Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! (30 page)
Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Julie Andrews, Diana Ross, Johnny Cash, and Alice Cooper all appeared on
The Muppet Show
.
Forty percent of all mammal species are rodents.
Among mammals, the rule of thumb is…the colder the climate, the shorter the legs.
A musk ox is actually a kind of sheep.
The
Palustris hefneri
species of rabbit is named for
Playboy
mogul Hugh Hefner.
How many wild grizzly bears are left in the lower 48 states? About 1,100. (Before the 1800s, there were about 100,000.)
The largest free-roaming elk herd in the United States is in Oregon’s Hells Canyon.
There are no skunks or snakes in Newfoundland, Canada.
According to the National Park Service, more rare animals live in caves than anywhere else.
Cows, camels, reindeer, and cats have all been used to deliver mail.
Squirrels lose at least half the nuts they hide—they forget where they put them.
Koalas sleep 19 to 22 hours a day.
In which film does James Bond play golf with the villain?
Goldfinger
.
Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill” is the only Bond theme song to hit #1 in the United States.
Half the world’s population has seen at least one James Bond movie.
In
Live and Let Die
, 46-year-old Roger Moore became the oldest actor to play James Bond.
Mel Gibson turned down the role of James Bond in
Golden Eye
.
Sean Connery started losing his hair at 21. He wore a toupee in his James Bond films.
Ian Fleming planned to kill off Bond at the end of
From Russia with Love
. He changed his mind after fans protested.
Ian Fleming modeled his James Bond character partially with Cary Grant in mind. But when offered the role, Grant turned it down.
According to the novels, James Bond prefers his eggs boiled for exactly 3
minutes.
The white bikini Ursula Andress made famous in
Dr. No
sold at a 2001 auction for $61,500.
Paul McCartney, Nancy Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong all recorded theme songs for James Bond films.
First African American Bond Girl: Trina Parks (as Thumper in
Diamonds Are Forever
).
Ian Fleming offered the role of Dr. No to actor Noel Coward, who replied by telegram: “Dr. No? No! No!!”
The original title of
License to Kill
(1989):
License Revoked
.
Each year, 30,000 people in the United States are seriously injured by exercise equipment.
Americans will spend more on cat food this year than on baby food.
How many times will you move in your life? If you’re an average American, 11.
A 1995 poll found that 37 percent of Americans thought the Ryder Cup golf competition was a horse race.
Since 1935, the United States has lost 4.7 million farms.
Americans recycle enough paper every day to fill a 15-mile-long train of boxcars.
Approximately 80 percent of 10-year-old girls in the United States will go on a diet this year.
One in every eight Americans lives in California.
There is enough water in American swimming pools to cover the city of San Francisco seven feet deep.
The three biggest party days in the United States: New Year’s Eve, Super Bowl Sunday, and Halloween.
Roughly 40 percent of U.S. energy comes from petroleum.
This year, Americans will throw away more than 100 million cell phones.
There are three times as many TV sets in the United States as there are people in the United Kingdom.
Sixty percent of Americans can name the Three Stooges. Seventeen percent can name three Supreme Court justices.
In the United States, people choke on toothpicks more often than on any other object.
KERMIT THE FROG.
Puppeteer Jim Henson created Kermit in 1955 as the main character on a local television show called
Sam and Friends
. Once he got the job on
Sesame Street
, though, Kermit became a superstar. Today, he’s known all over the world by a variety of names: Gustavo in Spain, René the Frog in Latin America, and Kamel in the Middle East.
GRANNY SMITH APPLES.
In the late 1860s, a woman named Maria Ann Smith and her husband Thomas owned an orchard outside of Sydney, Australia. The Smiths cultivated apples, and in 1868, they accidentally cross-pollinated a new green apple hybrid that they named Granny Smith, after Maria. Although the Smiths never saw their apple variety become popular in their lifetimes, it eventually traveled beyond their orchard to New Zealand, England, and finally to the United States in the 1970s.
OSIRIS.
According to the ancient Egyptians, green was the color of resurrection and immortality. That’s why Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife, was often portrayed as having green skin.
THE LIBYAN FLAG.
Libya has had a solid green flag since 1977. Why that color? In Islamic culture, green represents the lush paradise Muslims believe awaits them in the afterlife. It was also the color of the banner the prophet Muhammad carried. Many Islamic countries have green on their flags, but Libya’s is the only one in the world that’s a solid block of color.
JACK IN THE GREEN.
In England, May Day parades usually feature this character, a person wearing a costume covered in foliage. The Jack in the Green tradition dates back to the 16th century, when English people dressed themselves up in leaves or flower garlands to celebrate the coming summer with May Day festivals. One
year, a group of chimney sweepers completely covered someone with flowers, leaves, and branches. They called him “Jack in the Green,” and over time, he became a recurring character at May Day festivals around the country…and the young sweepers became a regular part of the festivals’ entertainment.
The Jack tradition faded in the late 1800s, when England’s government made it illegal for children to work as chimney sweepers. The young boys who’d provided so much of the festivals’ entertainment could no longer perform. But in the 1980s, Jack in the Green made a comeback. Today, the best-known Jack competition takes place every May 1 in the town of Hastings, where people gather to celebrate Jack and usher in the summer.
THE GACHALA EMERALD.
