The Extraordinary Book of Useless Information (4 page)

Gömböc is the world's only self-righting object. Developed in 2005, it is shaped in such a way that no matter how it is put down, it will always stand itself back up. Unlike Weebles, which self-right because of a weight in the bottom, Gömböc does so simply because of its shape. It has since been found that turtles share the same basic shape, allowing them to easily right themselves.

Gallium is a silvery metallic element that melts at 85°F. Crystals of this metal are on the market, and one can hold a gallium crystal in one's hand and watch it slowly melt into a shiny puddle that will freeze back into a solid when it cools.

Oobleck is a suspension of starch (such as cornstarch) in water and is an example of a non-Newtonian fluid (a liquid that does not behave as a typical liquid). Although it is a fluid, it becomes solid when pressure is applied to it. As such, a person can run across a vat of liquid oobleck.

Chilled caramel is another non-Newtonian liquid. Caramel on top of ice cream is a liquid, but if a finger is pushed rapidly into it, the caramel acts like a solid. A spoon pushed slowly in will keep the caramel in its liquid state, but pulling the spoon out quickly will cause it to form a solid. The same effect can be achieved by turning a container holding chilled caramel upside down rapidly.

EcoSpheres are sealed glass balls of seawater, algae, bacteria, and shrimp. These tiny ecosystems will live for years. All they require is warmth and sunlight.

DISHWASHER DISCOVERIES

Fish can be steamed in a dishwasher. To do so, wrap fish tightly in aluminum foil and run on the normal cycle with no detergent. Do not run the dry cycle. Enjoy.

Lemonade-flavored Kool-Aid can be used to remove iron and lime stains from a dishwasher. Simply empty a packet in the detergent dispenser and run the dishwasher.

LOTTO LOWDOWN

Studies show that people play lottery numbers 31 and down more often than higher numbers, probably because many bettors play birthdays.

BLOWIN' IN THE WIND

Tumbleweeds are not native to the American West, but originated in Eurasia.

Tumbleweeds are unique in that they disperse their seeds by rolling across the ground when blown by the wind.

A LITTLE NIBBLE

A “nibble,” in computing, is four bits, or half a byte. It is also spelled “nybble” and “nyble.”

PINHEAD NUMBER

The most common ATM PIN number is 1234. These incredibly unimaginative four digits make up 10.7 percent of PIN numbers. 1111 is second, with a user frequency rate of 6 percent. 0000, 1212, and 7777 round out the top five most popular PINs.

IN THE PINK

The color magenta gets its name from the dye magenta that was discovered shortly after the Battle of Magenta in 1859, near Magenta, Italy.

WATTS UP?

A one-watt night-light emits a billion billion photons per second.

PLANE AND SIMPLE

Flying in an airplane is safer than riding an escalator.

About 97.5 percent of passengers involved in a fatal plane crash survive.

Statistically speaking, a person would have to fly every day for thirty-five thousand years to be in a fatal plane crash.

The safest places to sit on a plane are in the back or in the middle over the wing.

The black box and flight recorders are kept in the tails of planes because that is the section most likely to survive a wreck.

PLASTIC IS FOREVER

Each year the United States uses about 102 billion plastic grocery bags.

Plastic molecules are too big for bacteria and fungi to break down. Sunlight, however, does degrade plastic, making it brittle and causing it to fracture into tiny pieces.

THAT BLOWS

Hurricane Alice has the distinction of being both the earliest
and
latest hurricane on record. It began on December 30, 1954 and ended on January 5, 1955. No other hurricanes have been active so late in a year, or so early in a year.

The only years on record in which there were no Atlantic hurricanes were 1907 and 1914.

IN A FOG

The foggiest place in the world is the Grand Banks off of Newfoundland, where the warm waters of the Gulf Stream meet the cold waters of the Labrador Current.

The foggiest place in the United States is Point Reyes, California, which averages more than two hundred foggy days a year.

Redwood trees in California receive 30 to 40 percent of their moisture from fog.

Precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before it reaches the ground is called virga.

Cloudy nights are warmer than clear nights, since clouds trap heat absorbed by the Earth during the day, preventing it from being lost back to space when the sun goes down.

Helicopters are sometimes used to clear fog from the runways at airports.

WEATHER UPDATE

Raindrops are not tear-shaped, but actually resemble mushroom caps.

