The Extraordinary Book of Useless Information (13 page)

The richest criminal of all time was Mexican Amado Carrillo Fuentes, whose drug empire gave him a net worth of about $25 billion before his death in 1997 from medical complications during facial plastic surgery to alter his appearance. (The two doctors who performed the surgery were later found dead, encased in concrete inside metal drums.)

An estimated thirteen thousand people died due to Mexican drug violence in 2011.

Drug smugglers in Mexico now shoot cans of marijuana across the U.S.-Mexico border with cannons.

BUSTED

The French government ruled that thirty thousand women who received PIP breast implants were to have them removed at the government's request, due to the concern that they may cause a rare type of cancer and are prone to rupture. The implants, which are made from a material intended for mattresses, were never approved for use in the United States.

FILL 'ER UP!

As of the end of 2012, the price of a gallon of gas was almost ten dollars in Turkey and just eighteen cents in Venezuela.

The world uses 89 million barrels of oil a day.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

At midnight on Thursday, December 29, 2011, Samoa skipped ahead to Saturday the 31st, omitting Friday the 30th. The country did so by shifting west of the International Date Line, to move them in line with the time zones of their major trading partner nations.

MONSTER MUM

The biggest chrysanthemum ever grown in North America was called a Thousand Bloom and had 1,167 flowers on a single plant. The monster mum, grown at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, was twelve feet high and nearly six feet wide.

The world record holder mum is one grown in Japan that had 2,220 blooms.

AIRPORT REPORT

The runway at the Gibraltar Airport, in Gibraltar, has a main road that runs right across it. There are several flights in and out of the airport each day, and the roadway must be closed to allow the planes to take off and land.

The airport in the Maldives is on an artificial island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Frommers.com rated the ten best and worst airport terminals as follows:

•
The best were Hajj Terminal, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (this terminal is only open six weeks a year, during the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca); Leifur Eirícksson Air Terminal, Keflavík, Iceland; Incheon Airport, Seoul, South Korea; “Rock” Terminal, Wellington, New Zealand; JFK Airport Terminal 5 (JetBlue), New York; Changi International Airport Terminal 3, Changi, Singapore; and Menara Airport Terminal 4, Marrakesh, Morocco).

•
The worst airports included at number one JFK Airport Terminal 3, New York; at number seven LaGuardia Airport Terminal 5, New York; at number eight Newark Liberty International Airport Terminal B, Newark, New Jersey; and at number two Midway Airport, Chicago.

•
According to a 2012 report, the world's top ten safest airlines are, in order, Finnair, New Zealand Air, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, TAP Portugal, Hainan Airlines, Virgin Australia, and British Airways. None of these carriers had lost a plane or had a fatality in the past thirty years.

•
China Airways, TAM Air, Air India, Gol Transportes Aéreos, Korean Air, Saudia Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Thai Airways, South African Airways, and SkyWest Airlines were the least safe airlines.

CATCH A WAVE

In 2011, surfer Garrett McNamara rode the biggest wave ever—a ninety-foot monster off the coast of Portugal.

CASH FLOW

In the aftermath of the devastating tsunami that swamped Japan in 2011, more than $78 million worth of cash has been recovered across the nation's countryside, most of it swept from homes and people. Amazingly, the large majority of the money was turned in to authorities.

BLACK AND BLUE

In 2012, Burger King Japan introduced the Premium Kuro Burger. It has a black bun made with bamboo charcoal in the dough, and black ketchup made with squid ink. McDonald's sells white– and black-bunned burgers in China.

The South Korean executive mansion where the president lives is called the Blue House. It has a blue-tiled roof.

BECAUSE, YOU NEVER KNOW . . .

Lloyd's of London issues some unique insurance policies, including insurance against giving birth to multiples, being struck by a meteorite or an asteroid hitting the Earth, or being abducted by an alien. One insurance company actually issued a policy in case the insured immaculately conceived the second incarnation of Jesus Christ.

KID CHARLEMAGNE

Genealogists say that anyone with European descendants is distantly related to Charlemagne.

GATES OF HELL

In 1971, Soviet geologists drilled into a subterranean cavern. The cavern collapsed, leaving a 230-foot-diameter hole in the ground filled with natural gas. The scientists set it afire in hopes it would burn off in a couple of days. The huge hole is still a raging inferno today and is known locally as “The Door to Hell.”

KILLING FIELDS

After Afghanistan, Colombia leads the world in the annual number of people killed by land mines. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), leftist rebels who have been trying to overthrow the government for fifty years, are responsible. FARC raises a lot of coca plants and protects the plantations with land mines. When they move to new locations, they leave the mines behind.

