Uncle John’s Did You Know? (19 page)
Read Uncle John’s Did You Know? Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
• The world’s deepest-dwelling fish,
Abyssobrotula galatheae
, was found near Puerto Rico at a depth of 8,372 meters—that’s more than five miles down! Its eyes are virtually nonexistent. (Since it’s so dark at that depth, eyes have become unnecessary and useless.)
• The average American watches 28 hours of TV each week.
• The average American spends 27 minutes per day reading the newspaper and 17 minutes reading books.
• The average American home contains six radios.
• The average American opens the refrigerator 22 times a day.
• On average, Americans spend $1,300 on utility bills each year.
• While shopping for groceries in a supermarket, the average American will make 14 impulse purchases. Examples: chewing gum, cold soda, cookies, tabloid newspapers, an eyeglass-repair kit, lottery tickets, or anything marked
“NEW!”
• In an average year, an average American will spend five times longer in their car than they’ll spend on vacation.
• The average American kid scarfs down 46 slices of pizza per year.
• Here’s a scary thought: The average American will develop a phobia by the age of 13.
Before the 1920s
—
in the days before child-labor laws and compulsory education
—
most children worked. How would you like to have had one of these jobs?
• You’ve seen
Mary Poppins
, so you know what a chimney sweep does—clean chimneys. But many chimney sweeps were small children, six to eight years old, who had to crawl up chimneys and loosen the soot with a broom.
• Gillie boys helped fishermen by baiting hooks, pulling nets, and preparing food.
• A loblolly boy was an assistant to a ship’s doctor. One of his responsibilities was to feed the patients, and what he fed them was a thick oatmeal or porridge called
loblolly
.
• Office boys worked—you guessed it—in offices. What did they do? Sharpened pencils, swept floors, stuffed envelopes, and ran errands.
• Being a powder monkey might sound like fun, but it was a dangerous job. The powder in question: gunpowder. Kids carried it to the cannons during battles.
• Children often worked as vendors, selling things on city streets. Besides newspaper boys, there were “hot corn girls,” who sold corn on the cob for a penny.
• Your nose gets runny when you cry because the tears from your eyes drain into your sinuses…and dribble out of your nose. (Eww!)
• Even if you ate while standing on your head, the food would still end up in your stomach.
• Travelers beware: Flying frequently across several time zones can shrink your brain.
• It seems there’s a name for
everything
: The food that’s digested in your stomach is called
chyme
.
• The body of an adult human is covered with about five million hairs—the same number of hairs as an adult gorilla.
• Your empty stomach has a capacity of less than two ounces. But when you start to fill it, your tummy can expand to hold a quart (about four juice boxes).
• Onion or garlic breath comes from the lungs, not the mouth: The odor-causing components get into your blood, and when the blood reaches your lungs you breathe out smelly gas. (Eww!)
• Breathing normally, you suck air into your nose at 4 mph. A sneeze shoots out of your nose at 100 mph.
• If you’re right-handed, you sweat more under your left arm. If you’re left-handed, you sweat more under your right arm.
• Sleeping on your right side helps gas escape more easily from your stomach. So, here’s the good news: you can burp while you snore.
• Your stomach lining contains millions of tiny glands that produce
hydrochloric acid
. This acid is so strong that it can dissolve metal.
• There are 639 named muscles in the human body.
• The average fart contains several different gases, including nitrogen (59%) and methane (7%).
• If you pluck a hair from your head (or someone else’s head), it will take 56 days—almost two months—for it to reappear.
• Move your hand. You just used 35 muscles.
• Bile produced by the liver is what makes your poop a brownish-green color. (Eww!)
• About 50% of the bacteria in your mouth live on the surface of your tongue.
• 90% of people have “innie” belly buttons, which means only 10% have “outies.”
• Argentinian cowboys, called
gauchos
, have over 200 words to describe the color of horses.
• The oldest known horse lived to 62 years old.
• The average horse secretes (yuck!) nine gallons of saliva a day.
• Hair from a horse’s mane or tail is used in making paintbrushes and violin bows.
• Car models named for horses: Colt, Bronco, Mustang, Pinto.
• A horse has 205 bones.
• The first cloned horse was born in Italy in 2003; the mare that gave birth to her was her identical twin.
• The word “equestrian” comes from
equus
, Latin for “horse.”
• Who’s the only athlete to appear simultaneously on the cover of
Time, Newsweek
, and
Sports Illustrated
? The racehorse Secretariat. In 1973 he won the Triple Crown of horseracing: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes.
• The cowboy slang word for horse—cayuse—comes from the name of a Native American tribe.
• The largest living thing in the world is an underground fungus in Oregon. It covers about 2,000 acres.
• The oldest organism on Earth: a colony of bacteria that had been entombed in sea salt in New Mexico for 250 million years. Scientists discovered it in 2000.
• By using a nearby fossil of an identical plant, scientists estimated the age of a King’s Holly plant found in the rain forests of Tasmania at over 43,000 years old.
• The oldest living animal: a Madagascar radiated tortoise presented to the royal family of Tonga by British captain James Cook in the 1770s. It lived to an estimated age of 188.
• The hottest place on Earth: the El Azizia desert in North Africa. On September 13, 1922, the temperature was officially measured at 136°F, but scientists believe it may have actually reached 150° in some areas.
• Manta rays can grow up to 19 feet long and weigh as much as 2,300 pounds.
•
Extreme
height: Astronauts grow as much as three inches taller in space. Engineers have to factor it in when designing space capsules and uniforms.
• In parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile, it has never rained. Ever.
• Boulder, Colorado, is the most educated city in America—more than half of the adult residents have college degrees.
• The oldest school in the United States is New York’s Collegiate School, founded in 1628.
• The first library was established by the Greeks in 530 B.C.
• Hawaii’s Lahainaluna High School was the first school established west of the Rocky Mountains. It was founded in Lahaina, Maui, in 1831, when Lahaina was a busy whaling port.
• Maria Montessori opened the first Montessori school in Rome, Italy, for the children of poor families.
• Utah’s Brigham Young University offers more than 100 ballroom dancing classes a year.
• In the 10th century, the Grand Vizier of Persia, Abdul Kassam Ismael, carried his complete library with him wherever he traveled. It required more than 400 camels to carry all 117,000 volumes.
• In 2004, Kimani Maruge of Kenya finally got his chance to go to elementary school…at 85 years old.
Dutch:
Vissers die vissen naar vissen en vissers die vissen die vangen vaak bot. De vissen waar de vissende vissers naar vissen, vinden vissers die vissen vervelend en rot!
English translation:
“Fishermen that go fishing for fish and fishermen who fish often catch flounders. The fish that the fishing fishermen fish for, find fishermen that go fishing annoying and beastly!”