The last snowfall of the season is known as the onion snow.

The warmest it has ever been in Antarctica was 59°F at Vanda Station on January 5, 1974.

SPACED OUT

Astronauts report that space has a distinctive odor. Upon returning from a spacewalk, their spacesuits have a metallic smell, similar to that of seared steak or welding fumes.

Bacteria grow faster in space.

Water in space boils in one big bubble, instead of the thousands of tiny ones found in earthbound boiling water.

Candle flames in space are spherical, not tear-shaped.

Many astronauts who spend too much time in space begin to develop blurry vision. Scientists aren't sure why this happens, but it could complicate efforts to send people on long-term missions, such as to Mars.

The first person to walk in space was Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, in 1965. His spacesuit was not properly pressurized and it ballooned and stiffened so much that Leonov got stuck trying to reenter the space capsule's air lock after first entering it the wrong way. He had to reduce the pressure in his suit to free himself, and he risked death from the bends.

Astronauts' urine is discharged into space. Their feces are brought back to Earth. The astronauts who landed on the moon left all their trash, including excrement, behind for future visitors to find. Apollo astronauts pooped into a bag and then had the odious task of squirting in some germicide and kneading the contents to sterilize said poop.

Many early space shots involved sending live animals into orbit. Sadly, none of these dogs, apes, and other animals ever returned safely to Earth. In fact, dozens of them are still orbiting the planet in mummified form.

STARSTRUCK

The sun is really a white star. It is the Earth's atmosphere that makes it appear yellow.

Most stars are smaller than the sun and most have a companion star.

The sun is closest to the Earth in early January.

The seasons on Earth have nothing to do with its distance from the sun, but with the tilt of the Earth's axis.

Brown dwarfs are space objects that are bigger than large gas planets (like Jupiter) but smaller than stars. Some brown dwarfs are as cool as 80°F.

Newly discovered stars, known as Y dwarfs, are about the size of Jupiter and are almost cool enough to touch. They remain so cool because their size is too small to allow fusion to take place. One of the nearest stars to Earth is a Y dwarf. Brown dwarfs that cool off become Y dwarfs.

VY Canis Majoris is the largest known star, some two thousand times the size of the sun. It is so big that it would take a jet plane twelve hundred years to fly around it.

A marshmallow dropped on a neutron star would impact with the force of an atomic bomb due to the star's enormous gravity.

There are so many stars at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy that if the Earth were moved there, there would be 1 million stars in the sky and there would be no night.

A recent study of the cosmos suggests that the universe is running out of star-making material and that new star formation is coming to an end.

Scientists now believe there are at least 176 billion galaxies in the universe.

The Hubble Space Telescope can see galaxies one-ten-billionth as bright as the naked eye can see.

The farthest away galaxy was discovered/photographed in 2011. Named GN-108036, this galaxy is believed to be 12.9 billion years old, just 750 million years younger than the universe itself.

If the sun was replaced by a black hole of equal mass, the orbits of the planets would not be affected.

Once a black hole forms, it never dissipates.

FRANKENSTORM

There was a massive storm on Saturn in 2011 that stretched some two hundred thousand miles, with a vortex nearly as wide as Earth.

STARDUST

Comet dust contains the gemstone peridot.

GREAT BALLS OF FIRE

Meteoroids that are large enough to impact the Earth are called meteorites.

Most meteoroids visible in the night sky are at an altitude of forty to seventy-five miles above the Earth.

Sometimes the sonic booms created by meteoroids can be heard on the ground. During the 2001 Leonid meteor shower, people reported hearing a cracking sound.

EARTH SCIENCE

If Earth didn't have an atmosphere, the sky would always be black, as on the moon. The atmosphere scatters sunlight, making it look blue.

Four billion years ago, an Earth day was just ten hours long. Tidal friction, or gravitational force, between the Earth and the moon has slowed Earth's rotation over the years. It is currently slowing at the rate of twenty seconds every million years.

Parts of Canada near the Hudson Bay have less gravity than the rest of the world.

Earthquake lights are multicolored lights, similar to aurorae, that appear in the sky during earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

GREAT MINDS

Isaac Newton wrote more about his Bible interpretations and the occult than he did about science.

Modern scholars believe Newton may have had Asperger's syndrome.

