Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids (39 page)

Research shows that women take 2 minutes, 5 seconds to change a diaper, whereas men take 1 minute, 36 seconds.

More babies are born on Tuesday than any other day of the week.

Babies are born with 300 bones, but many fuse together as they get older and the count goes down to 206 in adulthood.

On February 24, 1924, Mrs. J. P. Haskin of Arkansas delivered the heaviest known set of human twins. One was 14 pounds, the other 13.75 pounds, for a combined weight of 27.75 pounds.

Why should you not give cow's milk to infants? It doesn't have enough iron, vitamin C, or vitamin E, and it has too much protein.

Babies double their weight in their first six months, but slow down after that. If they kept doubling their weight every year, a six-pound baby would reach its tenth birthday weighing 6,144 pounds.

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“If men had to have babies they would only ever have one each.”

—Diana, Princess of Wales

Only Skin Deep

In the original story, Sleeping Beauty stayed asleep and beautiful for 100 years.

Cleopatra's beauty secrets: Lead ore on her eyebrows and around her eyes; blue lapis lazuli (a rare semiprecious stone) on her upper lids and green copper ore on her lower, red ocher on her cheeks, and henna on her palms.

Despite all of this, Cleopatra wasn't very attractive (but she's said to have had a beguiling voice and a great personality).

In her time, court artists depicted Queen Elizabeth I as beautiful. But a German visitor in the 1590s described her a little differently: “Her face oblong, fair and wrinkled; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose, a little hooked, her lips narrow and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar).”

In the 1920s, when Marlboro marketed its cigarettes exclusively to women, the company included “Beauty Tips” around the filters, red bands meant to hide lipstick stains.

In June 2004, a beauty contest was held in western Croatia…for goats.

In Japanese,
bakku-shan
means “beautiful when viewed from behind.” (It's not a compliment.)

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BEAUTIFUL WISDOM

“A soap bubble is the most beautiful thing, and the most exquisite in nature. I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble, if there were only one in the world.”

—Mark Twain

“Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.”

—David Byrne

Let's Get Hoppy!

Beer wasn't sold in cans until 1935. Before that, it came in bottles. And before that, drinkers had to go to taverns with a pail for them to fill.

In January 1935, the now-defunct Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company became the first to put beer in cans. Pop-tops hadn't been invented yet, so Krueger included a device to punch a hole in the top and printed instructions on the can about how to use it.

According to one estimate, about 10 percent of beer drinkers drink 43 percent of all the beer sold in the United States.

King Henry VIII's ladies at court had a ration of one gallon of beer per day.

Canadian inventor Steve Pasjack came up with the “Scarborough Suitcase” (the 12-pack beer carton with handles) in 1957.

Before a serious hurricane, the top food or beverage item sold at Walmart is beer. (Pop Tarts are #2.)

First high-profile kidnapping in Canada: Beer baron John Sackville Labatt in 1934. (He was eventually released.)

Studies show: Drinkers are likely to rate someone as 25% more attractive after two pints of beer.

Canada is home to Beersville (NB), Keg River (AB), and the Belcher Islands (NU).

According to Guinness, beards and mustaches soak up about 162,719 pints of beer every year.

The average British adult drinks nearly 500 pints of beer a year.

The daily breakfast regimen of Queen Elizabeth I included two pints of “strong beer.”

Navy ships carry two cans of beer for each sailor who spends 45 consecutive days at sea.

The first banned substance to disqualify an Olympian? Beer. In 1968 Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall of Sweden had a couple rounds to calm his jitters before competing in pistol shooting.

There's a Name for That

The six most common county names in the United States are Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, Jackson, and Madison.

A 2009 study showed that cows with names produce 3.4 percent more milk than cows without, but the names might not be the reason. Researchers believe that cattle thrive on being talked to and given individual attention instead of being considered just part of a herd.

The “see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, and speak-no-evil” monkeys have names: Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru. In Japan, where the three monkeys first appeared in the 1600s carved on a shrine's door, there is sometimes a fourth monkey, Shizaru, with his arms crossed, symbolizing “do no evil.”

The study of how bodies of water receive their names is called
hydronymy
.

The NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs were originally called the Toronto St. Patricks.

In 1934 carpenter-turned-toymaker Ole Kirk Christiansen held a contest among friends and employees to name his new company. After getting a number of entries, Christiansen decided he liked his own entry best: “Lego,” based on the Danish phrase
Leg godt
(“play well”).

The award for the best TV commercials is a Clio, named after the Greek muse of history.

Garci Ordonez de Montalvo's romantic fiction
Las Sergas de Esplandian
(1510) featured an otherworldly island called California. That's where the state got its name.

Rumen, reticulum, omasum
, and
abomasum
are the names of the segments of a cow's stomach.

Say Uncle!

Tom Hanks is a direct descendant of Abraham Lincoln's uncle.

Michelangelo wanted to be buried in his home city of Florence, but the pope insisted that he be entombed in Rome. Eventually, Michelangelo's nephew, honoring his uncle's wishes, managed to steal Michelangelo's remains and ship them in an unmarked crate to Florence, where they remain to this day.

“Uncle” Milton Levine got his nickname from his invention, the Ant Farm. Smart alecks kept asking him, “With all of these ants, where are the uncles?” So he added Uncle to his name.

Abe Lincoln's nephew William Todd designed the first California state flag.

