Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (6 page)

Trade secret: building managers install mirrors in lobbies because people complain less about waiting for slow elevators when they’re occupied looking at themselves.

In 1994 Russian astronauts orbiting in the
Mir
spacecraft tried using mirrors to reflect sunlight into northern areas of their country, in an attempt to lengthen the short growing season. It didn’t work.

Where was the first U.S. gold rush? Not California—North Carolina, in 1803. (Started when a boy found a 17-pound nugget on his father’s farm.) It supplied all the gold for the nation’s mints until 1829.

It is estimated that only about 100,000 tons of gold have been mined during all of recorded history.

The word
garnet
comes from the Latin word for pomegranate. (Garnets were thought to resemble pomegranate seeds.)

Rarest gem: Painite, discovered in Burma. Fewer than 10 specimens exist in the world.

The chemical formula for the stone lapis lazuli: (Na,Ca)
₈
(AlSiO
₄
)
₆
(S,SO
₄
,CI)
_1-2
.

The chemical formula for diamond: C.

The name “turquoise” comes from the fact that it was first brought to Europe from the

Mediterranean by Levantine traders, also known as Turks.

The California gold rush yielded 125 million ounces of gold from 1850 to 1875—more than had been mined in the previous 350 years and worth more than $50 billion today.

Amber gives off static electricity when it’s rubbed. Benjamin Franklin noticed this and so-named the phenomenon after the Greek work for amber: elektron.

Legend says that one day Cupid cut Venus’s fingernails while she was sleeping and left the clippings scattered on the ground. So that no part of Venus would ever disappear, the Fates turned them into stone. The stone: onyx, Greek for “fingernail.”

From 330 B.C. to A.D. 1237, most of the world’s emeralds came from Cleopatra’s mine in Egypt.

Fastest-growing plant on earth: bamboo, which can grow as much as 35 inches a day.

About 45 percent of all prescription drugs contain ingredients originating in the rain forest.

The seed cones of the cycad tree can weigh up to 90 pounds.

The bark of the giant sequoia can be up to two feet thick.

If a plant is native to the Arctic Circle, it doesn’t have thorns.

The potato and the tomato are more closely related than the potato and the sweet potato.

Onions are members of the lily family.

Herbicide use has created at least 48 “superweeds” that are resistant to chemicals.

Coconut shells can absorb more impact than most crash helmets.

The pineapple is neither a pine nor an apple. It’s actually a very big berry.

Seventy-five percent of the trees in Australia are eucalyptus.

The average human foot has about 20,000 sweat glands and can produce as much as half a cup of sweat each day.

Most people generally fart between 10 and 20 times a day, expelling enough gas to inflate a small balloon.

Cockroaches can flatten themselves almost to the thinness of a piece of paper in order to slide into tiny cracks; they can be frozen for weeks and then thawed with no ill effect; and they can withstand 126 g’s of pressure with no problem (people get squished at 18 g’s).

Most of the dust in your house is made up of dead human skin cells—every day, millions of them float off your body and settle on furniture and floors.

The average municipal water treatment plant processes enough human waste every day to fill 72 Olympic-size swimming pools.

In a survey, 2.1 percent of nose pickers said they did so “for enjoyment.”

According to a survey, over 10 percent of Americans have picked someone else’s nose.

Tears are made up of almost the same ingredients as urine.

Your mouth slows production of bacteria-fighting saliva when you sleep, which allows the 10 billion bacteria in your mouth to reproduce all night; “morning breath” is actually bacterial B.O.

A tapeworm can grow to a length of 30 feet inside human intestines.

The crusty goop you find in your eyes when you wake up is the exact same mucus you find in your nose—boogers.

Spiders don’t eat their prey; they paralyze the victim with venom, vomit a wad of acidic liquid onto them, and then drink the dissolved body.

Eighty percent of the deaths that occur in U.S. casinos are caused by “sudden heart attack.”

Murders claimed more American lives during the 20th century than wars did.

The odds of being killed by a bolt of lightning are about the same as those of being killed by falling out of bed.

More people are killed by donkeys every year than are killed in plane crashes.

Top five causes of household accidents: stairs, glass doors, cutlery, jars, power tools (in that order).

Over 2,500 lefties die each year “using products meant for right-handed people.”

In the next seven days, roughly 800 Americans will be injured by their jewelry.

Odds that you’ll be killed by a plane falling from the sky: one in 25 million. Odds that it will happen today: one in 7 trillion.

The four most dangerous steps on most staircases: the two at the top and the two at the bottom.

Since 1950, more than 700 people have been killed by avalanches in the United States.

In 1992, 2,421 people checked into U.S. emergency rooms with injuries involving house plants.

Number of documented deaths-by-piranha in human history: not even one.

You’re more likely to be struck by lightning than to be eaten by a shark.

If you pet your pig, it will have a larger litter. Pigs, like people, respond to kindness.

New Zealand sheep outnumber New Zealanders 13 to one.

If a pig is sick it stops curling its tail.

The average cow produces 70,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.

An adult horse eats 15 pounds of hay and nine pounds of grain every day.

A horse will win a sprint against a camel, but a camel will win a marathon against a horse.

Pound for pound, sheep outeat cows seven to one.

Name for a suckling calf: a bob.

Black sheep have a better sense of smell than white sheep.

Horses can only breathe through their nostrils.

Dumbest farm animal, according to farmers: the turkey.