Biographers speculate that Newton, who never married, may have died a virgin.

Galileo Galilei was an excellent lute player.

Galileo's middle finger is on display at the Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy.

Francis Bacon died after contracting pneumonia while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat—perhaps bacon.

Bacon married a fourteen-year-old girl when he was forty-five.

Charles Darwin married his first cousin. Whenever one of their children would get sick, he worried that it was because of inherited weakness due to inbreeding with his cousin.

Charles Francis Richter, of Richter scale fame, was an avid nudist.

Greek mathematician Pythagorus did not discover the Pythagorean theorem—a
²
 + b
²
 = c
²
. It was known to the Babylonians some time earlier.

EASY AS PI

Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Its decimal representation never ends and never repeats. Pi, in short, is roughly 3.14159.

Computers have calculated pi to more than ten trillion digits.

In 2005, a Chinese man named Lu Chao set the world record for reciting the digits of pi, correctly rattling off pi to 67,890 digits in just over twenty-four hours.

PAPER MOON

If an ordinary one-millimeter-thick sheet of paper could be folded 42 times, it would reach past the moon. Folding it 51 times would make it extend out past the sun. Folding it 60 times would reach past the edge of the solar system. Folding it 83 times would make it thicker than the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy, and unbelievably, folding it 103 times would put it near the edge of the known universe! (Each time the paper is folded, it doubles the previous thickness, resulting in phenomenal growth. This is the power of exponential math!)

ICE, ICE, BABY!

Depending on temperature and pressure, there are fifteen known “phases” of ice. All ice found in the biosphere is known as Ice I. The different kinds of ice differ in their density and crystalline structure.

It is believed that under high enough pressures, ice may become a metal.

SLIME TIME

Slime molds are giant one-celled organisms with many nuclei that may be up to several square feet in size.

Even though they have no brain, slime molds have the ability to “remember” where they have been. They lay down a trail of goo as they slide along and use its presence to retrace their path or move in a new direction.

That musty odor of old books is caused by the spores of the fungi that live on the pages. Some experts believe that breathing the spores of some of these fungi for a period of time can cause hallucinations.

SIZING YOU UP

That gadget they use to measure your feet at the shoe store is known as a Brannock Device.

BIG BIRD

Sixty-seven million years ago, a giant flying pterosaur the size of an F-16 fighter jet, named
Quetzalcoatlus
, lived in what now is Texas.

S
ports
P
age

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

The 1900 Olympics had a live pigeon shooting event.

The 1904 Games had club swinging, an event that involved the twirling of clubs.

The 1924 Games had an event called La Canne, a French sport similar to fencing, that used wooden canes.

Rope climbing was an Olympic event up until 1932.

World Olympic record-holder South Korean archer Im Dong-hyun is legally blind, with 10 percent vision in one eye and 20 percent in the other. He does not wear glasses or contacts during competition.

Olympic gold medals are only 1.34 percent gold. The rest is comprised of 93 percent silver and 6 percent copper. The metals in the gold medal are worth about $650, as of 2012.

Olympic silver medals are comprised of 93 percent silver and 7 percent copper.

Bronze medals are mostly copper.

A study of Olympic medalists found that they live an average of 2.8 years longer than members of the general public.

In 2012, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps sunk the longest televised putt in history when he holed a 159-footer at the Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland. The putt took seventeen seconds to reach the cup. Phelps had only been golfing seriously for two months before accomplishing the feat.

American William Fiske won Olympic gold in the bobsled in the 1928 and 1932 Winter Games. He was just sixteen years old in the 1928 Games and was the flag bearer in the 1932 Games. Fiske also holds the distinction of being the first American killed in World War II. He pretended to be a Canadian and joined the British RAF in 1940, before the United States entered the war. He died in the Battle of Britain.

The U.S. Olympic flag bearer is selected by a vote of the captains of the various sports represented.

ISN'T IT IRONIC?

Chaunté
Lowe
is an American high jumper who competed in the 2012 Olympics.

Sylvia
Fowles
is an American basketball player who competed in the 2012 Olympics.

BAD SPORTS

The only gold medal won by Ireland in the 2004 Olympic Games came in show jumping. Unfortunately the winning horse—Waterford Crystal—tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug and was stripped of the medal.