Pablo Picasso smoked until he died, swearing that a cigar-smoking uncle had once saved his life. How? At birth, baby Pablo wasn't breathing. The quick-thinking uncle blew cigar smoke into his lungs, causing the infant to choke, cough…and begin breathing on his own.

Paul Terry, who created the
Mighty Mouse
and
Heckle and Jeckle
cartoons, was the uncle of Alex Anderson, who created the characters of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right.

Married Folks

When Eleanor Roosevelt married, she didn't have to update her driver's license or stationery. Her birth name had also been Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a distant cousin of Franklin's.

About 20 percent of Roman Catholic priests are married. If a married male minister from another Christian denomination converts, he may be allowed to become a priest.

Patriot Patrick Henry left his estate to his wife, as long as she didn't remarry after his death. (She challenged the will in court and remarried.)

P. T. Barnum's conjoined “Siamese Twins” Chang and Eng married twin sisters in the mid-1800s and had 21 children between them.

Charles Addams, whose cartoons inspired the TV show
The Addams Family
, got married in a pet cemetery.

Stay married for 50 years in the United States and you can get a letter of congratulations from the president. In the United Kingdom, however, a letter from the queen requires 60 years.

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“A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.”

—Michel de Montaigne

Prison Yard

In Massachusetts, 1 percent of the construction costs of a prison must be spent on art.

The guy behind bars in Monopoly's jail is called Jake the Jailbird.

Of all the countries in the world, the United States has the highest percentage of adults in prison: 1 in 107. Adding in people on parole and probation, 2 percent of U.S. adults (1 in 50) are under “correctional supervision” at any given time.

Many writers penned classics in prison. Some examples: John Bunyan's
The Pilgrim's Progress
(the first part), Miguel de Cervantes's
Don Quixote
, Oscar Wilde's
De Profundis
, and most of O. Henry's short stories.

52 percent of Americans say they'd rather spend a week in jail than be president of the United States.

In 1904 Rhode Island judge Darius Baker sentenced to jail a man who was speeding through the streets of Newport…at a whopping 15 mph.

Some of the first European inhabitants in the New World were people who chose a sentence of working in labor camps instead of going to debtors' prison.

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison before becoming president of South Africa.

Eye See You

A good custom artificial eye, matching your natural color, will cost at least $3,000. (But don't call them “glass eyes”—they're made from unbreakable plastic.)

Top-selling poster in U.S. history: The Snellen Eye Chart, designed by Dutch ophthalmologist Herman Snellen in 1862.

The spot where your lower and upper eyelids meet is called the “canhus.”

Tiny bugs called follicle mites live in your eyebrows and eyelashes. They eat away the dust and dead skin trapped between the hairs.

A bird's eyes cover about 50 percent of its head; a human's, only about 5 percent.

Most apes and monkeys see almost all the same colors we do.

Owls can turn their heads in almost a full circle, but they can't move their eyes.

When a cat looks at you with half-closed eyes, it's a sign of trust. Do it back to them and you'll share a bonding experience.

“Esotropia” means cross-eyed. “Exotropia” means wall-eyed.

Your eyelids are the thinnest area of skin on your body.

The word “pupil” means both student and a part of the eye. Both came from the Latin word
pupilla
, meaning “small child.” The eye part was called that because of the tiny reflections of people seen within.

Needles have eyes and potatoes have eyes, but did you know that Swiss cheese has them, too? That's what the holes are called.

Saint Harvey—the patron saint of optometrists—was blind from birth.

Don't panic if your doctor tells you that you have
bilateral periorbital hematoma
. It's just med-speak for a black eye.

He Knows If You've Been Bad or Good

Much of what we believe Santa does on Christmas Eve came from the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (which begins “'Twas the night before Christmas…”). The poem was published anonymously in 1822, but 21 years later, after it became popular, amateur poet Clement Moore took credit for it. The family of another poet, Henry Livingston Jr., however, claims that he was the real author.

Washington Irving's 1809 satirical history book,
A History of New York
, contains the earliest known written reference to Santa Claus.

Canada's postal service offers its own address for Santa letters: Santa Claus, North Pole, Canada H0H 0H0.

Gene Autry wrote the song “Here Comes Santa Claus” in 1946 after hearing kids excitedly shouting the phrase during the Hollywood Christmas parade.

Rudolph, Santa's ninth reindeer, was born in 1939 as a promotion for the Montgomery Ward department stores. The ad copywriter, Robert May, wrote a poem that originally called the reindeer Rollo, and then Reginald, but the store nixed both names, and Rudolph it was. Montgomery Ward passed out 2.4 million illustrated booklets including the poem, which became a song ten years later.

The Business of Balls

The speed at which an item falls depends on its size, shape, and weight. Dropped from a height of a mile, a table-tennis ball would fall at about 20 mph, and a bowling ball, 350 mph.

With the skin of one cow, you can make about 20 footballs or 144 baseballs.

That little ball inside of a whistle has an official name—it's called a “pea.”

The Times Square New Year's ball is 12 feet across and weighs 11,875 pounds.

Of the 20 possible answers in a Magic 8-Ball, only five are negative. Ten indicate “yes,” and the remaining five tell you to “ask again.”

Originally, polo balls were made of willow root, but those were damaged easily. So hard plastic became the norm in the 1970s.