The Extraordinary Book of Useless Information (6 page)

Numbats are the only marsupial that is fully active by day.

Female marsupials have three vaginas. Two receive sperm from the male and the third delivers the young.

Kangaroos cannot walk. They only can jump. They cannot jump backwards.

A LITTLE GREEN

The world's smallest vertebrate—a frog measuring just 7.7mm—was discovered in Papua New Guinea. The little guy can fit on the face of a dime, with plenty of room to spare. Unlike other frogs, which go through a tadpole stage before becoming adults, these guys skip this stage and are born as adults.

TOP DOGS

Dogs were first domesticated in numerous places independently, as early as thirty-three thousand years ago.

Today there are 185 different dog breeds in the Westminster Kennel Club Show. Six new breeds were admitted in 2012. They are:

•
The American English coonhound, which was evolved from Virginia hounds that were descended from English foxhounds

•
The Cesky terrier, which is a hunting dog that originated in the Czech Republic in 1950

•
The Entlebucher mountain dog, which is native to Switzerland

•
The Finnish lapphund, which is a reindeer herder

•
The Norwegian lundehund, also known as the “puffin dog,” which has six toes on each foot for scaling rocky coastal cliffs to hunt for puffins (though puffin hunting is now illegal)

•
The Xoloitzcuintli, or “show low,” formerly known as the Mexican hairless, which is the national dog of Mexico

The top eight most expensive dog breeds are:

•
Pembroke Welsh corgi: $1,000

•
Saluki: $2,500

•
Chow Chow: between $1,000 and $8,500

•
Egyptian pharaoh hound: between $2,500 and $6,500

•
Löwchen: between $5,000 and $8,000

•
Canadian Eskimo dog: $7,000

•
Old English bulldog: $9,000

•
Tibetan mastiff: between $2,000 and $7,000. Big Splash, or “Hong Dong,” is an exceptional red Tibetan mastiff that sold for $1.6 million to a Chinese coal baron in 2012, a world record price for any dog. The breed, which weighs 180 pounds, is highly priced because these dogs are considered to be pure “Chinese” and rarely found outside Tibet. Genghis Khan and Buddha are believed to have kept them. Matings with this dog go for about $100,000 a pop.

BY A NOSE

The nose of a dog has a flap in the nostrils that deflects exhaled air to the sides, which prevents incoming scents from being blown away.

Dogs can get a sunburn on their nose.

BEWARE OF DOG

U.S. Navy Seal dogs wear protective vests that cost $20,000 and sport video cameras, microphones, and speakers, so that the dog's handlers can give it commands remotely—even to kill.

Approximately 92 percent of fatal dog attacks involve male dogs, and 94 percent of those dogs were not neutered.

Dog bites accounted for one-third of all homeowner insurance policy claims paid out in 2011.

PAMPERED PETS

In the United States, 53 percent of dogs and 55 percent of cats are overweight; 21 percent of dogs and 25 percent of cats are obese. These weight issues shorten the animals' lives by an average of 2.5 years.

UPON FURTHER REVIEW

Bulls cannot see the color red.

Lemmings do not intentionally commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs. They have, however, been seen to run over the edge of a precipice in unfamiliar territory. The suicide myth was promoted by the 1958 Disney nature documentary
White Wilderness
, where lemmings were pushed into a river by a rotating platform installed by the film crew.

ESCAPE ARTISTS

Rabbits go into a trance when placed on their back. This is a survival instinct to fool a predator into thinking they are dead, allowing them to escape.

The African spiny mouse has the unique ability to shed large amounts of its skin to escape a predator. Even more amazing is the fact that it can then regrow the lost skin perfectly with no scarring, which no other mammal can do.

The African crested rat chews on poison tree bark and then spits the saliva onto its fur, where special porous hairs absorb the poison spit. This protects the little guys from being eaten by predators.