At the 2008 Olympic Games, Cuban tae kwon do athlete Angel Matos was disqualified during a match after he took a longer than allowed injury time-out. He responded by kicking the referee in the face.

In his fencing match, Russian pentathlete Boris Onishchenko used an electronically rigged dueling sword that automatically scored hits, whether he touched his opponent or not. He was disqualified.

DON'T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB

Most American Olympic athletes work normal jobs and train in their spare time. Some examples from the 2012 team are triathlete Gwen Jorgensen, who is an accountant; discus thrower Lance Brooks, who is a construction worker in the oil business; sailor Debbie Capozzi, who works in the family Italian ice shop; and wrestler Chas Betts, who works as a motions designer (graphic arts) for films and videos.

American Suzy Favor-Hamilton, who ran in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Summer Games, supplemented her income as a high-priced call girl, earning up to six hundred dollars per client.

TO DIE FOR

Hall of Fame baseball player Ed Delahanty died in 1903 after a conductor kicked him off a train for being drunk and disorderly. Delahanty then attempted to walk over the International Railway Bridge connecting Buffalo, New York, to Fort Erie, Ontario, and either jumped or fell into the Niagara River and was swept over the falls.

Formula One racer Alan Stacey was killed during the 1960 Belgium Gran Prix after a bird hit him in the face, causing him to crash.

In 1998, an entire soccer team was killed by lightning during a match in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The opposing team was fine.

In 1983, Dick Wertheim, a tennis official at the U.S. Open, died after player Stefan Edberg hit a ball into his crotch, causing Wertheim to fall over and hit his head on the court.

MULTIPURPOSE MAN

On September 8, 1965, Bert Campaneris of the Oakland A's became the first major-league baseball player to play all nine positions in a single game. On the mound, he pitched ambidextrously, throwing lefty to left-handed batters and righty to right-handers. Since then, three more players have accomplished the feat.

AROUND THE HORN

Johan Santana became the first Mets pitcher ever to throw a no-hitter, in 2012. The only problem was that the umpire called a ball hit down the third base line foul, when replays clearly showed it to be fair.

In 2012, a baseball jersey worn by Babe Ruth circa 1920 sold for $4.4 million. That topped the previous record holder for sports memorabilia—the original rules for the game of basketball written by James Naismith—which sold for $4.3 million in 2010.

Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees holds the record for most home runs in World Series history with eighteen. He is followed by Babe Ruth with fifteen, Yogi Berra with twelve, Duke Snider with eleven, and Lou Gehrig and Reggie Jackson with ten.

The average major-league baseball salary in 1967 was $6,000. The average salary in 2012 was $3.2 million.

FOOTBALL RULES

About 36 percent of Americans say pro football is their favorite sport, followed by college football and pro baseball at 15 percent each, and auto racing at 8 percent.

The NFL's online store reported that Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers had the top-selling jersey for the 2011 season, followed by Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow and Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu. Teamwise, the Steelers sold the most jerseys.

Purdue quarterback Drew Brees threw the most passes in an FBS college football game—eighty-three—against Wisconsin in 1998. He completed fifty-five of them. Despite the pass-happy Brees, Purdue lost the game 31–24.

In 2012, forty-two college football coaches earned at least $2 million a year.

According to
Forbes
magazine, the most valuable college football program in the United States is the Texas Longhorns, followed by Notre Dame, Penn State, Louisiana State University, Michigan, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Auburn, and Oklahoma.

Lehigh University and Lafayette College have the longest-running rivalry in college football, 148 games and counting, as of 2012. The series began in 1884, with the only interruption occurring in 1896.

The Michigan football team holds the record for consecutive games without being shut out—349. The next four are Florida at 297, TCU at 242, Air Force at 233, and Tennessee at 222.

Since its inception in 1935, only three teams have had back-to-back Heisman Trophy winners. Larry Kelley (end) and Clint Frank (halfback) won for Yale in 1936 and 1937. Doc Blanchard (fullback) and Glenn Davis (halfback) won for Army in 1945 and 1946. Matt Leinart (quarterback) and Reggie Bush (running back) won for USC in 2004 and 2005. (In 2010, Bush became the first winner to forfeit the award.)

ZEBRAS

Black-and-white stripes first appeared on football officials' uniforms in the 1920s, after a quarterback in a college game tried to hand the ball off to an official in an all-white shirt.

