Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! (27 page)
China borders 16 other countries.
The only South American countries with no coastline: Bolivia and Paraguay.
The Cape of Good Hope is not the southernmost point of South Africa. Cape Agulhas, 100 miles to the southeast, is farther south.
Of the 700 or so islands that make up the Bahamas, only 30 are inhabited.
Hawaii is moving toward Japan at a rate of four inches per year.
Soldiers from every country in the world salute with their right hands.
Until 1864, men drafted into the U.S. military could hire someone to take their place. Grover Cleveland did this in 1863 and was ridiculed for it by his political opponent, James Blaine…who had done the same thing himself.
During World War II, Japanese officers killed in battle were promoted to a higher rank posthumously.
Rutherford B. Hayes was a major general in the Union army in the Civil War.
The doors that cover U.S. nuclear missile silos weigh 748 tons.
In 1943, at age 19, George H. W. Bush became the youngest pilot in the U.S. Navy.
For at least five years, the U.S. Army didn’t acknowledge the fact that the Wright brothers had built a machine that could fly.
There are 92 known cases of nuclear bombs lost at sea.
The only time a soldier is not required to salute: when he is a prisoner.
The secret code for unlocking U.S. nuclear missiles during the Cold War was 00000000.
When the president is aboard any HMX-1 Marine helicopter, it goes by the name “Marine One.”
The U.S. Air Force uses half of the fuel purchased by the government.
The U.S. Army includes Tabasco sauce in all of its ration kits.
1. Watch for sweating and squirming.
The alleged liar may be sweating more than normal or making fidgety adjustments to his clothing. (Don’t put too much stock in this one alone, especially when the stakes are high. The higher the stakes, the more nervous almost everyone is, so you’ll want to look for multiple clues.)
2. Notice if “barriers” have been put up.
Are the alleged liar’s arms crossed across his chest, or is he protecting himself by sitting behind a table or standing behind some kind of barrier, like part of a doorway?
3. Watch the eyes.
Liars often avoid eye contact and blink more often than normal. They also have difficulty transmitting emotions to their eyes: If a suspected liar is smiling, watch carefully to see if his eyes are “smiling,” too. Dilated pupils can be a sign of a lie.
4. Ask for details.
Often, a liar’s story will fall apart if he’s asked to explain it. A con artist, for instance, will have a story rehearsed—and look at ease while telling it—but you may be able to trip him up by interrupting and asking for details.
5. Listen for inconsistencies.
Police interrogators ask suspects to repeat their stories in the hopes of uncovering contradictions.
6. Listen for giveaways.
Experts have found that liars are generally less cooperative and less friendly than someone who’s telling the truth. Liars often pepper their speech with negative statements and complaints. They also inject phrases like “to be honest” in an effort to make you think they’re honest.
Live adult scorpions glow a greenish color when exposed to ultraviolet light.
If your bed is typical, about 6 million dust mites live in it.
Human tapeworms can grow to be 75 feet long.
Most spiders are cannibals.
Female Brazilian railroad worms have bioluminescent red and green spots.
Ribbon worms can turn themselves completely inside out.
Cockroaches have white blood.
Pill bugs are more closely related to shrimp than to insects.
There are about 650 different species of leeches in the world.
A spider sheds its skin as many as 15 times during its life.
If a cockroach touches a human, it runs to safety and cleans itself.
In England, the game of checkers is called “draughts.”
Modern bowling comes from the German game of
Heidenwerfen
, which translates to “strike down the heathens.”
Karaoke
means “empty orchestra” in Japanese.
The term “kangaroo court” was unknown in Australia until it was brought over from the United States.
In Arabic,
harem
means “forbidden.”
Terra incognita
is Latin for “unknown territory.”
The word
anthology
is Greek for “a collection of flowers.”
Mafia
comes from the old Arabic word for “swagger.”
In Chinese, saying “Yeeha” means you need to use the restroom.
Seersucker
comes from a Persian word—
shir-o-shakar
—that means “milk and sugar.”
The word
piccolo
means “small” in Italian.
The word
xylophone
is Greek for “wooden sound.”
The word
divot
means, appropriately, “piece of turf” in Scottish.
The word
guitar
comes from the Greek
kithara
, a seven-stringed lyre.
Japanese slang for “nice shot”:
Nice-su shot-o
. (Really.)
Glockenspiel
means “play of bells” in German.
The word
alcohol
comes from the Arabic
al-kuhul
, meaning “the kohl,” a powdered cosmetic used for darkening the eyelids.
Pencil
is Latin for “little tail.”
Coloring Easter eggs dates back to the ancient Egyptians and Persians, who practiced the custom during their spring festivals.
Juneteenth, a multiday celebration of the emancipation of slaves, originated in Galveston, Texas.
Traditional Christmas dish in medieval England: swan.
The average adult American male receives six Christmas presents.
Americans buy approximately 165 million Easter cards every year.
President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day a national holiday in 1914.
The Easter Egg Roll, held on Easter Monday, has been a White House tradition since 1878.
Americans generate an extra 5 million tons of trash between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.
Best-selling Christmas record of all time:
Elvis’ Christmas Album
(1957).
Cost to decorate a Christmas tree with electric lights in 1899: $300.
The only state capital with three words in its name: Salt Lake City (Utah).
Kansas City, Missouri, has more fountains than any city but Rome.
In Key Largo, Florida, there’s an underwater statue of Jesus called
Christ of the Deep
.
Two state capitals include part of the states’ names: Oklahoma City and Indianapolis.
The second-largest French-speaking city in the world: Montreal, Canada. (Paris is first.)
