Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! (5 page)
3 R
EDGRAVES
1.
Vanessa
2.
Lynn
3.
Corin
9 J
ACKSONS
1.
Rebbie
2.
Jackie
3.
Tito
4.
Jermaine
5.
La Toya
6.
Marlon
7.
Michael
8.
Randy
9.
Janet
4 T
UDORS
1.
Arthur
2.
Margaret
3.
Mary
4.
Henry VIII
4 J
ONAS
1.
Kevin
2.
Joe
3.
Nick
4.
Frankie
5 T
RUMPS
1.
Donald Jr.
2.
Ivanka
3.
Eric
4.
Tiffany
5.
Barron
Pink plastic lawn flamingos were inspired by a photo of real flamingos in a 1957
National Geographic
magazine.
The polka is thought to have been the inspiration for polka dots, which, in turn, were the inspiration for the game Twister.
According to Jude Law, he was named after the Beatles song “Hey, Jude.”
Crooner Michael Feinstein named his production company, Bing Clawsby Music, after his cat.
The film
Stand by Me
(1986) is based on Stephen King’s short story
The Body
.
Orson Welles admired John Ford’s film
Stagecoach
(1939) so much that he watched it about 40 times while making
Citizen Kane
(1941).
In
A Few Good Men
, Tom Cruise’s Jack Nicholson impersonation was ad-libbed.
Author Anne Rice’s real name is Howard O’Brien. (She was named after her father.)
Young Albert Einstein became interested in science when he was given a magnetic compass.
The villain in
Scream
was based on a Florida serial killer known as “the Gainesville Ripper.”
In 1946, Henrietta Radner saw the movie
Gilda
. She liked the film so much that she named her daughter Gilda.
Jeremiah Johnson
(1972) was based on the story of real-life trapper John Johnson.
Star Wars
creators modeled Yoda’s face on Albert Einstein’s.
In 2003, thousands of Russian citizens wrote angry letters to Warner Bros., claiming that the character of Dobby the house-elf was based on their president, Vladimir Putin. (It wasn’t.)
Former Doobie Brother Jeff “Skunk” Baxter now advises Congress on missile defense.
Chevy Chase was an original member of Steely Dan.
TV handyman Bob Vila was a Peace Corps volunteer.
Composer Franz Liszt’s first piano concerto includes a triangle solo.
Switch-hitter Pete Rose, who got most of his 4,256 hits left-handed, plays golf right-handed.
Keith Richards sang in the choir at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.
Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) studied electrical engineering.
Jimi Hendrix never took a formal music lesson.
Composer Philip Glass once played in a new-wave band called Polyrock.
Actor Tom Hulce practiced piano for four hours a day for his role in
Amadeus
.
KISS front man Gene Simmons speaks four languages and has a bachelor’s degree in education.
After his victory in the Roman civil war, Julius Caesar proclaimed that every poor family in the Roman Empire would live rent-free for one year.
Before becoming an actor, Peter Falk worked at the Connecticut State Budget Bureau.
When she got the lead role in the film
Whale Rider
, actress Keisha Castle-Hughes claimed she could swim—but she couldn’t. After the film, she said her whale-riding scene was “terrifying.”
The left arm of golfer Ed Furgol is six inches shorter than his right arm.
National flower of the United States: the rose, officially adopted in 1986.
Hydrangeas produce pink and white flowers in alkaline soil, and blue ones in acidic soil.
Bucket orchids release a chemical that can make bees drunk.
More than 200 kinds of wildflowers bloom in the Mojave Desert.
Texas sage, often called “barometer bush,” tends to bloom when rain is coming.
The tallest sunflower plant on record: 25 feet, 5.4 inches.
Sixty-nine percent of the roses purchased on Valentine’s Day are red.
Apples are part of the rose family.
The first wildflower of the year in the eastern United States: usually the eastern skunk cabbage, which starts blooming in February.
Garlic is a member of the lily family. So are onions.
The term “brand name” originated among American alcohol distillers, who branded their names onto their kegs.
Actors who portray Ronald McDonald are forbidden to reveal their true identities.
“PEZ” is short for
pfefferminz
—German for “peppermint.”
What do the initials stand for in the company name of Maine retailer L. L. Bean? Leon Leonwood.
Hello Kitty has appeared on more than 15,000 different products, including an AR-15 assault rifle.
The motto of Mary Kay Cosmetics: “Fake it till you make it.”
Ex-Lax was originally called Bo-Bo’s.
In 1907, two teenagers in Seattle started United Parcel Service (UPS).
The initials in B. F. Goodrich stand for Benjamin Franklin.
Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering was founded in 1946. It later got a shorter name: Sony.
World’s largest maker of musical instruments: Yamaha. Their logo is three interlocking tuning forks.
In 1971, Carolyn Davidson, a student at Portland State University, created the Nike swoosh logo.
Professional golfer Howard Twitty agreed to display Burger King’s logo on his golf bag. His price: 500 Whoppers.
Three men named Brandley, Voorhees, and Day opened an underwear company in 1856 that’s now known by their initials: BVD. (Their first names remain a secret.)
First trademark: the Bass Beer symbol, a red triangle.
THE SMALLEST STATE.
Rhode Island covers 1,212 square miles…about one-third the size of Yellowstone National Park.
NAME ORIGIN.
In the 1520s, Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed up the east coast of New England. North of New York, he noticed a group of islands, one of which he thought looked like the Isle of Rhodes in Greece. What he saw was actually modern-day Block Island, but the colonists who moved into the area 100 years later thought he’d been talking about Aquidneck Island, the largest in Narragansett Bay. So they started calling their settlement there “Rhode Island.” Later, the name was used for the larger mainland colony, and the island went back to its American Indian name, Aquidneck.