Weighing 858 carats (about half a pound), this is the world’s largest uncut emerald. Miners in Colombia pulled it out of the ground in 1967, and today it’s on display at the Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C.
BARIUM SALTS.
This is the chemical that makes fireworks shoot green sparks.
THE UNITED TASMANIA GROUP.
Considered to be the first “green” party in the world, the United Tasmania Group formed in 1972 in Australia. It lasted only five years and had limited success, but many of the United Tasmania Group’s candidates moved on to support the Tasmanian Greens and Australian Greens, two mainstream parties still around today.
* * *
“They’ll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like; but that particular green…never.”
—Pablo Picasso
Longest Oscar acceptance speech: Greer Garson in 1943, at five and a half minutes.
Jayne Mansfield “popped out of her dress” during the 1957 Oscars.
In 1958, Joanne Woodward accepted an Academy Award in a gown she made herself for $100.
Bing Crosby, the winner of the Oscar for Best Actor in 1944, didn’t want to attend the Oscar ceremony. He was golfing when studio assistants found him and made him go.
Only four horror films have been nominated for Best Picture.
First actor to refuse an Oscar: George C. Scott (for
Patton
in 1970).
James Dean was the first actor to receive a posthumous Oscar nomination, in 1955.
Shortest Oscar-winning performance: Anthony Quinn’s eight minutes as Paul Gauguin in
Lust for Life
(1956).
Director Alfred Hitchcock never won an Academy Award.
Only seven comedies have won Best Picture Oscars.
Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks are the only actors to win the Oscar for Best Actor two years in a row.
The only Best Picture nominee based on a TV show:
The Fugitive
(1993).
In 1994, Whoopi Goldberg became the first woman to host the Academy Awards.
The only film for which John Wayne won an Oscar:
True Grit
(1969).
First film to win more than 10 Oscars:
Ben-Hur
(1959).
In their ancient form, carrots were purple, not orange. The Dutch developed orange carrots in the 1600s.
Ancient Greeks believed that onions were an aphrodisiac.
Romans cultivated asparagus as early as 200 BC.
Tulips aren’t native to Holland. They were brought over from Turkey in the 1500s.
Originally, jack-o’-lanterns were made from turnips.
As American as apple pie? Apples are not native to North America; they were brought over from Europe and western Asia.
Chinese gooseberries didn’t sell well in the United States until the 1950s and ’60s, when grocers renamed them “kiwis.” (Calling them “Chinese” had negative associations because of the Cold War.)
Henry Ford was fascinated with soybeans and used them to make automotive paint and parts. (He also grew marijuana, hoping to make new plastics from it.)
The first apple orchard in North America was probably in Boston.
Once upon a time, pumpkins were recommended for removing freckles and curing snake bites.
The sweet potato was once a rare delicacy, believed to be a potent aphrodisiac.
The first vegetables grown in space: potatoes, in 1995.
Shortcake has been around since the 1500s in England, but strawberry shortcake is an American tradition that dates to the mid-1800s, when people held strawberry parties to celebrate the start of summer.
…pitch for a men’s pro baseball team: Ila Borders of the St. Paul Saints (1997).
…swim the English Channel: Gertrude Ederle (1926). It took her 14 hours, 39 minutes.
…become a professional bullfighter: Conchita Cintron. She began her career in 1934 at age 12.
…compete in the Indianapolis 500: Janet Guthrie (1977).
…have her work published in America: Anne Bradstreet (1650).
…travel into space: the Soviet Union’s Valentina V. Tereshkova (1963).
…receive top billing and to headline her own country-music show: Patsy Cline (1962).
…have her artwork displayed at the White House: Georgia O’Keeffe (1997).
…conduct at New York’s Metropolitan Opera: Sarah Caldwell (1976).
…lead a jazz band: Sophie Tucker’s Five Kings of Syncopation (1914).
Phobatrivaphobia is a fear of trivia about phobias.
Helminthophobia is the fear of worms.
Fear of vegetables is known as lachanophobia.
What is phobophobia? Fear of phobias.
The fear of Fridays is called friggaphobia.
Stenophobia is the fear of narrow spaces.
What is autophobia? Fear of being alone.
What is blennophobia? Fear of slime.
* * *
FAMOUS FEARS
• Composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky suffered from a paralyzing fear that his head would fall off.
• Queen Elizabeth I of England was afraid of flowers.
• Scientist Nicola Tesla found pearls revolting—and wouldn’t allow his female employees to wear them.
Charles Dickens’s son Francis was a Canadian Mountie.
President George W. Bush spent a summer selling sporting goods for Sears.
The kiss between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson at the end of
Lost in Translation
was not in the script. It was a last-minute ad-lib by the actors.
Ronald Reagan once appeared in a GE Theater production called
A Turkey for President
.
Dan Aykroyd co-owns a Toronto bar called Crooks. The other owners: several Toronto cops.
Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely sat down; he even had a podium in his office that he stood behind.
Young Calvin Coolidge earned spare cash selling apples and popcorn balls at town meetings.
Harrison Ford was offered the part of Mike on
All in the Family
, but turned it down because he felt Archie Bunker was too racist.
Jerry Springer worked on Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign staff.
One beehive can house as many as 40,000 bees.
Only female mosquitoes bite; they need the blood to feed their eggs. Males’ mouthparts aren’t equipped to suck blood.