COCOA KIDS

According to the U.S. government, there are seventy-seven countries around the world where citizens are subjected to forced labor.

An estimated one hundred thousand child slaves work in the cocoa fields of West Africa.

BAGEL HEADS

The newest wacky fashion fad to hit Tokyo involves injecting a saline solution into the forehead, causing a huge welt, then pressing the thumb into the center to form a depression. The result is a deformity that closely resembles a bagel implanted on the forehead. The effect goes away in about a day.

TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

The most isolated tree in the world used to be L'Arbre du Ténéré. This acacia was located in the Sahara, in northeast Niger, 250 miles from the nearest tree, until it was knocked down by a drunken Libyan truck driver in 1973. It was replaced by a metal replica.

The stoutest tree in the world is Árbol del Tule, a Montezuma cypress in Mexico with a trunk circumference of 119 feet and a diameter of 37.5 feet.

Five of the ten most massive trees on Earth, measured by volume, are found in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park in California.

The boab prison tree in Wyndham, Western Australia, is an enormous boab tree with a hollow trunk that police on patrol once used as a temporary holding cell for prisoners being transported. The cavity measures about one hundred square feet.

There is an Antarctic beech tree in Queensland, Australia, that is about twelve thousand years old. These trees used to cover Antarctica in its warmer days. They moved northward as the climate cooled.

Quebec's maple trees produce 70 to 80 percent of the world's maple syrup.

One-third of the world's lumber comes from tree farms.

HEAVY IS THE HEAD THAT WEARS THE CROWN

The Crown Jewels of England are comprised of 23,578 gems.

The Imperial State Crown has 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, and 5 rubies.

In 2011, the British monarchy changed its rules of succession. Now a firstborn daughter can ascend to the throne, even if she has a younger brother. Had this policy been in place five hundred years ago, Henry VIII would have lost out to his older sister Margaret, who would have become queen.

MURDER CENTRAL

The murder rate in Caracas, Venezuela, is higher than that of Baghdad.

CAPTAIN HOOK

A Dutch group of doctors called Women on Waves runs what is called an “abortion ship” that sails to countries where abortion is illegal, picks up women there, and takes them into international waters to perform the procedure, before returning them home.

MUMMY DEAREST

Sokushinbutsu
was a practice where Japanese Buddhist monks mummified themselves. For one thousand days they would eat only nuts and seeds, while exercising strenuously to reduce body fat. For the next one thousand days, they would eat only bark and roots and would drink a poisonous tea made from a tree resin that's used as a lacquer. This resulted in vomiting, loss of fluids, and making the body too toxic for maggots to eat after death. Finally, the monks would assume the lotus position in a small stone tomb, until they died.

Hundreds of monks attempted self-mummification, but only a dozen or two have been found so far. Those who were found were removed from the tomb and displayed as a Buddha in their temple.

LE PEW

A 2012 poll found that one in five French citizens bathe every other day, and 3.5 percent do so only once a week. And 20 percent of the population admits to not washing their hands before meals, and 12 percent fail to do so after using the bathroom.

COKELESS COUNTRY

About 80 percent of Cuba's labor force work for the government.

Coca-Cola is sold in every country except Cuba and North Korea.

DEEP THOUGHTS

Nemo 3 is the deepest recreational pool in the world. Located in Brussels, Belgium, the 113-foot-deep swimming pool is used for indoor diving. It holds 2.5 million liters of water.

The underground Sifto Salt Mine in Ontario, Canada, is larger in area than Manhattan.

STREET SKINNY

The world's narrowest street is Spreuerhofstrasse in Reutlingen, Germany, which is thirty centimeters at its narrowest and fifty centimeters at its widest.

BLOCKBUSTER BREW

The world's strongest beer is Scotland's Brewmeister's Armageddon, which has an alcohol content by volume of 65 percent. That's 130 proof.

IT'S ALL DEPENDS

In Japan, the sales of adult diapers exceed those of baby diapers.

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THIS OLD HOUSE

The oldest wooden building in North America is Fairbanks House outside of Boston, which was occupied by the Fairebankes family for eight generations. The house, which was built circa 1640, is now a museum.

The oldest church in America is San Miguel Mission in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was built in 1710. Masses are still held there.

Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar on Bourbon Street in New Orleans is the oldest operating tavern in the United States. It first opened circa 1722 and later served as a hangout for notorious pirates Jean and Pierre Lafitte.

HAWAII FAUX-O

Tiki bars were first introduced to the world in the 1930s by two California restaurants—Trader Vic's and Don the Beachcomber. (A tiki is a carved figure of the Maori people of New Zealand.)

