The Extraordinary Book of Useless Information (5 page)

Four-time Super Bowl winner Terry Bradshaw holds the record with a zero quarterback rating in a game three times. Joe Namath did it twice and Johnny Unitas once.

The highest passer rating possible in the NFL is 158.3. To achieve such a rating, a quarterback must attempt a least ten passes, have a completion percentage of at least 77.5 percent, an 11.875 touchdown percentage, a minimum of 12.5 yards per pass attempt, and no interceptions. Thirty-five different quarterbacks have achieved this rating in a game since the advent of the system in 1973. Peyton Manning has had four perfect games; Ben Roethlisberger and Kurt Warner have thrown three.

Ex–NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb and NFL defensive end Julius Peppers are the only two people to have played in a Super Bowl and an NCAA Final Four basketball game. McNabb was a reserve on the 1996 Syracuse basketball team that lost to Kentucky in the Final. He also lost in his only Super Bowl appearance. Peppers was a reserve on the 2000 University of North Carolina basketball team that lost to Florida in the Final Four semifinals, and he lost in his only Super Bowl.

POUTY PATRIOT

Those weird-looking logos on either side of the field in Gillette Stadium, the home of the New England Patriots, are stylized representations of the bridge and tower found at the north end of the stadium.

The midfield logo in Gillette Stadium is a stylized patriot, known locally as “flying Elvis” because of his long sideburns and pouty expression.

GO SKINS

In the eighteen presidential elections that have taken place since the Washington Redskins moved to Washington in 1937, seventeen have been predicted by the team's performance in its final home game before the election. If the Redskins win, the incumbent does also.

WHAT'S THE PUNCH LINE?

The 1944–45 Montreal Canadiens hockey lineup of Rocket Richard, Elmer Lach, and Toe Blake, known as the “Punch Line,” were 1-2-3 in the National Hockey League in scoring that season.

Carolina Hurricanes goalie Cam Ward scored a goal without touching the puck. According to NHL rules, the last player to touch the puck gets credit for the next goal scored by his team. Ward stopped a goal by the attacking New Jersey Devils near the end of a game on December 26, 2011. The Devils, who had pulled their goalie from the net to insert another attacker, inadvertently sent the puck back into their own goal on an errant pass. Ward was credited with the score since he was the last Hurricane to touch the puck.

BIRDIES OF A FEATHER

Traditional badminton shuttlecocks, or birdies, were made from about sixteen overlapping feathers from the left wing of a goose or duck.

WEARING THE YELLOW JERSEY

Professional cyclists in long races, like the Tour de France, will pee off to the side while riding their bikes. The trick is not to spray the riders to the rear while doing so.

BADSKETBALL

Kobe Bryant's wife Vanessa got half of the couple's $150 million assets when they divorced due to allegations of Bryant's infidelity. She also got three mansions in the Newport Beach, California, area, one of which her mother lives in.

In more bad basketball news, a judge garnished Allen Iverson's bank account to put toward $375,000 worth of jewelry the former star never paid for. Iverson made about $150 million in his career.

Star NBA basketball player Tony Parker cheated on his wife, actress Eva Longoria, with the wife of his San Antonio Spurs teammate Brent Barry. Both couples subsequently divorced.

In 1997, Charles Barkley was arrested for throwing a man through an Orlando, Florida, nightclub's plate glass window after the man had thrown a glass of ice at Barkley.

Barkley has confessed to having lost about $10 million on gambling, $2.5 million of it during one particularly poor six-hour blackjack session.

FUTILITY FACTOR

In 2012, the Portland Trailblazers set an NBA record for missing all twenty of their 3-point shot attempts in a 92–74 win over the Toronto Raptors.

WILLIAMS TO WILLIAMS TO WILLIAMS TO WILLIAMS

The 2011 New Jersey Nets NBA basketball team had four players with the last name Williams. They sometimes were all on the court at the same time during a game, making it quite challenging for the play-by-play announcers.

NBA player Ron Artest changed his name to Metta World Peace.

HOOP SCOOP

On November 20, 2012, Jack Taylor, who was a sophomore player on the Grinnell College basketball team in Iowa, shattered the NCAA scoring record by pouring in 138 points in a regulation game. He took 108 shots, made 27 of 71 three-pointers, averaged one shot every twenty seconds, and scored four points a minute in the second half. A player on opposing Faith Baptist Bible scored seventy points and they still lost by seventy-five points. Taylor's best effort before this game was forty-eight points when he was in high school.

DISPOSABLE INCOME

In 2012, Tiger Woods's ex-wife, Elin Nordegren, bought a $12-million mansion in Florida and promptly had it demolished to make room for an even more expensive one.

MARATHON MAN

American ultramarathon runner Dean Karnazes once ran fifty marathons in fifty states in fifty days.

FLIP-FLOPPER

In 2012, American Keith Levasseur ran the Baltimore Marathon in a time of 2:46:58 while wearing flip-flops.