THE OCEAN STATE.
Rhode Island got its official nickname, “the Ocean State,” from two sources: 1) About one-tenth of its inland area is covered with salt water, and 2) Most residents live within 30 minutes of the ocean. It’s not actually an island, though. Most of the state’s land is connected to the U.S. mainland.
FIRSTS.
Rhode Island was the first state to…
• Prohibit slavery in North America (1652).
• Have a newspaper with a female editor, Ann Smith Franklin of the
Newport Mercury
(1762).
• Declare itself independent from Great Britain (1776).
• Patent a motion-picture machine (1867). The small box showed a movie of animals.
• Host a polo game in the United States, in Newport (1876).
• Hold an automobile race on a track (1896).
Polo is one of the few games that requires participants to play right-handed. (Jai Alai is another.) Left-handed play in polo was banned in 1975 for safety reasons.
In 2001, Marco Siffredi of France became the first person to snowboard down Mt. Everest. It took 2 hours and 30 minutes.
With the development of strong, lightweight fabrics and ultralight rods, kite flying is now possible indoors. Kite flyers say the key is to keep the kite moving all the time. Running isn’t required—small movements are enough to keep an indoor kite airborne. (All you need is a high-ceilinged room.)
The Vasaloppet is the world’s oldest, largest, and longest cross-country ski race. The race between the towns of Sälen and Mora, Sweden, a distance of 56 miles, has been held every year since 1922.
A set of nine stone bowling pins was unearthed from the tomb of an Egyptian child buried around 5200 BC.
In the 1930s, some journalists claimed that record-breaking American sprinter Helen Stephens was actually a man because “no woman could run as fast as she does.” Olympic officials investigated— Stephens was female. (But Poland’s Stella Walsh, whom Stephens outran in the 1936 Olympics, turned out to be a hermaphrodite.)
Miss Piggy’s measurements are said to be 27-30-32.
There are 20 possible answers on a Magic 8-Ball: 10 positive, five negative, and five neutral.
U.S. Patent #4,429,685 was issued for a “Method of Growing Unicorns.”
Average age of male golfers: 50. Females: 42.
Sam Malone’s (
Cheers
) baseball jersey number: 16.
The only number that is twice the sum of its digits is 18.
Antarctica’s country code: 672.
According to experts, it’s about 10 times easier to shoot a hole in one while playing golf than it is to bowl a perfect 300 game.
But the odds against an amateur golfer scoring a hole in one are 12,000 to 1.
From 1950 to 1970, U.S. guitar sales grew from 228,000 to 2.3 million, a 1,000 percent increase.
Life span of a U.S. patent: 17 years.
The first three digits of a 13-digit bar code indicate the product’s country of origin.
What’s a septillion? 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000.
When making a peanut-butter and-jelly sandwich, people put the peanut butter on first about 96 percent of the time.
In the 1962 hit song “Duke of Earl,” the word “duke” is sung 125 times.
The 40-day pre-Easter period of Lent is actually 46 days long (Sundays aren’t counted).
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest, Death, Slaughter, and Famine.
When people are asked to pick a number between one and ten, they most often choose seven.
The vocabulary of the average adult human consists of 5,000 to 6,000 words.
The world’s population increases by 237,748 every 24 hours.
When choosing bathroom reading, women prefer magazines. Men favor newspapers.
Morology is the study of ridiculous conversation.
In ancient Greece, sick people slept in “medicine temples” to dream about how to get better.
The scientific term for left-handedness is sinistrality. Right-handedness is dextrality.
Male patients fall out of hospital beds twice as often as female patients do.
One in seven adults spends more than 30 minutes a day in the bathroom.
But on average, men spend just 45 seconds in a public restroom stall. Women spend about 80.
Studies show: feeling guilty may damage your immune system.
According to experts, human knowledge is increasing so fast that 90 percent of what we will know 50 years from now hasn’t been discovered yet.
One in eight men snores while sleeping. One in ten grinds his teeth.
Worldwide, there are 4.2 babies born every second and 360,000 born every day.
For most people, honey is easy to digest. Why? Because it’s already been digested…by a bee.
Some female cockroaches mate only once and then die as soon as they give birth.
An oyster may change gender several times during its life.
Crocodile babies don’t have sex chromosomes— the temperature at which the egg develops determines gender.
Most clams are hermaphrodites.
Rabbits and hares can’t mate with each other.
White-fronted parrots kiss before mating by locking beaks and flicking their tongues at each other. Then the male parrot vomits up food and offers it to the female as a token of his affection.
Many alligators “snuggle” for days before mating.
Female sea turtles don’t reach sexual maturity until they are about 25 years old.
Elephants show affection for each other by entwining their trunks.
To attract a female hippopotamus, the male poops and pees while spinning his tail to spray it around.
The space between your eyebrows is called the glabella.
What is your buccal cavity? Your mouth.
What makes cheese, sweaty feet, and vomit smelly? Butyric acid.
Your outermost layer of skin is called the stratum corneum (Latin for “horny layer”).
What is a natal cleft? The medical term for a butt crack.
The scientific name for stinky armpits: tragomaschalia.
You know that little membrane under your tongue? It’s your frenulum.
A “gut feeling” (or hunch) is sometimes called a “splanchnic,” referring to the splanchnic nerves of the intestinal area.
The skin that peels off after a sunburn is called blype, and the skin under your fingernails is called the whickflaw.
Do you have a diasthema between your front teeth? (It’s a gap.)
Ernest Hemingway, Irving Berlin, Winston Churchill, and F. Scott Fitzgerald all served in the military during World War I.