What do California, Idaho, Delaware, Florida, Oregon, Wyoming, Kansas, Nevada, and New Hampshire have in common? They’re all cities in Ohio.
Waterford, Pennsylvania, has a statue depicting George Washington in a British uniform.
Churchill, Manitoba, calls itself the “Polar Bear Capital of the World.”
Montpelier, Vermont, is the only state capital with no McDonald’s within its city limits.
Cincinnati was named for Cincinnatus, a politician who ruled Rome for 16 days in 458 BC.
First people to cultivate cotton: a prehistoric community that lived in the Indus River valley in modern-day Pakistan, China, and India around 4000 B.C.
During the Middle Ages in Europe, people knew that imported cotton came from a plant, but they didn’t know what the plant looked like. Some believed the plants “grew” lamblike animals that produced the fiber.
The first recorded cotton crop in the United States was in Florida in 1556. Virginia followed in 1607.
The world uses more cotton today than any other type of fiber.
After the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, the U.S. cotton crop doubled. By 1850, the United States was growing 75 percent of the world’s cotton.
The first machine-woven cotton cloth was made in England in 1730.
The United States produces nearly 21 million 500-pound bales of cotton each year, nearly twice the production of 1950.
Cotton’s quality is based on three things: color, purity, and fiber strength.
During the American Revolution, the British and French were cut off from cheap American cotton, so they bought the fiber from Egypt instead. (After the war, they went back to buying American.)
Today, Egyptian cotton is softer, stronger, and more expensive than American cotton.
Cottonseed is crushed to produce three products: oil, meal, and hulls.
Around the turn of the 20th century, engineers changed the direction of the Chicago River. It used to flow north into Lake Michigan, but they redirected it to flow south so that waste and debris would float away from the city’s downtown area.
A “shut-in” is a rocky, narrow, and unnavigable river channel.
Ten of the tributaries flowing into the Amazon River are as big as the Mississippi River.
America’s first national river: Buffalo National River in the Ozarks, part of the National Park Service.
Minnesota is the only state with the source of three main river systems: the Mississippi, St. Lawrence, and Red River of the North.
There are no rivers in Saudi Arabia.
The Amazon River is visible from outer space.
The Mississippi River is only about three feet deep at its headwaters in Minnesota.
The Everglades swamp is the widest river on earth.
The Buffalo National River in Arkansas is one of the nation’s few remaining unpolluted rivers.
Texas’s Colorado River is not the same river as the one in Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. The Colorado River in Texas starts and ends in the state.
The Rio Grande separates Texas from Mexico for 1,254 miles.
World’s longest river: the Nile, at 4,132 miles.
The place where a stream disappears underground is called a “swallet.”
Worldwide average life expectancy: 64.3 years.
Most people pass one to three pints of gas a day, in 14 different “episodes.”
The average adult has about 46 miles of nerves and 10–20 billion miles of DNA.
A human who sits all day burns 104 calories per hour.
In humans, the left lung is smaller than the right.
Rope woven from human hair can support the weight of 400 people.
During his lifetime, the average man shaves off about 27 feet of hair.
The average dream lasts about 20 minutes.
During the first trimester, a human fetus is about the size of a sesame seed.
Most people suffer about 200 colds in their lifetime.
Most human scalps contain 120,000 and 150,000 hairs.
With more than 663,000 square miles, Alaska contains about one-fifth of all the land in the United States.
Alaska’s 33,000 miles of coastline touch three different bodies of water: the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Bering Sea.
Alaska’s state sport: dogsled racing.
Highest mountain in the United States: Denali (aka, Mount McKinley), at more than 20,000 feet tall.
About one-third of Alaska is inside the Arctic Circle.
The first European to visit Alaska was Danish fur trader Vitus Bering in 1741.
During World War II, the Japanese invaded three of the state’s Aleutian Islands, the only time the Japanese occupied American soil during the conflict.
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs 800 miles from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Gulf of Alaska in the south. Since it was completed in 1977, more than 15 billion barrels of oil have passed through the pipeline—about 88,000 barrels an hour.
About 22 indigenous languages are spoken in Alaska.
The United States bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for two cents an acre…or a little over $7.2 million.
In 1927, Benny Benson, a 13-year-old from Seward, won a contest to design the state’s flag. His design: a blue background (to symbolize the sky, lakes, and ocean) with eight gold stars representing the Big Dipper and the North Star.
Juneau is the only capital in the United States that’s accessible only by boat or airplane.
An octopus can lay more than 100,000 microscopic eggs at one time.
Male emperor penguins incubate their eggs on top of their feet. In the time it takes to hatch a single egg, the male loses a third of its body weight.
Pregnant bottlenose dolphins gestate for a year.
The only animals born with horns: giraffes.
Male sea catfish keep the eggs of their young in their mouths until the babies are ready to hatch.
Typical life span of a cow: 20–25 years. Typical life span of a dairy cow: 3–4 years.
Mother orangutans nurse their young for up to six years.
An arctic woolly bear caterpillar can live for 14 years before it turns into a moth.
The paradoxical frog, which lives in Trinidad, starts as a foot-long tadpole and “grows” into an inch-long frog.
Human birth-control pills are also effective on gorillas.
The 200 million wild rabbits living in Australia today come from 12 original breeding pairs.
In Liechtenstein, dairy farmers publish obituaries for their deceased cows.
Every year, approximately a billion seabirds and mammals die from ingesting plastic bags.
Dehydrated brine shrimp eggs can lie dormant for years, but once they’re put in salt water, they rehydrate and will hatch within a few hours.