Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (36 page)

Supposedly Said By:
Vice President Dan Quayle to a group of schoolchildren, on a tour of Latin American countries

Actually:
It was invented by Democratic congresswoman Pat Schroeder as an attack on Quayle. Even though she publicly apologized to the former VP for the remark, it lives on as a “genuine quote” in popular mythology.

Line:
“Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

Supposedly Said By:
Mark Twain (1835–1910)

Actually:
Twain was so prolific and so clever that a lot of good quotes are mistakenly attributed to him. But journalist Charles Dudley Warner was the real author of this line. To his credit, Twain never claimed it as his own.

Line:
“You can’t be too rich or too thin.”

Supposedly Said By:
The Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson (1896–1986)

Actually:
Aside from the fact that the king of England abdicated his throne in order to marry her, this is the only thing the duchess is remembered for. Too bad she didn’t say it. Truman Capote said it in 1950 on David Susskind’s TV talk show.

Rats can live longer without water than camels can.

A squirrel can fall as much as 600 feet

to the ground without injuring itself.

The harvest rat spends 22 hours a day looking for food.

Hibernating, a woodchuck breathes 10 times

per hour. Awake, 2,100 times per hour.

Moles are able to tunnel through 300 feet of earth in a day.

The Merv Griffin Show’
s director was Dick Carson, Johnny Carson’s brother.

Paul Anka wrote Johnny Carson’s
The Tonight Show
theme song.

Big Bird’s address: 123 1/2 Sesame Street (zip code unknown).

Gilligan’s first name on
Gilligan’s Island
was Willy. The skipper’s name was Jonas Grumby.

The average
Jeopardy!
winner takes home $11,500 per show.

Sixty percent of the U.S. television viewing audience watched the last episode of
M*A*S*H
in 1983.

As of 2005 Steve Martin has hosted
Saturday Night Live
the most times: 13.

Jay North, star of TV’s
Dennis the Menace
, was also the voice of Bam-Bam Rubble.

The TV show
The Love Boat
was based on a novel.

Nancy Reagan appeared in
Diff’rent Strokes
to tell kids to “Just Say No.”

In Arabic countries,
Sesame Street
is known as
Iftah Ya Simsim
.

In 1986, in the very last scene of
Search for Tomorrow
, after 35 years on the air, Stu asks Jo what she is searching for. “Tomorrow,” she replies.

According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than four hours of television each day (that’s 28 hours per week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent nine years glued to the tube.

Seventy-five percent of industrial accidents happen to people who skipped breakfast that morning.

Corporate double-talk for layoff: “career-change opportunity” and “schedule readjustment.”

Eighty percent of Americans will be fired from a job at least once in their lives.

Business travelers gain an average of five pounds every year they’re on the road.

The top six reasons for being late to work: traffic, oversleeping, procrastination, household chores, car problems, having sex.

Odds that an American worker won’t tell his or her spouse after they receive a raise: 36 percent.

One in three companies monitor the e-mails of at least some employees.

£ or lb.

Meaning: Pound

Origin:
The abbreviation originates with the Latin phrase
libra pondo
, which means “a unit of measurement by weight.” The Romans shortened the phrase to
pondo
, which ultimately became
pound
in English, but the abbreviation of the first word—
lb
., for libra—endured. The symbol for British currency is a stylized
L
, or £, which comes from the same source. The value of the British pound was originally equal to one pound of silver.

V.I.P.

Meaning: Very important person

Origin:
This frequently used abbreviation was created during World War II by a British officer in charge of organizing flights for important military leaders. In order to conceal the names from enemy spies, each of these were referred to as a V.I.P. in the flight plan.

Mrs.

Meaning: A married woman

Origin:
Originally,
Mrs
. was a shortened version of
mistress
, a word that used to mean “wife” but has since acquired a very different meaning. Strictly speaking, because the word it once abbreviated has changed its meaning,
Mrs
. is no longer an abbreviation—unlike
Mr
., its male counterpart, which can be spelled out as
Mister
.