Officials in the old American Football League wore red-and-orange-striped jerseys.

There are seven officials for an NFL game. They are the head referee, umpire, head linesman, line judge, side judge, back judge, and field judge.

The referee is the crew chief and wears a white hat, while the other officials wear black ones. He stands behind the offense and watches for penalties involving the quarterback or running back. The referee is the final authority on the field and is the one who communicates game information directly to the crowd via a wireless microphone. He also confers with the replay official in a booth above the field on instant replay challenges.

The umpire stands behind the defensive line and linebackers and watches for offensive holding and illegal forward passes. He is also responsible for making sure the players' equipment is legal.

The head linesman stands on one side of the field at the line of scrimmage. He looks for offsides penalties and determines if a player steps out of bounds. The head linesman also is in charge of the first down chain crew and marks forward progress on the field.

The line judge stands on the opposite sideline from the head linesman and also watches for offsides and out-of-bounds. In addition, he keeps track of the time during the game as a backup to the clock operator.

The field judge stands behind the defensive secondary, on the same side of the field as the line judge. He determines pass interference, pass completions, and illegal blocks downfield, and rules on whether field goal attempts are successful.

The side judge has the same responsibilities as the line judge, but on the opposite side of the field.

The back judge works the middle of the field behind the defensive secondary. He watches for pass interference, pass completions, illegal blocks downfield, and delay of game penalties.

NFL officials first started announcing penalties to the crowd in 1975.

NFL officials make about nine thousand dollars a game.

IT TAKES A LOT OF BALLS

In an NFL football game, the home team provides thirty-six new balls for an outdoor game and twenty-four balls for one played indoors. There are an additional twelve balls supplied for the kickers. The referee checks the air pressure in the balls prior to kickoff.

KICKER'S KORNER

Statistics show that “icing” a kicker—that is, the opposing coach calling a time-out just before a kicker attempts a high-pressure field goal—makes no difference. However, when the Dallas Cowboys inexplicably iced their own kicker in a 2011 game against the Cardinals, he missed the game-winning field goal, after making it just before the time-out.

The longest high school field goal was sixty-eight yards. Dirk Borgognone of Reno, Nevada, accomplished the feat in 1985. The NFL record is only sixty-three yards.

Kickers make 99.3 percent of extra points attempted in the NFL.

BACKWARDS BARRY

Barry Sanders holds the NFL record for most carries by a running back for negative yardage—336. These plays resulted in minus 952 yards.

In a 1994 playoff game against the Green Bay Packers, Sanders had a grand total of minus one yards rushing on thirteen carries.

MANNING UP

New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning's full name is Elisha Nelson Manning. He was named after his father, Elisha Archibald “Archie” Manning III, who was also a star NFL quarterback.

Eli's older brother's full name is Peyton Williams Manning.

Cooper Manning is the eldest Manning brother. He was a Mississippi all-state wide receiver who was thought to have a bright future in football, until he was diagnosed with spinal stenosis (a narrowing of the spinal column) at the age of eighteen.

As of late November 2012, the Manning family has thrown a combined 750 NFL touchdown passes—Peyton (425), Eli (200), and Archie (125).

CHEAT SHEETS

The first professional quarterback to use a wristband with the plays written on it was Tom Matte of the Baltimore Colts in 1965. Matte was actually a running back on the team, but was forced to play QB after injuries to Johnny Unitas and his backup, Gary Cuozzo.

THE WONDERLIC YEARS

The year future NFL football prospects are eligible for the draft, they are given something called the Wonderlic test to determine their intelligence. It is a fifty-question SAT-like exam that must be completed in twelve minutes. One point is awarded for each correct answer. The average score is 20.4. Historically, centers have the highest average score (26), followed by quarterbacks (25), offensive tackles (22.5), offensive guards and tight ends (22), safeties and linebackers (21), defensive ends (20), defensive tackles and fullbacks (19), receivers and cornerbacks (18), and running backs (17).

PASSING MUSTARD

The lowest passer efficiency rating in the NFL is 0.0. To achieve such a distinction, a quarterback must attempt at least ten passes, have a completion percentage of 30 percent or less with no touchdowns, average fewer than three yards per attempt, and have an interception percentage of 9.5 percent or higher.