W
ild
T
hings

SLEEPY TIME

Opossums sleep twenty hours a day.

Walruses have air sacs beneath their throats that they inflate to keep their heads above water while sleeping at sea.

Migrating thrushes will land briefly to take micro-naps lasting only eight seconds.

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

A “new” species of frog has been discovered in the most unlikely of places—the New York metropolitan area. It went unnoticed for so long because it closely resembles the local southern leopard frog that lives in the region.

In 2010, a new species of bee was discovered in New York City. The blue-green, non-stinging sweat bee, about the size of a sesame seed, licks salt from sweaty people.

There are about 250 native bee species found in New York City, the highest number of any major city.

Half of the world's spider species have yet to be discovered.

MONKEY BUSINESS

The first new monkey species discovery in twenty-eight years was confirmed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2012. The golden-maned primate is known as a lesula.

Black howler monkeys in an Argentine natural park were treated with antidepressants after two of the elder females in the group died.

Male chimpanzees have spines on their penises that can injure the female during mating.

GOING APE

Bonobos, chimpanzee-like apes that live in the Congo, have sex more than any other primate. They do so several times a day, with multiple partners, in multiple positions, regardless of gender or age.

Bonobos are the only nonhuman primates to engage in tongue kissing and oral sex.

Bonobo society is matriarchal, with females ruling. They use sex to keep the males in line.

A bonobo mother will carry and nurse her young for four years.

FOR THE BIRDS

The expression “crazy as a loon” comes from the fact that the common loon's call sounds like the wild laughter of a demented person.

The name “loon” comes from the Swedish
lom
, meaning “lame.” This waterfowl's feet are set so far back on its body that it has difficulty walking on land.

Woodpeckers have barbed tongues so that they can grab insects out of the holes they peck in trees.

Bald eagles return to the same stick-built nest each year, adding to its size annually. Some older nests can weigh up to one thousand pounds.

The golden eagle is North America's largest predatory bird.

A barn swallow's nest consists of one thousand beakfuls of mud.

American kestrels are able to see ultraviolet (UV) light. This enables them to locate rodents by their urine, which glows bright yellow in UV light.

Great horned owls can hear a mouse moving beneath a foot of snow.

Great horned owls lay their eggs in January or February.

The curious name of the titmouse comes from the Scandinavian word
tit
, meaning “little,” and the Old English word
mase
, meaning “bird.”

The tufted titmouse will pull the fur from sleeping cats and dogs to line its nest.

Robins do not cock their heads to listen for worms. They hunt by sight, and their eyes are set so far back on their heads that they must tip their heads to one side to see the ground.

Swifts spend all their daylight hours on the wing, never perching. They drink by dipping into water, and they collect twigs by snapping them off while in flight.

Barn swallows may fly up to six hundred miles a day in search of food for their young.

Some male marsh harriers grow female plumage to protect these transvestite birds from other males.

Birds have better color vision than do humans. While humans have three color cones in their eyes—red, green, and blue—birds have a fourth type—violet.

In Stockholm, Sweden, the pigeons hitch a ride on a local subway instead of flying. From their resting area the birds take the train one stop to their preferred feeding site near a mall that has plenty of cafes and Dumpsters for their dining pleasure.

More than 250 bird species engage in a behavior known as anting, where they rub dead insects, usually ants, on their feathers. It is thought that the chemicals in the bugs acts to kill parasites on the birds, and the oils found in the insects may supplement the bird's own natural oils.

Emperor penguins can dive to depths of 1,750 feet in search of food.

Only five of the seventeen penguin species live in cold climates.

“I TAWT I TAW A PUDDY TAT!”

Feral cats rival window strikes as the main killers of birds.

According to the U.S. Department of the Interior's
State of the Birds
report, domestic and feral cats kill hundreds of millions of birds each year and are one of the reasons that one-third of America's eight hundred bird species are endangered, threatened, or in serious decline.

The caracal is a cat found in Africa and Western Asia that can jump ten feet into the air from a crouching position, to grab birds in flight.

JUST DUCKY

Ducks maintain a constant body temperature of 105° F, even in the coldest winter.

The blood flowing to a duck's feet is cooled first so that there is no loss of body heat when swimming in frigid waters.

Ducks have an oil gland on their backside that they use to waterproof their feathers while preening.

The common eiger duck eats whole mollusks, shells and all. The duck's gizzard grinds up the shells, and the calcium they contain finds its way into future eggshells.

Ducks are one of the only birds in which males may forcibly copulate with unreceptive females if they can't find another mate.

Ducks have antibiotics in their sperm that fight off sexual diseases in males and females. The brighter a male duck's bill is, the stronger the antibiotics in his sperm.

LET'S TALK TURKEY

Male turkeys keep harems of up to twenty females.

Turkeys roost in trees at night.

CAT COUNTRY

A cheetah can spot a rabbit from two miles away.

The cheetah is the only cat that does not have retractable claws.

Cheetahs are one of the only cats to hunt during the day.