K

Meaning: A strikeout in baseball

Origin:
In the 1860s when a batter struck out, it was proper to say that he “struck.” It was during this era that a newspaperman named Henry Chadwick created symbols for use with his new invention—the box score. He gave each play a letter:
S
for
sacrifice, E
for
error
, and so on. Since
S
was already taken, he used the last letter of
struck
instead of the first to abbreviate it:
K
.

Rx

Meaning: A drug prescription

Origin:
Actually, there is no
x
in
Rx
. In medieval Latin the first word in medicinal prescriptions directing one to take a specific quantity of a concoction was
recipe
, meaning “take” or “receive.” This was later symbolized as an
R
with a slash across its leg. The spelling
Rx
is an attempt to represent this symbol in English letters.

B.O.

Meaning: Body odor

Origin:
In 1933 the Lifebuoy Health Soap Company ran a series of radio advertisements containing their new slogan: “Lifebuoy stops B--- O---.” A heavy two-note foghorn warning was synchronized with the
B.O
., giving the phrase a negative spin it has retained ever since.

D-day

Meaning: June 6, 1944, the day Allied forces invaded France during WWII

Origin:
The
D
in
D-day
does not stand for
designated
or
defeat
, as many believe, but simply for
day
. D-day actually means “day day.” The redundancy comes from the common practice in army correspondence of referring to a top secret time as H-hour or D-day.

XXX

Meaning: Marking on bottles in cartoons to indicate that they contain alcohol

Origin:
According to one theory, during the 19th century, breweries in Britain marked their bottles
X, XX
, or
XXX
as a sign of alcohol content. The number of
X
s corresponded to the potency of the drink.

What’s the botanical difference between green peppers, yellow peppers, and red peppers? Only the difference in age. They start out green, then turn yellow, then red, then purple, then brown. As they mature, they get progressively sweeter (until they spoil).

The first U.S. cent, which was the size of today’s 50-cent piece, was coined in 1793. In 1856 the mint produced the first penny of today’s size.

Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be depicted on a U.S. coin, a penny issued in 1909. The penny is the only U.S. coin where the person faces right instead of left.

The 1921 Alabama Centennial half-dollar was the first U.S. coin designed by a woman, Laura Gardin Fraser.

When the Citizens Bank of Tenino, Washington, closed on December 5, 1931, the town was without ready cash to do business, so denominations of 25¢, 50¢, and $1 were printed on three-ply Sitka spruce wood, the first wooden money issued as legal tender in the United States.

In 1932 Congress issued a commemorative coin—the Washington quarter—to celebrate the 200th birthday of George Washington. The quarter was intended to be used for only one year, but it was so popular that it was continued as a regular-issue coin from 1934 on.

Booker T. Washington was the first African American to be depicted on a U.S. coin, a half-dollar issued in 1946.

During World War II, the United States minted pennies made of steel, to conserve copper for making artillery shells.

Until 1965, pennies were legal tender only up to 25¢. A creditor couldn’t be forced to accept more than 25 pennies in payment of a debt. Silver coins were legal tender for amounts not exceeding $10 in any one payment.

IF YOU
are brushing your hair, it’s best to stop after about the 25th stroke. That’s the right number for the best distribution of your hair’s natural oils. Much more brushing than that can cause damage.

IF YOU
have hair growing out of your armpit, you’ve got hirci. That’s the fancy word for armpit hair.

IF YOU
are stuck in the grip of a crocodile’s jaw, jam your thumbs in its eyeballs. (Good luck.)

IF YOU
get a “mustache” from drinking grape or cherry juice, you can quickly wipe it off with a bit of toothpaste dabbed on a washcloth.

IF YOU
are an average American, your butt is 15 inches long.

IF YOU
sneeze your most powerful sneeze, it’ll come flying out of your face at a little more than 100 mph.