Grass skirts are from the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific. They were introduced to Hawaii in the 1870s. Before this, Hawaiians wore skirts made of fresh ti leaves.

BACK IN BLACK

Prior to 1913, Ford automobiles came in many colors, but not black. Then, in 1914, as a cost-cutting measure, black was the only color offered.

NAME THAT CAR

Originally, the Volkswagen Beetle was named
Kraft durch Freude Wagen
, or the “Strength Through Joy Car,” at Adolf Hitler's behest.

Some other interesting car names of the past include the Mazda Bongo Friendee, which was made from 1995 to 2005; the Honda That's, sold from 2002 to 2007; and the Studebaker Dictator, available from 1927 to 1937.

HISTORY UNCOVERED

The earliest known bras were found in an Austrian castle and date to the Middle Ages. The bra was previously thought to have been invented in the early 1900s. This find pushes that date back some five hundred years.

Panty hose were invented in the 1950s.

The sales of panty hose did not exceed those of stockings until 1970.

Sales of panty hose went down 50 percent between 1995 and 2006.

STERILIZED STATES

Between 1909 and 1963, the state of California sterilized 20,000 people who were wards of the state. Virginia sterilized 8,300. In total, thirty-two states engaged in eugenics.

The Nazis consulted with the state of California before setting up their own eugenics program.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN'

A century ago, there were 230,000 blacksmiths in the United States. Today there are just 600.

Western Union sent its last telegram in 2006.

Old lifejackets were filled with cork.

Early slot machine prizes were a cigar and a drink.

WORLD AT WAR

Marquis de Lafayette was a nineteen-year-old French aristocrat who financed his own way to America to fight in the Revolutionary War. He had to purchase his own ship and disguise himself as a woman to leave Europe. Congress rewarded Lafayette by giving the teenager the rank of major general.

No American forces were killed when George Washington captured Trenton on December 26, 1776. The Hessian commander of the garrison received a letter from a Loyalist warning him of the sneak attack just before it happened, but he was too busy playing cards to read it.

There is a cemetery in Tripoli, Libya, that has the remains of thirteen U.S. sailors who died there in 1804 when the USS
Intrepid
blew up on a secret mission in the First Barbary War.

American naval captain James Lawrence uttered the famous words “Don't give up the ship” after being mortally wounded aboard the U.S. ship
Chesapeake
during the War of 1812. Unfortunately, the British did capture the ship shortly thereafter.

More British Redcoats were killed by the tornado and storm that hit Washington, DC, during their occupation of that city in the War of 1812 than were killed by American forces.

The biggest foreign invasion onto U.S. soil occurred in 1814, when the British lost to American forces in the Battle of Plattsburgh at Lake Champlain, New York.

In 1814, President Andrew Jackson pardoned notorious pirate Jean Lafitte and his men in exchange for their help in defeating the British at the Battle of New Orleans. After the battle, Lafitte returned to his pirating ways.

During the Russian Campaign of 1812, Napoléon lost two hundred thousand horses.

Napoléon Bonaparte, at five feet seven inches, was not short when compared to the height of most Frenchmen of his time.

The convention of the time during the Civil War was for women to mourn six months for the death of a brother, one year for the death of a child, and two and a half years for the death of a husband. They went through three stages of mourning—heavy, full, and half—with gradually decreasing requirements for dress and behavior. Men, on the other hand, were only expected to mourn for three months for the death of a wife and to wear a black band on the arm or hat.

After the Battle of Shiloh, the wounds of some of the casualties glowed in the dark. Many wounded lay in the mud for two days and got hypothermic. Their lowered body temperature encouraged the growth of the bioluminescent bacterium
Photorhabdus luminescens
. Those with the glowing wounds healed faster, as the bacterium inhibited the growth of pathogens in the wounds.

During the Civil War there was a Union general named Jefferson Davis, also the name of the president of the Confederacy.

A five-dollar Confederate bill featuring Jefferson Davis was found in the wallet of Abraham Lincoln after he was assassinated.

The worst civilian disaster during the Civil War occurred on September 17, 1862, at the Allegheny Arsenal in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania. Seventy-eight women and children employed to stuff, roll, and tie ammunition during the Battle of Antietam were killed when a wagonload of gunpowder being delivered from DuPont exploded because of sparks from the horses' iron horseshoes on new stone. This explosion triggered two more blasts. It is believed that leaky barrels used by DuPont and road stones that were too hard caused the disaster.

Sergeant Stubby was America's first war dog. He achieved the rank of sergeant for his valor in combat during World War I. He was able to smell poison gas before the other soldiers and hear incoming artillery before them also. He single-pawedly captured a German spy. Upon his return home Stubby became a national hero and a celebrity and met three different U.S presidents.

