Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! (7 page)
King Tut was buried with 145 pairs of loincloth underwear.
What do Scottish men wear under their kilts? Traditionally, nothing at all.
According to manufacturers, the average bra size today is 36C. In 1980, it was 34B.
Surveys say: about two-thirds of American men prefer boxers to briefs.
Harpo Marx and George Burns enjoyed golfing together in their underwear.
Large-scale production of the modern bra didn’t begin until the 1930s, when it began to replace the corset. But bralike undergarments have been around since 1400 BC.
At any point in time, 0.7 percent of the world’s population is drunk.
About 1,500 New York residents are bitten every year…by other New Yorkers.
Americans bet $6 billion a year at Internet gambling sites.
Percentage of high-school seniors in 1970 who smoked: 18.4. In 2008: 10 percent.
Two-thirds of Americans say they regularly use the “f-word.”
Up to 98 percent of college students have admitted to cheating in school at least once.
Experts say it’s harder to tell a convincing lie to someone you find sexually attractive.
According to researchers, the number of public apologies issued by famous figures in the United States doubled between 1990 and 2002.
Odds that one of your party guests will peek into your medicine cabinet: 40 percent.
How big is home plate on a baseball diamond? It’s five-sided: 17" x 8 ½" x 12" x 12" x 8 ½"
A cloud measuring one cubic mile weighs about 3.5 million pounds.
The Slinky toy was made of an 87-foot piece of wire, 3" in diameter and 2" high.
Actual dimensions of a record: a 12" disk (LP) is 11.89", and a 7" disk (45 rpm) is 6.89".
An NFL field is 360 feet long (including end zones) by 160 feet wide.
Diameter of the wire in a standard paper clip: about 0.04".
Average length of a coat hanger when straightened: 44".
There are exactly 216 noodles in every can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.
Average depth of a golf ball dimple: 0.01".
Fattest newspaper ever printed:
The New York Times
, October 17, 1965, at 946 pages. It weighed 7 ½ pounds.
The average iceberg weighs 20 million tons.
A standard CD is 4.7" in diameter.
A baby grand piano is 5'11" long. Professional grand: 6'. Concert grand: 8'11" or longer.
Plymouth Rock weighs about four tons.
At liftoff, a space shuttle weighs about 4.5 million pounds.
The first Band-Aids ever made were 2½" wide…and 18" long.
If you had $1 million in $100 bills, they would weigh 20.41 pounds.
“If your lifeguard duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning.”
—Simon Cowell,
American Idol
judge
“Discussing personal things in front of an audience creates a release; people recognize something from their own lives. Humor is the optimism, the release.”
—Simon Amstell, comedian
“The whole point in forming a band: Girls. Absolutely gorgeous girls.”
—Simon Le Bon, lead singer of Duran Duran
“Judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”
—Simón Bolívar
“What I want to do and what I do are two separate things. If we all went around doing what we wanted all the time, there’d be chaos.”
—Simon Birch, from the film
Simon Birch
“I used to lie in bed in my flat and imagine what would happen if there was a zombie attack.”
—Simon Pegg, British writer and actor
“I miss meat pies. They don’t have them in L.A. Actually, all I think about the whole time I’m in America is what I’m missing out on in Australia.”
—Simon Baker, actor
“Violence is like a weed—it does not die even in the greatest drought.”
—Simon Wiesenthal
“I think I have a superior brain and an inferior stature, if you really want to get brutal about it.”
—Paul Simon
“I remember being onstage once when I didn’t have fear: I got so scared I didn’t have fear that it brought on an anxiety attack.”
—Carly Simon
Van Halen created the famous “M&M rider” clause (which prohibited brown M&Ms backstage) to test whether concert promoters had read the entire contract.
Per his contract, Oakland A’s relief pitcher Rollie Fingers got $300 extra in 1973 for growing the longest mustache on his team, and $100 more to pay for mustache wax.
Diana Ross once had a contract that said no one backstage was allowed to make eye contact with her.
