Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! (6 page)
The British royal family renounced its German ties in 1917. By royal proclamation, King George V changed the family’s name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. (He got “Windsor” from the name of one of their castles.)
The Turks killed more than a million Armenians between 1914 and 1918.
Canada’s mascot during the war: a live black bear named Winnipeg (“Winnie”). The Canadians ultimately donated the bear to England’s London Zoo, where A. A. Milne and his son Christopher often visited. Young Christopher named his teddy bear after Winnie, and it became the inspiration for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.
World War I saw the first women officially enlisted in the U.S. armed forces. It was also the first war in which tanks, airplanes, blood banks, and X-rays were used.
American fighter ace Eddie Rickenbacker raced cars before he joined the army. After the war, he founded an automobile company.
In 1916, the Germans tried to negotiate peace with the Allies…naming themselves the winners. (The Allies refused.)
Many words and phrases came into common use during World War I, including “chow down,” “trench coat,” “red tape,” “zero hour,” “cushy,” “ace,” “cootie,” and “basket case.”
During the second half of 1914, the French lost as many men in battle as the United States lost in the entire 20th century.
Song that received
American Bandstand
’s lowest rating ever: “The Chipmunk Song” (1958).
The Muppet named Animal was modeled after the Who’s drummer, Keith Moon.
MTV’s first guest VJ: Adam Ant.
Twilight Zone
’s well-known theme was composed by an American named Marius Constant. He didn’t find out his music was used until after the show aired.
Frank Sinatra’s last appearance on a TV show was on the sitcom
Who’s the Boss?
in 1989 (though he didn’t sing).
MTV aired its millionth video in March 2000.
Vinnie Vincent of KISS was a staff songwriter for TV’s
Happy Days
and
Joanie Loves Chachi
.
In 1991, Data (Brent Spiner) of
Star Trek: The Next Generation
released an album titled
Ol’ Yellow Eyes Is Back
.
Number 16 on
Billboard
’s Hot 100 for the week of September 26, 1970: “Rubber Duckie” by Ernie (
Sesame Street
).
Because Spencer Tracy died 17 days after filming
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
, Katharine Hepburn never watched the completed film— she thought it would make her too sad.
Marlon Brando kept the ashes of his friend, comedian Wally Cox, in his Tahiti home.
Art Scholl, a stunt pilot, was killed during the filming of
Top Gun
(1986).
Singer Tom Jones was on Charles Manson’s hit list.
Archaeological studies show that 1 in 25 coffins from the 16th century has scratch marks on the inside.
Swedish confectionery salesman Roland Ohisson was buried in a coffin made of chocolate.
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison all died at 27.
In 1968, Samuel L. Jackson was an usher at Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral.
Aimee Semple MacPherson, an early 20th-century evangelist, was buried with a working telephone. When she didn’t call after seven years, the line was disconnected.
In
Cold Mountain
, Nicole Kidman did all of her own piano playing.
Salma Hayek is of Lebanese and Mexican descent.
Country singer Tonya Watts was a body double for Pamela Anderson in the 1996 film
Barb Wire
.
Actress Goldie Hawn worked as a can-can dancer at the 1965 World’s Fair in New York.
Before she appeared in
Splash
, Daryl Hannah was in an allgirls band called Psychotic Kindergarten.
Before she became famous, Michelle Pfeiffer worked as a supermarket cashier.
Julia Roberts played clarinet in her Smyrna, Georgia, high school band.
Cyd Charisse had to be taught how to smoke for a dance sequence in
Singin’ in the Rain
.
According to one of the dancers on her early films, Joan Crawford loved to tell dirty jokes.
Before she took the role of Roxie Hart in
Chicago
, Renee Zellweger had only sung in public twice.
Kate Winslet didn’t win an Oscar until 2008, but she took home a Grammy in 2000 for her performance in the spoken word recording “Listen to the Storyteller.”
Linda Fiorentino won her role in
Men in Black
in a poker game with the director, Barry Sonnenfeld. (She also won about $1,200 in cash.)
