female political party: the National Woman’s Suffrage Society.

  In 1980, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir became Iceland’s first (and only) female head of state.

  First woman to head an Islamic government: Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan.

  Miriam “Ma” Ferguson became the first female governor of Texas on January 20, 1925.

  Wyoming boasts the nation’s first elected female public official: Estelle Reel, in 1895. She was Superintendent of Public Instruction.

  One of the 19th century’s leaders of women’s suffrage, Victoria Woodhull, ran for U.S. president in 1872…even though she couldn’t vote.

  Lady Nancy Astor, the first woman elected to the British House of Commons, was born in Virginia.

  In 1916, Montana’s Jeannette Pickering Rankin became the first woman to serve in the U.S. Congress.

  In August 2000, women filled the top five political and judicial posts in New Zealand.

  Hillary Clinton was once a Republican.

  England & France

  The average life expectancy for Londoners in the 16th and 17th centuries was 39.7 years.

  In 52 BC, Paris was attacked by the Romans, who called the city Lutetia, meaning “marshy place.”

  In 1014, Viking ships pulled down and destroyed the London Bridge.

  In 1789, when a Paris mob stormed the Bastille to start the French Revolution, it missed rescuing the Marquis de Sade by just days. (He’d been transferred to an insane asylum outside Paris, accused of egging on the rioters from his cell’s window.)

  The 1666 Great Fire of London destroyed 13,200 homes but resulted in only six recorded fatalities.

  The Great Plague of London (1665–66) was a bubonic plague that killed 20 percent of the city’s residents.

  A French executioner was once fired because he pawned his guillotine.

  In the 1840s, French criminals couldn’t be arrested from sundown to sunrise.

  London was founded by the Romans in AD 47.

  The first English historian was a monk known as the Venerable Bede (672–735).

  During France’s Reign of Terror (1793–4), 17,000 people were beheaded.

  The Marquis de Lafayette (who fought in the American Revolution) was labeled a traitor during the French Revolution because he sided with the middle class.

  After England conquered Quebec in 1760, it offered to trade the region back to France for the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe. France declined.

  Ancient Designs

  Estimated weight of Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza: 6 million tons.

  A Babylonian pyramid called Etemenanki may have inspired the Tower of Babel story.

  Darius I of Persia connected the Nile to the Red Sea with a canal.

  Stonehenge wasn’t the work of Celtic druids—it was built about 2,000 years before they arrived in Great Britain. Today, most historians think the Britons (ancestors of the modern British) built the monument.

  The Great Pyramid of Giza is made of 2.3 million limestone blocks; each weighs 2 ½ tons.

  Byzantine architects built the largest domes in the ancient world. The most famous example: St. Sophia, constructed in Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul, Turkey.

  The Parthenon in Athens was nearly destroyed in 1687 when Turkish soldiers used it to store gunpowder.

  Looking for Cutthroat Castle? You’ll find it in Colorado’s Hovenweep National Monument. No pirates there, though—Hovenweep consists of pre-Columbian Indian ruins.

  The Great Wall of China was actually made of four different walls that were rebuilt and linked over 2,000 years.

  The Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily includes a famous mosaic of bikini-clad Roman women exercising.

  The step pyramid at Saqqara, Egypt, is considered the oldest man-made building still standing.

  Rome’s ancient stadium, the Circus Maximus (for horse and chariot racing), could hold up to 250,000 people.

  Sister Acts

  MARY AND ANNE BOLEYN

  Mary (a.k.a. the other Boleyn girl) became the mistress of England’s King Henry VIII before her more famous sister ended up marrying him. Most historians think Mary was the older of the two, and some believe she had two children by Henry. In 1519, at the age of 20, Mary joined the English court as “maid of honor” to Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife, who was then the queen of England. Mary’s sister Anne joined the court soon after.

  Anne rejected Henry’s amorous advances for at least a few years before he decided to divorce Catherine to marry her. Meanwhile, Mary married and was widowed. Her second husband was a commoner, which prompted the family to disown her. Mary, her husband, and their children moved to the countryside, where Mary lived out the rest of her days. (Things didn’t go as well for Anne. She was beheaded in 1526 to make room for Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour.)

  CHARLOTTE, EMILY, AND ANNE BRONTË

  All three grew up in Yorkshire, England, during the 19th century, the daughters of an Anglican clergyman. They all published their first novels in the same year: 1847. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre was an overnight success. Emily’s Wuthering Heights wasn’t an immediate hit with readers, but it caught on a few years later and today is considered one of the finest English novels ever written. Younger sister Anne’s Agnes Grey was considered good but not great.