Fox Television forbids actor Dan Castellaneta from doing his Homer Simpson voice in public.
Bollywood actor Shahid Kapoor had to spend several months under house arrest in 2009. Why? His contract stipulated that he couldn’t go out in public and reveal his “tough-guy” look for a movie he was filming.
In 1987, Charlie Kerfeld signed a contract to pitch for the Houston Astros…with two stipulations: he wanted to be paid a salary of $110,037.37 (to honor his #37 jersey), and he wanted 37 boxes of orange Jell-O.
The average car releases one pound of pollutants for every 25 miles it drives. But…
…A midsize car in the 1960s emitted 20 times more pollution than a brand-new midsize car emits today.
Colorado has traffic cones with sensors that can measure the amount of air pollution cars give off.
It takes just one gallon of used motor oil to pollute a million gallons of fresh water—an entire year’s supply of drinking water for 50 people.
A house produces twice as many polluting greenhouse gases as the average car.
The Amazon rain forest produces more than 20 percent of the world’s oxygen.
Tasmania, an island state off the coast of Australia, has the world’s cleanest air.
Bad news: indoor pollution can be 25 times more toxic than outdoor pollution. Worse news: most people spend nearly 90 percent of their time inside.
In just one Coastal Cleanup Day, beach lovers collected 338,876 cigarette butts from California beaches.
According to the World Health Organization, the air in Cairo, Egypt, is so polluted that breathing it is like smoking 20 cigarettes a day.
Every month, Americans throw away enough aluminum cans to rebuild every commercial airplane in the country.
Disposable diapers take up about 1 percent of the space in U.S. landfills, and require at least 250 years to decompose.
Americans use more than 2 million plastic bottles an hour.
First person to walk across Canada: John Hugh Gillis, in 1906. It took him nine months to walk from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Vancouver, British Columbia.
Martin Frobisher, an English explorer, held Canada’s first Thanksgiving in 1578 to celebrate surviving the long trip from England to Newfoundland.
Canada received the world’s first transatlantic wireless message. In 1901, using a kite as an antenna, an operator in Cornwall, England, sent a message to inventor Guglielmo Marconi in Newfoundland.
In 1922, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson of Toronto was the first person to be treated successfully for diabetes. His doctors, Frederick Banting and Charles Best, invented insulin the year before.
Auyuittuq National Park in Nunavut is the oldest park in the world to lie inside the Arctic Circle.
First city in North America to be put on the UNESCO World Heritage list: Quebec City.
World’s first surviving (and only identical female) quintuplets: Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Marie, and Yvonne Dionne, born in Ontario in 1934.
Mad Dogs…Domingo of Silos
Dumbness…Drogo
Editors…John Bosco
Blackbirds…Kevin of Glendalough
Country girls…Germaine Cousin
Air crews…Joseph of Cupertino
Arm pain…Amalburga
Eczema…Anthony the Abbot
Holy wafer bakers…Honorius of Amiens
Button makers…Louis IX
Children learning to talk…Zeno of Verona
Disappointing children…Louise de Marillac
Dentists…Apollonia
Murderers…Caedwalla
Relief from pestilence…Roch
Grave diggers…Barbara
Wandering musicians…Julian the Hospitaller
Hairdressers…Cosmas
Race relations…Martin de Porres
Lions…Mark the Apostle
Old maids…Catherine of Alexandria
School principals…John Baptist de La Salle
Rope braiders…Paul the Apostle
Unjustly lost lawsuits…Nicholas of Myra
Actresses…Pelagia the Penitent (The Beardless Hermit)
California boasts the highest (Mount Whitney) and lowest (Death Valley) points in the contiguous United States.
The state’s vineyards produce more than 17 million gallons of wine a year.
About 8 percent of all Californians are vegetarians.
Raisin capital of the world: Fresno. Date capital of the world: Coachella Valley.
More than 1,200 people have committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.
In the town of Pacific Grove, near Monterey, you can be fined $500 for “molesting” butterflies.
