Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
During most of the 19th century, Americans set their watches to as many as a hundred local times. Standard Time was finally devised in 1883 by Sandford Fleming, a Canadian.
The
anno Domini
system of counting the years from the birth of Christ began in 525.
The tip of the hour hand on a wristwatch travels at about 0.00000275 miles per hour.
Mahatma Gandhi observed a day of silence on Mondays.
The first TV commercial: a Bulova watch ticking on the screen for exactly 60 seconds.
February 29, or leap day, was once called Bissextile Day.
According to a medieval system of time units, a “moment” is 1½ minutes.
Hindu holy days begin at sunrise, Jewish holy days at sunset, and Christian holy days at midnight.
Author James Joyce always wore five watches, each set to a different time.
When Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar, October 4, 1582, was followed by October 15.
London’s Westminster clock tower (Big Ben) chimes part of Handel’s
Messiah
on the quarter-hour.
October almost always begins on the same day of the week as January. The exception: leap year.
The word
February
comes from the Latin
februum
, “to cleanse.”
Actress Tuesday Weld was born on a Friday (August 27, 1943). Her real name is Susan.
Japan’s Emperor Akihito is the 125th ruler in an unbroken line that goes back to the first century BC.
The words
czar
and
kaiser
are both descended from the word
caesar
.
The throne of Ethiopia’s Menelik II (1844–1913) was actually an electric chair imported from the United States.
The line of succession to the British throne includes 60 people.
The only English king to die on the battlefield was Richard III, in 1485 during the War of the Roses.
Europe’s longest-reigning monarch…so far: Louis XIV of France. He ruled for 72 years, 3 months, and 15 days.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was the only person to serve as queen of both England and France.
Longest-serving monarch: Pepi II, who ruled Egypt for 94 years between 2278 and 2184 BC.
The eldest son of the king or queen of England is automatically the Duke of Cornwall.
The word
khan
, as in Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan, means “ruler.”
* * *
Football player who made end zone dances famous:
Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, a kick returner who played professional football from 1974 to 1988 and spent most of his career with the Houston Oilers and the Atlanta Falcons.
Teddy Roosevelt’s “cavalry charge” up San Juan Hill was done on foot.
Russia’s “February Revolution” took place in March. The “October Revolution” was in November.
The Battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought one hill over, on Breed’s Hill.
The Hundred Years’ War lasted 116 years.
In Vietnam, the Vietnam War is called the American War.
Nazi Germany’s Thousand Year Reich lasted 147 months.
The town of Waterproof, Louisiana, has been flooded many times.
Virginia extends 95 miles farther to the west than West Virginia.
When the Civil War started, Robert E. Lee owned no slaves. Ulysses S. Grant did.
What do Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan have in common? They were all members of the National Rifle Association—and they were all shot with guns.
A 1935 proposal called for joining the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles in a new state: Texlahoma.
The United States was the first independent country in the New World. Haiti was the second, in 1804.
First country to officially recognize the United States as an independent country: Morocco.
Theodore Roosevelt’s 1901 inaugural oath was the only one not sworn on a Bible.
“Hail Columbia,” the song played for the vice president’s entrance, was once an unofficial U.S. national anthem.
In 1946, the U.S. Marines were called to subdue the Battle of Alcatraz, the deadliest escape attempt in the prison’s history. Two guards and three inmates were killed, and 15 others were injured.
What did U.S. presidents John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, and Chester A. Arthur have in common? No vice president.
The U.S. death toll from the 1918 flu pandemic was so high that it created a coffin shortage.
In the early 1900s, the U.S. government wanted to build a canal through Nicaragua. But because a Nicaraguan stamp showed a volcano, the United States chose Panama instead.
First presidential election in which all U.S. women were allowed to vote: 1920. The winner: Warren G. Harding, who’d been a supporter of women’s suffrage.
In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, 131 million votes were cast. In the final voting for
American Idol
that same year, 97 million votes were cast.
None of the scenes in
Fargo
were actually filmed in Fargo.
The snow scenes in
It’s a Wonderful Life
were shot on a movie lot in Southern California during a record heat wave.
Stagecoach
was the first of nine films that John Ford filmed in Monument Valley, Utah.
High Noon
was shot in 32 days after only 10 days of rehearsal.
The mansion in
Hannibal
is the Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina.
Amadeus
was shot entirely in natural light.
The Russian epic
Doctor Zhivago
was filmed in Spain and Finland.
World War II made filming in Europe impossible, so a Welsh mining town had to be created in Malibu, California, for
How Green Was My Valley
.
Oklahoma!
was shot in Arizona. (Oklahoma was too well developed when the film was made in 1955.)
VICHYSSOISE.
Don’t let the French name fool you—this leek-and-potato soup (pronounced
vi-she-swaz
) has an American origin. Louis Diat, the head chef of New York’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, came up with the cold soup in 1917 while looking for something to serve to customers in the sweltering New York summer heat.
FISH STICKS.
Clarence Birdseye single-handedly invented the frozen-food industry in the late 1920s when he figured out how to freeze food without ruining its flavor, texture, or nutritional value (you have to freeze it quickly). His early machines worked best with food that was cut into slender pieces, and one of the first foods he came up with was a knockoff of a French delicacy called
goujonettes de sole
: sole fillets baked or fried in bread crumbs and a light batter. Birdseye switched to cheaper fish (cod), fried it in a heavier batter, and scored a hit.
WISH-BONE SALAD DRESSING.