WHAT ELEMENTS MAKE UP A HUMAN BEING?
As a child you were told that girls were made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and that boys were made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails, but let’s just say that this list of primary components was, well, a little off. Actually, just six elements comprise 99 percent of the mass of every boy and girl. They are (in order of weight): oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Coincidentally, these same elements are major players in snails, spices, sugars, and puppy dog tails. But it’s not so much the ingredients as the way they’re put together.

WHAT’S THE MOST COMMON ELEMENT ON EARTH?
Oxygen. It makes up nearly half the weight of the earth’s crust and 62 percent of the total by sheer number of atoms. In the earth’s crust, after oxygen, the most abundant elements are (in order of weight): silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, and sodium. However, in terms of elements in the atmosphere, oxygen ranks a paltry second to nitrogen. Nitrogen is 78 percent of the earth’s atmosphere, while oxygen is just 21 percent.

WHAT’S THE MOST COMMON ELEMENT IN THE UNIVERSE?
Roughly three quarters of the universe is nothing more than hydrogen, the simplest element there is, and most of the rest of it is helium. The rest of the naturally occurring elements, from lithium to uranium, make up less than 1 percent of the universe.

CAN YOU NAME THE PLACE ON EARTH THAT HAS FOUR ELEMENTS NAMED AFTER IT?
This is one to stump your friends at the next chemistry department mixer you go to. The answer: Ytterby, Sweden, which gave its name to ytterium, erbium, terbium, and ytterbium. The first three of these were found in a quarry near the town, which seems reason enough for their naming;
ytterbium, however, was discovered in Switzerland by Jean de Marignac. He named the element after the town because it was a “rare earth” element, and the first rare earth elements discovered were in that quarry outside Ytterby.

WHAT ELEMENT ARE YOU LEAST LIKELY TO FIND IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE?
That would probably be francium, the most highly unstable naturally occurring element. Less than an ounce is present on the face of the earth at any one time, and none of that in any measurable amounts; it had to be discovered through the decay of actinium, another element entirely.

WHICH ELEMENT IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE?
Among the naturally occurring elements, protactinium is likely to be the most expensive, not just because it’s rare but also because it’s so hard to isolate. In 1961 the British government extracted 125 grams of the stuff from over 60 tons of material at a cost of half a million bucks; in today’s money, that works out to $24,000 a gram. But don’t start flashing that jewel-encrusted protactinium ring to your friends just yet: it’s radioactive and highly toxic.

WHY IS THE CHEMICAL SYMBOL FOR GOLD “AU”?
There’s neither an
a
nor a
u
in
gold
. Well, not in English. There is both an
a
and a
u
in
aurum
, the Latin word for gold (
gold
, incidentally, comes from the Old English
geolo
, meaning “yellow”). Other elements whose chemical symbols don’t match their English names include silver (Ag,
argentum
, Latin), lead (Pb,
plumbum
, Latin), potassium (K,
kalium
, Latin), tungsten (W,
wolfram
, German), and tin (Sn,
stannum
, Latin).

WHAT’S THE DUMBEST NAME FOR AN ELEMENT?
Take your pick: ununnilium, unununium, or ununbium. These names were given to recently discovered elements after chemists and physicists couldn’t play nice and agree on the names these new elements ought to have. So the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry devised a naming system based on the Latin names for numbers and the atomic weight of the element. Ununnilium, for example, has an atomic weight of 110; so, one-one-zero. The Latin word for one is
un
, and for zero it’s
nil
—therefore: un-un-nil-ium.

Sarah Josepha Hale’s 1830 poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was inspired by a little girl named Mary Tyler. Her pet lamb used to follow her to school.

Australian soldiers used “We’re Off to See the Wizard” as a marching song during World War II.

The song “You’re a Grand Old Flag” was originally called “You’re a Grand Old Rag.”

“Battle Hymn of the Republic” was written by Julia Ward Howe. She sold the rights for five dollars.

“The Alphabet Song,” “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” and “Baa, Baa Black Sheep” are all sung to the same music: a 1765 French song titled “Ah! Vous dirais-je, Maman.”

The third verse of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” is “The bear went over the mountain . . .”

There are 364 gifts in “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

First song ever sung in space: “Happy Birthday,” performed by the
Apollo
astronauts on March 8, 1969.

Pete Seeger, who wrote “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “We Shall Overcome” (among others), was born into a musical family: both his parents were teachers at Juilliard School in New York.

“Dixie,” the anthem of the South, was written by a Yankee: Dan Emmett of Ohio. Emmett also wrote “Polly Wolly Doodle.”

A rough translation of “Auld Lang Syne” is “times gone by.”

Charles Wesley wrote the words to “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” in 1739. More than 100 years later composer Felix Mendelssohn put the song to music.

Q: HOW DO PARROTS TALK?

A:
Exactly why parrots can change their calls to make them sound like words is still not understood. Their ability to mimic may possibly be linked with the fact that they are highly social birds. A young parrot in captivity learns the sounds it hears around it and quickly realizes that repeating these sounds brings attention and companionship. This is perhaps a substitute for its normal social life. Although they are such good mimics in captivity, parrots do not imitate other sounds in the wild. There are, however, many other species that do: mynah birds and lyrebirds, for example, do mimic the sounds they hear in their everyday lives. (
What Makes the World Go Round?
, edited by Jinny Johnson)