Many of California’s redwoods are more than 2,000 years old.
During the gold rush (1848–52), California’s population grew from 14,000 to more than 200,000.
Hearst Castle in San Simeon has the most expensive swimming pool in the world—its 1 million tiles are all inlaid with gold.
World’s largest outdoor ampitheatre: the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
Willow Creek calls itself the “Bigfoot Capital,” and claims more Bigfoot sightings than anywhere else in the United States.
California’s economy ranks 10th in the world.
In 1947, the Castroville Fair’s first Artichoke Queen was a young Marilyn Monroe.
California’s largest state park (and the second largest in the United States) is the 600,000-acre Anza-Borrego Desert, 90 miles east of San Diego.
The world’s first movie theater opened in Los Angeles in 1902.
Billionaire Warren Buffett once paid $100,000 to caddy for Tiger Woods in a charity event.
The NFL buys up to 150 Super Bowl rings per year, at a cost of $5,000 each. (Losers also get rings.)
In 2005, Napoléon Bonaparte’s tooth sold at an auction for $19,400. In 2006, William Shatner’s kidney stone sold for $25,000.
Estimated earnings of the Rolling Stones’ 2006–7 concert tour: $500 million.
The Pentagon’s 2008 budget was about $439 billion…which amounts to spending $13,920 per second.
In 1987, Charlie Chaplin’s bowler hat and cane sold for $150,000.
First pro golfer to earn over $100,000 in a single year: Arnold Palmer, in 1963.
In 1965, CEOs earned about 44 times as much as their factory workers did. In 1999: 419 times more.
Undefeated world heavyweight boxing champ Gene Tunney made more money in one match in the 1920s than baseball player Babe Ruth made in 14 seasons combined.
America’s first billionaire: John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil.
On her 2006 Confessions tour, Madonna used a two-ton disco ball with $2 million worth of Swarovski crystals.
In 1988, Mike Tyson won $20 million in 91 seconds when he defeated Michael Spinks.
Pablo Picasso’s artworks have fetched more than $1.2 billion at auction houses.
Bill Gates is richer than the poorest 114 million people in the United States combined.
One tree gives off about 260 pounds of oxygen annually, a year’s supply for two people.
Myrrh is made from dried tree sap.
Average growing time for Christmas trees to reach proper height: seven years.
World’s oldest tree: Methuselah, a 4,800-year-old bristlecone pine in California’s White Mountains.
A mature birch tree makes about a million seeds every year.
If every reader recycled a single day’s run of the
New York Times
, it would save about 75,000 trees.
A mature oak tree can have as many as 400,000 caterpillars living in it.
Cypress trees have “knees,” mysterious growths on their roots.
In Florida, gumbo limbo trees are nicknamed “tourist trees”…because they stand in the sun, turn red, and peel.
Studies show: people in hospitals heal faster if their room’s window looks out on trees.
Fats Domino had 18 songs that sold a million copies each, but he never had a #1 record.
Tina Turner won a Grammy in 1971, was on food stamps in 1976, and won another Grammy in 1985.
W. W. Clements started as a delivery-truck driver in 1935 and later became CEO of the Dr. Pepper Company.
Composer Jan Paderewski was told he’d never be a good pianist because his middle finger was too short.
As a 5' 11" sophomore, Michael Jordan was cut from his high school’s varsity basketball team.
In 1983,
Billboard
magazine declared Madonna a “flash in the pan.”
In 1977, Ben (Cohen) and Jerry (Greenfield) took a $5 correspondence course in ice-cream making.
The Spice Girls had a #1 hit in 53 countries within six months of their debut.
Artist with the most singles on the
Billboard
Hot 100 without a #1 hit: James Brown.
In 1980, Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Mike Parrott won on opening day. His record that season: 1–16.
First licensed female pilot in the United States: Harriet Quimby, in 1911. She died a year later when her plane pitched forward and ejected her during an air show in Massachusetts.