When Phillip Sollomi returned from fighting in World War II in 1945, he opened a restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri. The house specialty: fried chicken. So he named the restaurant “The Wish-bone.” In 1948, he started serving his mother’s Sicilian salad dressing, which was so popular that he started bottling it and selling it on the side. In 1957, he sold the salad dressing business to the Lipton Tea Company, and today Wish-Bone is the best-selling Italian dressing in the United States.
CORN DOGS.
Neil Fletcher wasn’t the first person to dip a hot dog in cornmeal batter and deep-fry it, but he did popularize the dish when he began selling it at the Texas State Fair in 1942. Those early dogs were served on plates, though. It wasn’t until four years later that Ed Waldmire, a soldier stationed in Amarillo, first put the corn dog on a “stick” (the first ones were actually metal cocktail forks, later replaced by wooden sticks).
In Canada, milk is sold in plastic bags as well as in jugs.
Lacrosse is the official “national summer sport” of Canada.
Canada has the fourth-lowest population density in the world.
Studies show that the second-most-annoying thing to Canadians is “Someone reading over your shoulder.” (First is traffic.)
According to a survey, Canadian teens spend 27.8 percent less time online than adult Canadians.
Canadian performer with the most celebrity impersonators: Shania Twain.
Five percent of Canadians don’t know the first two lines of their national anthem. (“O Canada! / Our home and native land!”)
In his lifetime, Elvis Presley played only five concerts outside the United States—all in Canada.
Canadian journalist Sandy Gardiner coined the phrase “Beatlemania.”
Twelve percent of Canadians admit to having kicked a photocopier in frustration.
The snowmobile was invented in Canada.
Longest street: Yonge Street in Toronto, at 1,178 miles.
A Canadian pilot, Roy Brown, is credited with shooting down Manfred von Richthofen, “the Red Baron.”
Canada is the second-largest country in the world. (Russia is first.)
Canadian-born Arthur Irwin invented the baseball fielder’s glove in the late 1800s.
What’s an
atluk
? A hole in the ice where seals come up to breathe.
What’s a
mondegreen
? A misheard song lyric.
What’s the technical name for a
kazoo
? A membranophone.
What’s a
quidnunc
? Well? Well? (It’s someone who asks too many questions.)
What’s a
carriwitchet
? A puzzling question.
What are
ephelides
? Freckles.
What is
punctate pruritus
? The medical term for an itchy spot.
What’s a
bibliobibuli
? Someone who reads too much.
What is
nikhedonia
? The feeling of pleasure one gets from anticipating victory.
What’s a
pollex
? Your thumb.
What’s the scientific name for heavy winter fog containing ice crystals? Pogonip.
What’s an
olf
? A unit of indoor odor equal to one day’s aroma from a sedentary human.
What’s a
mythomaniac
? Someone who lies constantly.
What do you call a nerve cell that has just formed? A neuroblast.
What’s an
onychophagiac
? Someone who habitually bites his or her nails.
* * *
Studies show:
Forty-one percent of Americans say they believe in extraterrestrials who are “much like ourselves.”
Farmers and ranchers provide food and habitat for about 75 percent of America’s wildlife.
The McIntosh apple is named for Canadian farmer John McIntosh, who discovered it in 1811.
American farms use the rectilinear grid system, with plots laid out in rectangles. Thomas Jefferson came up with this system in the 18th century.
Cows give more milk when they listen to relaxing music.
Pigs don’t sweat—they have no sweat glands. They cool themselves off by wallowing in mud.
Temperature of milk inside a cow: about 100°F.
A cow spends six hours of every day eating…and about eight hours chewing cud.
In Japan, apple farmers use turkeys to guard their orchards against monkeys.
Today, the average yield of a dairy cow is four gallons a day more than it was in the 1700s.
A 1,200-pound horse eats about seven times its own weight per year.
The bottom line on a standard eye chart: PEZOLCFTD.
Ralph Teetor, the man who invented cruise control for cars, was blind.
Baseball player Rogers Hornsby wanted to preserve his eyesight, so he didn’t read or watch movies.
Loud noises, aspirin, caffeine, and quinine can all cause tinnitus (ringing in the ears).
The original back cover of the 1973 Wings album
Red Rose Speedway
had a message to Stevie Wonder, written in Braille. (It says, “We love ya baby!”)
Roy Orbison refused to perform without his sunglasses.
If a man with normal vision and a color-blind woman have children, the daughters will have normal vision and the sons will be color-blind.
Wearing headphones for an hour can increase the number of bacteria in your ears by 700 percent.
Liu Ch’ung of China (ca. AD 995) had two sets of pupils in each of his eyes.
The opposite of “cross-eyed” is “walleyed.”
Leonardo da Vinci made a sketch for contact lenses in the 15th century.
One of David Bowie’s pupils is permanently dilated after a friend punched him in the eye as a kid.
Thomas Edison was partially deaf.
Actor Lon Chaney was the son of deaf-mute parents, and thus learned early to pantomime.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was also an ophthalmologist.
Leaders of the First and Second Reichs: Charlemagne and Otto von Bismarck.
As a member of the British Parliament in the early 1700s, Isaac Newton spoke only once. He wanted to open a window.
The writings of Confucius were nearly lost when China’s emperor Qin Shi Huang, who unified the country in 221 BC, tried to burn them all.
England nearly went bankrupt after paying the ransom for Richard the Lionheart when he was kidnapped by Austrians in 1192.
Shortly after being exiled from Russia, Leon Trotsky stayed with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Mexico.
Nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer was classed as a security risk during the McCarthy era for opposing the nuclear arms race.
When Joseph Stalin became general secretary of the Communist Party in 1922, it was a menial position.
Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Missouri in 1946.
David Ben-Gurion, who led Israel through two wars, was actually born in Poland.