The binturong, also called the bearcat, is an animal from Southeast Asia that looks like a cross between a bear and a cat. It is unique in that it smells just like hot, buttered popcorn.

The palm civet, which is a relative of the binturong, can kill a cobra by running around it in circles until the snake becomes dizzy and falls over, at which point the feisty little mammal strikes.

SOMETHING'S FISHY

The snakehead is an introduced fish from Asia and Africa that invaded Maryland in 2002 and is now in seven states. Known locally as the “fish from Hell,” it can live for four days on dry land and can travel a quarter mile between bodies of water.

There are electric catfish in Africa that are capable of producing a 350-volt shock to incapacitate their prey.

Clownfish live in groups of up to six members around a single anemone. The largest and most dominant fish is always a female. The next in size is the male, and the other four smaller fish are immature, without gender. Once the immature clownfish do develop a gender, they can change their sex if one member of the mating pair dies.

A female brown trout will fake orgasms to trick males into releasing their sperm, while she does not release her eggs. This behavior causes undesirable males to leave her alone so she can find a more suitable mate.

Fish can taste with their fins and tail.

Ten thousand sea rays migrate from the waters off the Yucatán Peninsula to the coast of Florida in spring and back again in fall.

The heart of a blue whale measures nine feet across and weighs about one ton.

The spade-toothed whale is the rarest and most reclusive whale in the world. It is also probably the least understood large mammal. Two specimens that washed up on a beach in New Zealand in 2010 are the only ones ever found. The creature has never been observed in the wild. Its existence had only been conjectured from a partial jawbone found in 1872 and skull bones found in the 1950s and 1986.

Dolphins hear at least ten times better than people.

The Chinese soft-shelled turtle urinates through its mouth.

CREEPY CRAWLIES

Jurassic-era fleas were an inch long.

The Atlas moth of Southeast Asia is the largest moth in the world, with a total wing surface of sixty-five square inches and a ten-inch wingspan.

The Atlas moth does not have developed mouthparts and never eats during its one– to two-week adult lifespan, living on stored fats from the larval (caterpillar) stage.

When a caterpillar enters into its chrysalis, its body completely liquefies, and the butterfly is formed from scratch from its cells.

A virus that infects gypsy moth caterpillars causes them to climb to the top of trees, where they die and liquefy, raining down a virus-filled ooze on their brethren below.

Some ant species are incapable of foraging for food, tending their own young or their queen, or cleaning up their nests. Instead they raid the colonies of other ants and steal away their pupae, which they turn into slaves when the pupae reach adulthood.

The bite of the Brazilian wandering spider can cause painful, long-lasting erections in men, which can lead to impotence. The spider's venom is being studied for use in erectile dysfunction drugs.

Fire ants will latch on to one another to form large rafts when floodwaters strike. Some two hundred thousand ants may link together in a mat that can stay afloat for weeks. The ants on the bottom are able to breathe from air bubbles trapped between the mass of bodies.

While they suck blood, mosquitoes must urinate to prevent fluid overloads.

The male water boatman makes the loudest mating call, for its body size, of any animal. By rubbing their penis against ridges on their body, these 2.3-millimeter insects can make a noise that reaches ninety-nine decibels. Even when they are submerged in a river, their calls can be heard along its banks.

A new species of cockroach discovered in South Africa can jump a distance of fifty times its body length.

Centipedes are flatter than millipedes, with longer legs, and they move much quicker.

Millipedes generally have between 36 and 400 legs, although one California species has 750.

The oldest known land creature is a millipede species that lived some 428 million years ago.

There were eight-foot long millipedes roaming the Earth 300 million years ago. The largest species today measures over fifteen inches and lives in East Africa.

When threatened, millipedes will emit a hydrogen cyanide gas to ward off predators.

A termite queen can live for twenty-five to fifty years.

Termite colonies also contain kings, who mate with the queens for life.

Male Australian jewel beetles can't seem to differentiate between the dimpled, brown bottom of a beer bottle and the females of their species. The amorous males will try to mate with bottles and often die of overexertion after not being able to successfully complete the union.

JAWS

Anacondas have reverse curved teeth, and once they bite into a victim they cannot let go. They must relax their jaw for about thirty minutes to do so.

Alligator and crocodile jaws are covered with an array of tiny sensors that make them more sensitive than a human fingertip.

TONGUE TWISTERS

Anteaters belong to the taxonomic suborder
Vermilingua
, which means “worm tongue.”

An anteater's tongue is coated with a sticky saliva that makes catching ants and termites easier.

To avoid wiping out a colony, and with it their source of food, an anteater will only feed a few minutes at a time at each colony.

Anteaters will occasionally dine on fruit and bird's eggs.

Anteaters have no teeth and digest their food whole with the aid of dirt and pebbles ingested while feeding.

TERMINEX

A numbat is a small marsupial also known as a banded anteater, found only in Western Australia, that feeds almost exclusively on termites. Adult numbats must eat at least 20,000 termites a day.