  Emily never finished her next novel; she died at age 30 of tuberculosis. Anne died at 29, also of tuberculosis. Charlotte, the only one to marry, outlived them both and made it to age 38 before succumbing to an illness probably related to her pregnancy.

  LILLIAN AND DOROTHY GISH

  Lillian was in her late teens and Dorothy was about 13 years old when they started making silent movies for director D. W. Griffith in 1912. Lillian starred in Griffith’s classic Birth of a Nation (1915), and both had roles in his Orphans of the Storm (1921).

  Later, Lillian took on Broadway roles in Uncle Vanya and Camille and made her last movie in 1987: The Whales of August, starring Bette Davis. She never married. The l
ess-famous Dorothy specialized in comedies, but did drama, too. Dorothy’s last movie was The Cardinal in 1963. She died of pneumonia at a clinic in Italy in 1970, with her sister by her side. Lillian died in her sleep in 1993 at the age of 99.

  BARBIE AND SKIPPER ROBERTS

  Barbie’s younger, shorter (9.25 inches to Barbie’s 11.5 inches) was introduced in 1964 in three varieties (blonde, brunette, and redhead) and had a demure sideways glance, as opposed to her big sister’s forward gaze. Skipper’s first accessories included a wire stand, comb and brush, red flats, headband, and swimsuit. Her older sister had been launched—as a blonde and a brunette—in 1959 with gold hoop earrings, sunglasses, and black open-toe heels.

  Over time, Skipper’s image changed, a marketing effort to make her more “appealing.” By the time she was removed from the market in 2003, she was almost as long-legged and shapely as Barbie, who remains one of the most popular toys in the world.

  VENUS AND SERENA WILLIAMS

  Superstar tennis players Venus and Serena Williams have both been ranked number one in the world by the Women’s Tennis Association. Born in 1980 and 1981, respectively, they’re the youngest of five sisters. Their father Richard wanted all his daughters to play tennis—he’d admired the game since he was a young man—but only Venus and Serena showed a natural aptitude for the sport. Both started their training at the age of four.

  The sisters have played each other more than 20 times professionally, and the results are fairly even. As a doubles team, they’re near unbeatable—taking home two Olympic gold medals, in 2000 and 2008. Both women are also fashionistas and have their own designer clothing lines.

  Firsts

  First telephone call from Earth to the Moon: President Richard Nixon called the crew of Apollo 11 on July 21, 1969.

  Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod on October 23, 2001; it cost $400. Since then, more than 173 millions units have been sold, with the iPod Shuffle going for just $79.

  On June 4, 1927, millionaire Charles A. Levine was the first passenger on a transatlantic flight leaving the United States.

  First album released on compact disc: Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, on October 1, 1982.

  First electronic computer: the ENIAC—Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer. It was unveiled on February 14, 1946, and cost $500,000 to build.

  Johnson & Johnson introduced the first decorative Band-Aid in 1951.

  Year the first home video game console went on sale: 1972.

  First popular transistor radio: the Regency TR-1. It was released in 1954 and cost $49.95, about $395 today.

  The first interactive video game: a missile simulator created in 1947.

  Inventor Martin Cooper, who worked for Motorola, made the first cell phone call on April 3, 1973. (He called his rivals at AT&T). His inspiration for the phone? The communicators on Star Trek.

  The first Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader was published in 1988.

  The first direct-dial transcontinental call was made on November 10, 1951; it took 18 seconds to connect. This was an improvement on the first transcontinental call made in 1915, which took 23 minutes and needed five operators to connect.

  Age Doesn’t Matter

  Youngest student ever admitted to the Baltimore Peabody Conservatory of Music: Tori Amos. She was five.

  Sydney Greenstreet was 62 when he made his film debut in The Maltese Falcon.

  By the age of four, Mozart could learn a new piece of music in half an hour.

  John Cleese reached the height of six feet by the age of 12.

  Jazz singer Mel Tormé’s first gig: singing with the Coon Sanders Nighthawks Orchestra. He was four.

  Julie Andrews had mastered a four-octave singing range by age eight. Average person’s range: three octaves.

  Fourteen-year-old Bobby Fischer became the youngest chess grand master in history when he won the title in 1958.

  Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t publish her first book until she was 65.

  William James Sidis, a child prodigy, entered Harvard University at the age of 11 in 1909. (The school had refused to let his father enroll him at age nine.)

  Robert Redford turned down the lead in The Graduate because he felt he was too old for it. Dustin Hoffman, who took the part, was 30—the same age as Redford.

  Katharine Hepburn, an avid golfer, started playing at the age of five.

  Golfer Bobby Jones won the Georgia State Amateur Championship at age 14.

