Uncle John’s Did You Know? (16 page)

• No more fumbling around in the dark—there’s a motion-sensitive night-light that flashes a red warning when the toilet seat’s been left up, or a green “go” light when the toilet seat is down.

• Greatest distance a toilet has ever been thrown: 23.8 feet.

• Do whales fart? Yes. Survivors of whale farts report that the bubbles are really big and the smell is awful.

• More bad news for swimmers: Blue whales make about 6,000 pounds of poop each day.

• Butterflies don’t go to the bathroom.

• Volcanic ash is an ingredient in some toothpastes.

• Consider this fact the next time you have to use a public bathroom—the first stall in the row is most likely the cleanest. That’s because it’s the least likely to be used.

BASKETBALL
TEAM NAMES

How NBA teams got on the ball and found their names
.

•
Atlanta Hawks:
They used to be the Tri-City Blackhawks, based in the area of Moline, Illinois; Rock Island, Illinois; and Davenport, Iowa. The team was named in honor of Sauk chief Black Hawk.

•
Denver Nuggets:
The name is a nod to Colorado’s 1800s gold mining boom.

•
Detroit Pistons:
Fort Wayne, Indiana, businessman Fred Zollner named the team he owned after Zollner Pistons, his car-parts business. The Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons moved to Detroit in 1957, dropped the “Zollner,” and became the Detroit Pistons.

•
Indiana Pacers:
The name comes from another sport: auto racing. A “pacer” is the pace car that starts the state’s Indianapolis 500 race.

•
Los Angeles Lakers:
They used to be based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” The team kept the name when it moved to Los Angeles, even though the city has few lakes.

•
New Jersey
Nets: It’s not only from a basketball net—it was picked to rhyme with two other New York teams: the New York Mets and the New York Jets.

•
Utah Jazz:
Before moving to Salt Lake City, Utah, the Jazz played in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz music.

•
Seattle SuperSonics:
When Seattle was awarded a new basketball team in 1967, it was around the time Seattle airplane manufacturer Boeing announced plans to build a high-speed supersonic jet. The plane was never built, but the team took the name “SuperSonics” anyway.

•
Los Angeles Clippers:
The team used to be the San Diego Clippers. The name refers to the tall clipper ships that once traveled in and out of San Diego Bay.

•
New York Knicks
. The team’s full name is the New York Knickerbockers. What are knickerbockers? They are pants that are cuffed just below the knee, commonly worn by the 17th-century Dutch settlers who founded New York.

OH, BABY!

• How do they do it? For about six months after birth, infants can breathe and swallow at the same time. (No wonder they burp so much.)

• Shelby Park, born February 10, 2001, was the first baby to have her birth broadcast live on the Internet.

• Glug! Glug! Disposable diapers hold up to seven pounds of liquid.

• The average baby eats 15 pounds of cereal before he or she is one year old.

• An unborn baby’s heart beats about 140 times per minute.

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

• In the first few days of life, a baby can see about eight inches away from its face.

• Most new babies have blue eyes because melanin (the brown pigment that colors skin, hair, and eyes) hasn’t been fully deposited in their irises or darkened by exposure to ultraviolet light.

• Hey, baby! Try this classic tongue twister: rubber baby buggy bumpers.

• Most American women don’t have their first baby until they’re at least 24 years old.

• In Japan a baby is born every 25 seconds.

WHAT’S ON TV

• Q: What do chimpanzees like to watch on TV?

a) talk shows, b) game shows, or c) hockey?

A: b) Game shows. Researchers are still trying to figure out why.

• On one Japanese extreme game show, a grandmother had to answer questions about pop culture to prevent her grandson from being catapulted into the air by a bungee machine. (She didn’t know the answers.)

• Only one out of 10 middle-aged Americans didn’t watch TV yesterday.

• A chimp named “J. Fred Muggs” was a regular on the
Today
show from 1953 to 1958. He was also an artist—one of his finger paintings appeared on the cover of
MAD
magazine in 1958.

• 26% of the men and women who watched the 2006 Super Bowl said that watching the commercials was the thing they enjoyed most about the game.

• The first TV commercial, for a wristwatch, ran in 1941. It cost the Bulova Watch Company $9 to air it.

• Since its premiere in 1969, 75 million American kids have watched
Sesame Street
.

• Young adults prefer reality shows, while older viewers like police and medical dramas best.

JAPANESE
LANGUAGE

• Japanese is a great language for sound effects.
Gata gata
is the sound of a chair with one short leg.
Pichiku-pachiku
is the sound of chattering women.

•
Puyo-puyo
is the sound of a blob of gelatin wiggling.

•
Pori pori
is the sound of scratching.

• The Japanese word for “index finger” literally means “person-pointing finger.” The ring finger is called the “medicine finger,” because it’s traditionally used to stir medicine.

• Ever see a couple where the woman is taller than the man? The Japanese call that
nomi no fuufu
—a flea couple.

• Ringo Starr, the drummer for the Beatles, once appeared on a Japanese advertisement for applesauce. Why?
Ringo
means “apple” in Japanese.

• Japanese cars: Daihatsu Naked, Honda Life Dunk, Honda That’s, Mazda Bongo, Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear and Pistachio, Nissan Fairlady Z and Prairie Joy, Rickman Space Ranger, Suzuki Cappuccino, Toyota Deliboy and Toyopet, Volugrafo Bimbo, and Isuzu GIGA 20 Light Dump and Mysterious Utility.

ANIMAL
SOUNDS QUIZ

Match the Japanese animal sounds with the animal.

Answer key

Dog: Wan-wan Sheep: Mee-mee Duck: Qua-qua Pig: Boo Cat: Neeow Bird: Qui-qui Horse: He-heeh Cow: Mo-mo

IN LIVING
COLOR

• Most men prefer white bedrooms, but women tend to like blue ones.

• Fast-food restaurants are decorated with lots of yellow, red, and orange—colors thought to stimulate hunger.

• When shopping for casual clothing, most people prefer blue items.

• The ancient Greeks thought they’d have pleasant dreams if they wore white to bed.

• Crayola Crayons currently produces over 120 different crayon colors, but their paper wrappers come in only 18 different colors.

• It was Shakespeare who first called jealousy the “green-eyed monster.”

• At one time, people thought that blue would ward off evil spirits. That’s why baby boys are dressed in blue. The idea of dressing baby girls in pink came later.

• According to color theory, purple in a child’s room will help develop his or her imagination.

• People who sell real estate say that yellow houses sell faster than any other color.

• It’s been proven: Blue causes the brain to release hormones that calm people down.

PRECIOUS!

• 34% of the world’s gold—about one-third—is mined in South Africa.

• What country uses the most gold? India.

• Approximately 17 tons of gold are used to make wedding rings in the United States every year.

• Diamonds were first discovered over 4,000 years ago in the riverbeds of the Golconda region of India. And until the 1730s, India was the world’s only source of diamonds.

• The Hope Diamond is said to be cursed, because it was removed from the eye of a statue of the Hindu goddess Sita.

• Most expensive jeweled egg: The Fabergé “Winter Egg,” decorated with more than 3,000 diamonds. In 2002 it was sold for $9.6 million.

• The most expensive perfume, Parfum VI, is packaged in a gold bottle covered with diamonds. Cost: $71,380.

• Carat for carat, emeralds—the traditional birthstone for the month of May—are the most valuable gemstones in the world.

• The world’s largest silver nugget was found near Aspen, Colorado, in 1894. It weighed 1,840 pounds!

THE PLANE TRUTH

• The first Boeing passenger plane, the 247, carried only 10 passengers.