A newspaper critic on Faye Dunaway’s first movie: “[Her] rib cage looks marvelous.”
Susan Sarandon is one of only two actresses to win an Oscar for playing a nun. (The other was Jennifer Jones in 1943’s
Song of Bernadette
.)
George Clooney campaigned for the lead role in 2004’s
Sideways
, but director Alexander Payne thought he was too big a star for the small film.
Before he became famous, Keanu Reeves managed a pasta restaurant in Toronto, Canada.
Christopher Walken has worked as an actor, a catalog model, and a lion tamer.
Tom Hanks collects typewriters from the 1940s.
Robert Redford didn’t see
The Sting
(1973) until June 2004.
Before becoming an actor, Humphrey Bogart played chess for money; he usually won about $1 a game.
Clark Gable’s birth certificate originally listed him as a girl.
Johnny Depp played slide guitar on the 1997 Oasis album
Be Here Now
.
Harrison Ford played the school principal in
E.T.
, but his back was to the camera.
Jack Nicholson’s first job in Hollywood: office boy in MGM’s cartoon department.
Denzel Washington’s son John David used to be a running back for the NFL’s St. Louis Rams.
Al Pacino’s grandparents were natives of Corleone, Sicily.
Warren Beatty turned down the role of Bill in the
Kill Bill
movies. He thought they were too violent. (The part went to David Carradine instead.)
Sean Connery competed in 1953’s Mr. Universe pageant. He placed third in the “tall man’s” category.
Will Smith met his wife Jada Pinkett Smith when she auditioned to be his girlfriend on
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
(She didn’t get the part.)
Each pole of Uranus is dark for 42 years at a time.
The ancient Sumerians were the first to record sightings of the planet Mercury, in about 3000 BC.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is 25,000 miles wide.
At last count, there were more than 300 known planets outside of our solar system.
There are rocks on Mars named Scooby-Doo, Yogi Bear, and Gumby.
Saturn’s rings are made of chunks of ice, ranging from dust- to house-sized.
It’s estimated that about half a ton of Martian material falls to Earth each year.
Because of Saturn’s tilt and the thinness of its rings, every 14 years the rings seem to disappear.
In 1989,
Voyager 2
(the only spacecraft to visit Neptune) discovered a unique cloud pattern that circles the planet extremely fast. Its name: the Scooter.
On Venus, the sun rises in the west.
Most expensive MP3 player: The gold-and-gem-encrusted Douglas J. Presidential costs $44,000. It comes with 1GB of memory, and a “personal escort” will hand-deliver it to your house.
Most expensive concert ticket ever: $1,530. (Front row at Barbra Streisand’s 2000 Australia tour.)
Floyd Rood hit a golf ball across the continental United States. (It took him 114,737 strokes.)
Eating champion Mort Hurst once ate 16 double-decker Moon Pies in 10 minutes, and 38 eggs in 29 seconds.
The record for hula-hooping the most hoops simultaneously: 100, held by Kareena Oates.
Jerry Rice has the most career touchdowns in Super Bowl history: eight.
Roger Staubach holds the career record for the most Super Bowl fumbles; he dropped the ball five times.
Students at England’s Stockport College built an 896-pound fully operational yo-yo. Diameter: 10 feet 5 inches. It was launched off a crane at a height of 189 feet.
Elaine Davidson of Edinburgh, Scotland, has a world-record 720 body piercings.
World record bubblegum bubble: 23" in diameter, blown by Susan Montgomery Williams.
The pogo-stick jumping world record: 41 hours.
Basketball player with the most points scored in his career: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, with 38,387.
World’s oldest restaurant: Casa Botín in Spain. It’s been in operation since 1725.
There are almost 800 different brands of bottled water available for sale in the United States.
According to some experts, the world’s best-tasting tap water is in Los Angeles.
Every day, the sun’s heat evaporates about a trillion tons of water.
With just one gulp of air, a beaver can swim up to half a mile underwater.
Each day, the United States uses 134 billion gallons of water to irrigate crops.
Sunlight can penetrate clear ocean water to a depth of 240 feet.