  Sergei Prokofiev composed an opera at the age of nine.

  Colonel Harlan Sanders started his finger-lickin’-good chicken business in his 60s.

  Calls of the Wild

  Studying the musical features of animal sounds—like cricket chirps and whale songs—is called zoomusicology.

  According to scientists, frogs croak, bark, cluck, click, grunt, snore, squawk, chirp, whistle, trill, and yap.

  Some male songbirds sing more than 2,000 times a day.

  Mockingbirds can imitate almost any sound, from a car alarm to a cat’s meow.

  Giant pandas emit a bleat like sheep.

  A lion’s roar is about as loud as a chainsaw.

  Apes gibber, deer bell, and hippos bray.

  Cats can make more than 100 different vocal sounds; dogs can make about 10.

  Dolphins communicate in several frequencies, many of which are higher than the human ear’s limit. So we can only hear some of their vocalizations.

  A lion’s roar can be heard five miles away.

  Burial Grounds

  The Paris Catacombs were built in abandoned quarries in 1788 to house bones moved from overcrowded graveyards around the city.

  A “graveyard” is usually associated with a church and located on church property. A “cemetery” is an independent burial ground.

  Fairview Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is the burial site for more Titanic casualties than any other cemetery in the world. Of the more than 1,500 victims of the disaster, 121 are buried there.

  Jim Morrison, Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt, Moliere, and Marcel Marceau are all buried in the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

  Composer Frederic Chopin’s heart is encased in a pillar at the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw, Poland. (The rest of him is buried in Paris.)

  A crematorium can cremate a 180-pound body in 1 ½ hours.

  Largest cemetery in Europe: Zentralfriedhof in Austria. It opened in 1874 and holds more than 3 million bodies.

  World’s largest cemetery: Wadi-us-Salaam in Iraq, with more than 5 million graves.

  World’s oldest pet cemetery: the Cemetery of Dogs in Paris opened in 1899 in response to a new law stating that pet owners could no longer leave their animals’ bodies in the city’s streets or rivers.

  Lenin’s embalmed body has been on display in Moscow’s Red Square since 1924.

  People started building tombs aboveground in New Orleans in the 1700s because cemeteries often flooded during heavy rainstorms, and buried coffins would be pushed out of the ground.

  Books

  More than 100 romance novels are published every month in the United States.

  Indiana University’s main library sinks an inch per year…because of the weight of the books.

  First published in 1985, the Klingon Dictionary has sold more than 250,000 copies.

  One of ancient Persia’s highranking government officials took his 117,000-volume library with him everywhere. The books were carried on the backs of camels trained to walk in alphabetical order.

  Iceland publishes four times as many books per capita as the United States.

  Later in his life, the famous lover Giovanni Casanova worked as a librarian.

  By the year 1500, there were 10 million books in print.

  Clergyman John Harvard didn’t found the college; he donated a library to the school, which was named for him later.

  The Oxford English Dictionary lists 39 euphemisms for “bathroom” and 49 words that can be used to describe buttocks.

  In 2007, Harle
quin introduced a series of romance novels about NASCAR.

  More than 450,000 of Bob Hope’s jokes are housed at the Library of Congress.

  The pages of this book will eventually turn brown, due to oxidation.

  In the 1700s, the best-selling book in the world was the multivolume Diderot’s Encyclopedia, compiled by Frenchman Denis Diderot.

  Cash Crops

  Leading producer of cranberries in the United States: Wisconsin.

  MSG is found naturally in wheat.

  A single acre of wheat can produce more than 3,000 loaves of bread.

  There are about 1,300 kernels in a pound of corn.

  Bugs Bunny’s favorite type of carrot is called Danvers.

  There are more than 7,000 varieties of tomatoes.

  Oranges and strawberries do not ripen after being picked. Avocados and bananas do.

  The celtuce plant is a hybrid, part celery, part lettuce.

  The indentation on the bottom of an apple is called the calyx basin.

  Tomato juice is the state beverage of Ohio.

  Avocados are often called a “perfect” food because they contain nearly all the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients (including protein) that the human body needs.

  Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them. A ripe berry can be dribbled like a tiny basketball.

  There are 7,500 varieties of apples—2,500 of them grow in the United States.

  On average, there are seven peas in a pod.

  Potatoes and sweet potatoes are distantly related. But yams and sweet potatoes aren’t related at all.

  Ninety-nine percent of the pumpkins sold in the United States end up as jack-o-lanterns.

  Crime and…

  Number of shopping carts stolen from Los Angeles stores in 2005: 6.2 million.

  People most often killed during bank robberies: the robbers.