STEWED SHREWS

The Malaysian pen-tailed shrew nightly drinks the equivalent of nine glasses of wine in the form of a naturally occurring fermented nectar.

BY A WHISKER

The whiskers on a harbor seal are known as “vibrissae.”

Moose with antlers have much improved hearing. The antlers act like a giant hearing aid, functioning like a parabolic reflector to collect and direct sound waves to the moose's ears.

Along with giant pandas, most species of mole have six digits per leg.

The male platypus produces a venom cocktail in its ankle spurs that has eighty types of toxins that can incapacitate a human.

Wombat poop is cube-shaped.

S
tar
P
ower

PACKIN' HEAT

The following celebrities are gun owners: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Howard Stern, Joe Perry, Donald Trump, Eric Clapton, Christian Slater, James Earl Jones, and, of course, Clint Eastwood.

NAME THAT STAR

Stevie Wonder's given name is Stevland Hardaway Morris.

Wolfgang Puck's real name is Wolfgang Johannes Topfschnig.

Shakira's real name is Isabel Mebarak Ripoll.

Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky.

Reese Witherspoon named her son Tennessee.

Robert Downey Jr. named his son Exton Elias.

Man vs. Wild
star Bear Grylls has sons named Marmaduke and Huckleberry.

Uma Thurman's daughter is named Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence Thurman-Busson.

Mariah Carey named her two children with Nick Cannon Monroe and Morocco (because Cannon proposed to her in a Moroccan-style room in her mansion). She calls the kids Roc and Roe.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z tried to trademark their baby's first name—Blue Ivy—but were rebuffed by the court.

SOUNDS FAMILIAR

Mila Kunis is the voice of Meg Griffin on
Family Guy
.

Casey Kasem was the voice of Shaggy on
Scooby-Doo
.

Fergie was the voice of Charlie Brown's little sister Sally on a couple of
Peanuts
specials.

Seth Green voiced Chris Griffin on
Family Guy
.

Jerry Orbach, who starred on
Law & Order
, was the voice of Lumiere in Disney's
Beauty and the Beast
.

HAPPILY NEVER AFTER

Singer Sinead O'Connor married her fourth husband, Barry Herridge, from the back of a pink Cadillac in Las Vegas. The honeymoon didn't last long. They were divorced sixteen days later.

Nicolas Cage was married to Lisa Marie Presley for 108 days.

Kenny Chesney and Renée Zellweger made it for 130 days.

Drew Barrymore was married to bartender Jeremy Thomas for fewer than two months and filed divorce papers after five months of marriage to comedian Tom Green.

Britney Spears's marriage to Jason Alexander lasted fifty-five hours.

The only one of Elizabeth Taylor's seven husbands she did not divorce was producer Michael Todd, who died in 1958, a year after they were married. Todd perished when his private plane, the
Lucky Liz
, crashed in New Mexico. The plane was overloaded, flying too high for its design, and had icy wings. Taylor had wanted to accompany him on the flight, but he made her stay home because she had a cold.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS . . .

Not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Janeane Garofalo discovered in 2012 that she had been married for some twenty years to writer/producer Rob Cohen. The two went to a Las Vegas drive-thru wedding chapel in a taxi in 1992. Apparently she didn't think weddings in Vegas were legally binding.

BRING THE BLING

Movie producer Michael Todd gave Elizabeth Taylor a thirty-carat diamond engagement ring in 1957.

Jay-Z gave Beyoncé an eighteen-carat diamond when he popped the question in 2008.

Mariah Carey accepted a seventeen-carat pink diamond from Nick Cannon in 2008 after dating for six weeks.

Donald Trump gave Melania Knauss a twelve-carat rock in 2004.

Grace Kelly got a ten-and-a-half-carat ring from Monaco's Prince Rainier III in 1955.

HERE'S JOHNNY!

Johnny Carson's television career began in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1950. He hosted a local show called
The
Squirrel's Nest
, where one of his bits was interviewing pigeons on top of the courthouse about the political corruption they had seen.