In 1940, the Soviet secret police massacred twenty-two thousand Polish military officers in the Katyn Forest. The United States knew about it but kept quiet for fear of upsetting Josef Stalin, who would later be an American ally when the United States entered the war.

At the peak of World War II, the U.S. Navy had 1,248 active ships in its fleet. By 2011, that number was down to 285.

The last U.S. cavalry charge came in 1942, on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

In 1939, in the biggest financial transaction in world history, Britain shipped $7 billion worth of its gold reserves, stocks, and bonds to Canada aboard a light frigate to protect these assets from the Nazis. England's National Gallery moved countless priceless works of art to tunnels at a quarry in North Wales. The hiding place of the Crown Jewels still hasn't been revealed to this day.

Yonatan Netanyahu, the older brother of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was the commander of the elite Israeli commando unit that rescued more than one hundred hostages on a plane that was hijacked and flown to Entebbe Airport in Uganda in 1976. He was the only one of the commandos who was killed.

The Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) is the only military conflict in which helicopters engaged each other in aerial combat.

All the germ strains used by Iraq to develop its biological warfare weapons program came from the United States. They were supplied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Type Culture Collection (a biological sample company) in the 1980s. The CDC claims it thought the anthrax, botulinum toxin, and West Nile virus would be used for medical research.

Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle holds the record for most confirmed kills in U.S. military history—160. Kyle served ten years in Iraq and was so feared by the Iraqis that they nicknamed him the “Devil of Ramadi” and placed an eighty-thousand-dollar bounty on his head. Ironically, Kyle did not die in combat, but was murdered on a Texas gun range in 2013 by a fellow veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The world's current longest-running war is the civil war in Myanmar that pits the Karen people against the central government. It has been raging since 1949.

Florence Green, the last known veteran of World War I, died in London in 2012. She served in the Women's Royal Air Force.

THE RIGHT STUFF

Seventy-four graduates from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point have won the Medal of Honor.

Eighteen West Point grads went on to become astronauts, as did thirty-nine from the U.S. Air Force Academy and more than fifty from the U.S. Naval Academy.

MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Soviets sent a flotilla of nuclear-armed submarines to the waters near the United States. Soviet submarine B-59 had been out of contact with Moscow for several days and had no idea what the status of the crisis was. When the U.S. Navy dropped depth charges to signal B-59 to surface, its captain thought that a war had begun. He and the chief political officer on board wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo at the Americans, which would have likely started World War III and led to Armageddon. Protocol dictated that use of a nuke would require the approval of these two men as well as that of second-in-command Vasili Arkhipov, who defied the others and refused to consent.

The only American killed by enemy fire during the Cuban Missile Crisis was U2 spy plane pilot Rudolph Anderson, who was shot down over Cuba during a reconnaissance flight.

DO NOT ENTER

In 1939, the luxury liner
Hamburg American
brought 936 Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba. Upon their arrival, the passengers were told that they had been duped out of their money and would not be allowed into the country. The ship then sailed to Miami, where the U.S. government also denied them entry. Eventually, England, Holland, Belgium, and France took the Jews. Unfortunately, the latter three nations were later overrun by the Nazis and many of the Jews became victims of the Holocaust.

During World War II, many Jewish refugees in Russia ended up in Japan, the only country that would take them.

During World War II, black American troops were banned from Australia and Iceland.

FENCE SITTERS

Ireland remained neutral in World War II and refused to allow Britain the use of its ports and airfields.

The Irish prime minister expressed his condolences to Germany upon Hitler's death.

The neutral country of Portugal flew its flags at half staff to mourn Hitler's passing.

PATTON PLACE

During World War II, American general George Patton stopped halfway across the Rhine to urinate in the river. He liked to mark his territory, much as predatory animals do.

Patton's great uncle was a Confederate colonel killed during Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.

When Patton was sent south of the border into Mexico during the Punitive Expedition of 1916, he returned to the United States with two dead Mexican leaders strapped to his armored vehicle, like big game killed in the hunt, making him a sensation in the press.

Patton believed that he was the reincarnation of the ancient military leader Hannibal.

TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM

Civil War political figure and lawyer Clement Vallandigham accidentally killed himself while defending a client against a murder charge in 1871. His client was accused of shooting a man in a barroom brawl, but Vallandigham argued that the victim had shot himself while trying to pull a gun out of his shirt. When Vallandigham attempted to recreate the shooting, he shot himself in the process, with a gun he believed to be empty. His point proved, the client was found not guilty.

LONDON FOG

One reason London was so foggy in the old days was due to air pollution, or smog. The famed London “fog” is now a thing of the past.