Eighty percent of a baby’s body weight at birth is water.
In the ancient Egyptian language, the word
nile
means “water.”
Beethoven often dipped his head in cold water before he began composing.
All sturgeon caught in British waters are legally the property of the queen.
If all the ice in Antarctica melted, sea levels would rise by about 200 feet.
An average golf course uses about 6,000 gallons of water per day. Some desert courses use a million gallons.
It’s recommended that we consume eight cups of water a day, but people can actually drink up to three gallons (or 48 cups).
By the time you feel thirsty, you’ve already lost 1 percent of the water in your body.
An average water droplet contains 100 quintillion molecules of water.
Booker T. Washington’s middle name was Taliaferro, which he pronounced “Tolliver.”
The “S” in Ulysses S. Grant didn’t stand for anything; his real name was Hiram Ulysses Grant.
France had kings named Charles the Fat, Charles the Bold, Charles the Simple, and Charles the Well-Served.
Queen Elizabeth’s last name is Mountbatten-Windsor.
Soprano Maria Callas was christened Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulou.
Boxer Sugar Ray Leonard’s full name: Ray Charles Leonard. (He was named after singer Ray Charles.)
Malcolm X’s last name is symbolic of the African names his ancestors lost to slavery.
Before his victory at Hastings, William the Conqueror was called “William the Bastard.”
Robert McNamara, U.S. secretary of defense in the 1960s, had a strange middle name: Strange.
Justin Timberlake once won a “Dance Like the New Kids on the Block” contest.
Bobby Pickett titled his song “Monster Mash” to cash in on the 1960s Mashed Potato dance craze.
A 1909 song called “Uncle Josh in Society” was the first whose lyrics contained the term “jazz.” In the song, it referred to a type of dancing known as ragtime.
World record: in August 1983, Peter Stewart of England disco-danced for 408 hours.
“Dance floor dehydration syndrome” (DFDS) can be fatal.
Tap dancing is derived from Irish clogging.
Athlete Jim Thorpe was a national ballroom dance champion.
In his youth, King Louis XIV of France was an avid ballet dancer.
State dance of South Carolina: the shag.
Guitarist Les Paul invented the multitrack recording. The first song to use it was his “How High the Moon” (1951).
Henry Ford, father of the Model T, is also the father of the charcoal briquet.
Englishman Sir Humphry Davy created the technology for the lightbulb in 1800, more than 70 years before Thomas Edison did.
Eli Whitney came up with the idea for interchangeable parts to fill a large army order for muskets in 1797.
Jerry Lewis invented and patented a video monitor system in 1956; it’s still used throughout the film industry today.
Thomas Edison at first thought his phonograph was “a mere toy, which has no commercial value.”
Jacques Cousteau invented the Aqualung (scuba-diving gear) while fighting with the French Resistance in World War II.
Leonardo da Vinci invented an alarm clock that woke him by rubbing his feet.
In 1891, Samuel O’Reilly used a Thomas Edison invention (the electric pen) as a model for the first electric tattoo machine.
Film star and racing enthusiast Steve McQueen patented a type of bucket seat in 1969.
Benjamin Franklin is credited with the invention of the odometer.
Thomas Jefferson invented the dumbwaiter, swivel chair, and lamp heater.
Wilhelm Maybach got the idea for the carburetor after observing a perfume pump spray.
Pro golfer Gary McCord split his pants open at the 1984 Memphis Classic—and had no underwear on.
The first boxer shorts appeared in the 1920s as part of the costume for boxers, whose footwork in the ring benefited from the loose shorts.
Lisa Zobian-Lindahl and Hilda Miller of Vermont invented the sports bra in 1978. It was was called the Jogbra.
Michael Jordan always wore the shorts of his North Carolina uniform under his Chicago Bulls uniform.
According to one study, 25 percent of women in Arkansas keep a spare pair of panties in their car’s glove compartment.
Average number of days a German man goes without washing his underwear: seven.
A pair of nylons is made from a single filament four miles long, knitted into 3 million loops.