Carson's big break came in 1954, when, as a writer for the popular
Red Skelton Show
, he was asked to fill in at the last minute after Skelton had accidentally been knocked out just before airtime.

Johnny at first turned down hosting
The Tonight Show
, but after Joey Bishop, Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx, and Bob Newhart also declined, NBC convinced him to accept.

HOLLYWOOD CONFIDENTIAL

Director Tim Burton once played water polo and was on his high school swim team.

Sarah Jessica Parker's tenth great-grandmother was accused of being a witch in the Salem witchcraft trials.

Director James Cameron was once a school bus driver, as was John Malkovich.

Cuba Gooding Jr. was a backup dancer for Lionel Richie.

Brad Pitt had his front teeth chipped for his role in
Fight Club
, then had them redone afterward.

Mick Jagger studied at the London School of Economics and had planned on being an accountant.

Ken Jeong of
The
Hangover
is a medical doctor who studied at the University of North Carolina. He broke into comedy by doing stand-up in his spare time.

Colin Farrell has a lucky belt and always wears the same boxer shorts, with shamrocks, on the first day of shooting a new movie.

Heidi Klum carries a bag of her baby teeth for good luck.

Reese Witherspoon's father is a bigamist.

In 1935, unmarried actress Loretta Young conceived a child with Clark Gable while filming
The Call of the Wild
. Young had the baby in secret and put her into orphanages until she turned nineteen months, at which time she brought the child home and told the public that she had adopted her. In 1940, when Young married Thomas Lewis, the girl, Judy, took his surname. Until her dying day, Young never publicly acknowledged Judy as her biological daughter.

Comedian Jimmie “J.J.” Walker, of
Good Times
fame, once employed both Jay Leno and David Letterman as writers for $150 a week.

After the cancellation of
Star Trek
and a divorce from his wife, William Shatner lived in his car for a time.

Lucille Ball filed for divorce from Desi Arnaz the day after they filmed the last episode of
I
Love Lucy
.

Johnny Depp appeared as a guy named Eddie in a 1991 music video for Tom Petty's song “Into the Great Wide Open.”

Christina Aguilera made a Spanish language album—
Mi Reflejo
—in 2000, even though she doesn't speak the language.

Richard Gere played the part of Danny Zuko in the stage production of
Grease
in 1973, five years before John Travolta rose to fame playing the role in the 1978 movie adaptation.

Kelly Bensimon of
The Real Housewives of New York City
is not a housewife, or any other kind of wife. She was divorced in 2007.

Richard Belzer holds the record for playing the same character in the most different TV series. He has appeared as Detective John Munch on at least eleven different shows, including
Homicide
,
Homicide: Life on the Street
,
Law & Order: Trial by Jury
,
Law & Order: SVU
,
The X-Files
,
The Beat
,
M.O.N.Y
.,
Sesame Street
,
The Wire
,
Arrested Development
, and
30 Rock
.

Daniel Radcliffe admits to showing up on the set drunk from the night before while filming the later Harry Potter movies.

Pat Sajak confided that he and Vanna White would down up to six margaritas during their breaks between the shooting of several
Wheel of Fortune
shows per day.

LeAnn Rimes has a tattoo on her right foot that reads, “the only one that matters.” It's something husband Eddie Cibrian said to her.

Michael Richards was slated to play the title character on
Monk
on ABC. He backed out and then so did ABC. The show was then picked up by USA Network, starring Tony Shalhoub.

Kate Upton's great grandfather was a cofounder of Whirlpool.

David Bowie's left eye is permanently dilated from being punched in the face as a kid.

Gossip Girl
star Leighton Meester was born in prison, where her mother was doing time for being involved in a drug ring.

Frank Oz is the puppeteer who performed Yoda, Miss Piggy, and the Cookie Monster, among others.

Katie Couric battled bulimia in college.

Pierce Brosnan used to work as a fire-eater in a circus.

During one week in November 1994, Tim Allen had the top movie (
The Santa Clause
), the top TV show (
Home Improvement
), and the top
New York Times
bestselling book (
Don't
Stand Too Close to a Naked Man
).

Jane Lynch met director Christopher Guest while shooting a Frosted Flakes commercial. The two went on to work together on several “mockumentary” movie projects, including
Best in Show
and
A Mighty Wind
.

CULT OF PERSONALITIES

Notable celebrity Scientologists include Kirstie Alley, Anne Archer, Karen Black, Sonny Bono, Jeff Conaway, Chick Corea, Tom Cruise, Isaac Hayes, Juliette Lewis, Priscilla Presley, Kelly Preston, Leah Remini, John Travolta, Greta Van Susteren, and Edgar Winter.

People who were once Scientologists include Al Jarreau, Charles Manson, and Lisa Marie Presley.

SELLEBRITIES

Rihanna once promoted Secret (deodorant) Body Spray.

Serena Williams hawked Tampax.

Ozzy Osbourne shilled for “I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.”

Florence Henderson pushed Polident.

Kris Jenner promoted Poise pads.

Justin Bieber has his own line of Opi nail polish.

50 Cent has planned to start his own line of condoms.

WHAT PRICE BEAUTY?

Jennifer Aniston spends about four hundred dollars a day on beauty. She uses a $450 neck ointment, a $350 rejuvenating serum, gets $295 laser skin peels and $450 facials, $600 hair cuts, $320 highlights, and spends $900 a week on yoga sessions.

JUST A CLICK AWAY

Justin Bieber was the most-searched-for celebrity on the Bing search engine top ten list for 2011. The next nine were Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Aniston, Lindsay Lohan, Megan Fox, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Miley Cyrus.

Yahoo! reported that the top-searched athletes for 2011 were Danica Patrick (race car driver), Tiger Woods, Manny Pacquiao (boxer), Maria Sharapova (tennis player), Serena Williams, Kris Humphries (basketball player briefly married to Kim Kardashian), Hope Solo (soccer player), Kobe Bryant, Lamar Odom (basketball player), and Caroline Wozniacki (tennis player).

Lady Gaga had the most Twitter followers in 2011, with 14.4 million. Kim Kardashian had 10.3 million and Britney Spears had 10 million.

One can now download an app to have Snoop Dogg as the voice on a TomTom GPS device.

BACKWORDS

Several well-known celebs have suffered from dyslexia, including Jewel, Bruce Jenner, Kurt Cobain, Orlando Bloom, Whoopi Goldberg, Cher, Patrick Dempsey, Vince Vaughn, Keanu Reeves, Keira Knightley, and Tony Bennett.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Christopher Walken, Al Pacino, and Nick Nolte were all considered for the role of Han Solo in
Star Wars,
instead of Harrison Ford.

Al Pacino was considered, along with Christopher Reeve, for the lead in
Pretty
Woman
, instead of Richard Gere.

Molly Ringwald, Heather Locklear, Kim Basinger, and Meg Ryan were all thought of before Julia Roberts for
Pretty Woman
.

Nicolas Cage was in the running with Mickey Rourke for the lead in
The Wrestler
.

Gwyneth Paltrow almost beat out Kate Winslet for the part of Rose in
Titanic
.

Val Kilmer could have been the one hitting the floor with Jennifer Grey in
Dirty Dancing,
instead of Patrick Swayze.

Kate Winslet nearly beat out Renée Zellweger for the lead in
Bridget Jones's Diary
.

Tom Cruise was the first choice to play Henry Hill in
Goodfellas
, not Ray Liotta.

RACIST ROLES

Many older movies chose to cast white actors as characters of another race, usually with embarrassing results:

Charlton Heston was cast as a Mexican drug agent in 1958's
Touch of Evil
. His skin and hair were darkened and he wore a cheesy mustache.