Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (20 page)

It takes about 21 pounds of milk to make one pound of butter.

It takes 720 peanuts to make a pound of peanut butter.

Honey is easy to digest because it has already been digested by a bee.

Honey never goes bad.

One in every five potatoes grown in the United States ends up as french fries.

It takes 16,550 kernels of durum wheat to make a pound of pasta.

How do airports scare birds off their runways? One British airport plays Tina Turner albums.

Denver’s International Airport is larger than the entire city of Boston.

Each year U.S. airlines use more than 20 million airsickness bags.

About 21,000 commercial airline flights are scheduled daily in the United States. Only about 5,000 planes are available to fly them.

If you take a plant with you on a long airplane flight, it will suffer from jet lag.

The automated baggage handler at the Chicago O’Hare Airport can sort 480 bags per minute.

The airport in Calcutta, India, is called Dum Dum.

As many as 10,000 pieces of luggage are lost or “mishandled” by U.S. airlines every day.

First-class stamp: 3¢

Quart of milk: 12¢

Six-pack of Coca-Cola (bottles): 25¢

Full dinner at New York’s Roxy Grill: 75¢

Three-minute call from New York to San Francisco: $4.30

Average starting salary for a college graduate: $20–$25 a week

13-day cruise from New York to Bermuda: $123

FDR’s presidential salary: $75,000 a year

Q: IS A DOG YEAR REALLY THE EQUIVALENT OF SEVEN HUMAN YEARS?

A:
No—it is actually five to six years. The average life expectancy of a dog is 12 to 14 years. However, most dogs mature sexually within six to nine months, so in a sense there is no strict correspondence to human years. (
The Book of Answers
, by Barbara Berliner)

Q: WHY ARE THERE HOLES IN SWISS CHEESE?

A:
Because of air bubbles. During one of the stages of preparation, while it is still “plastic,” the cheese is kneaded and stirred. Inevitably, air bubbles are formed in the cheese as it is twisted and moved about, but the viscous nature of the cheese prevents the air bubbles from rising to the surface and getting out. As the cheese hardens, these air pockets remain, and we see them as the familiar “holes” when we slice the wheel of cheese. (
A Book of Curiosities
, compiled by Roberta Kramer)

Q: DO FISH SLEEP?

A:
Hard to tell if they sleep in the same sense we do. They never look like they’re sleeping, because they don’t have eyelids. “But they do seem to have regular rest periods . . . Some fish just stay more or less motionless in the water, while others rest directly on the bottom, even turning over on their side. Some species . . . dig or burrow into bottom sediment to make a sort of ‘bed.’ Some fish even . . . prefer privacy when they rest; their schools disperse at night to rest and then reassemble in the morning.” (
Science Trivia
, by Charles Cazeau)

Q: SHOULD YOU TOSS THE COTTON AFTER OPENING A BOTTLE OF PILLS?

A:
Yep. “The cotton keeps the pills from breaking in transit, but once you open the bottle, it can attract moisture and thus damage the pills or become contaminated.” (
Davies Gazette
, a newsletter from Davies Medical Center in San Francisco)

Q: WHAT ARE THE “BABY CARROTS” SOLD AT SUPERMARKETS?

A:
Take a closer look. Right there on the bag, it says clearly “baby-cut.” These aren’t now and never were baby carrots. In the early 1990s a carrot packer in Bakersfield, California, thought of a clever way to use his misshapen culls. Mechanically he cut them into short pieces, then ground and polished them until they looked like sweet, tender young carrots. Baby-cut packers today don’t rely on culls . . . They use a hybrid carrot called Caropak that grow long and slender; it doesn’t taper much and has little or no core. In the processing shed, the carrots are cleaned, cut into pieces, sorted by size, peeled in abrasive drums, then polished. Bagged with a little water and kept cold, they stay crisp and bright orange. (
San Francisco Chronicle
)

Q: HOW MUCH GOLD DOES THE UNITED STATES STORE IN FORT KNOX?

A:
The U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox contains approximately 315 million troy ounces of gold. At the official government price of $42.222 per troy ounce, the gold in the vault is worth $13 billion. At a market price of $300 an ounce, the gold would be worth $94.5 billion. (
Do Fish Drink Water?
, by Bill McLain)

Q: HOW MUCH IS ONE HORSEPOWER?

A:
Although it was originally intended to be measured as the average rate at which a horse does work, one horsepower has now been standardized to equal exactly 550 foot-pounds of work per second, or 746 watts of power. Speaking of watts, they’re named after James Watt, the Scottish engineer who invented an improved steam engine and then created the term
horsepower
. He needed some way to convince potential customers that his engine could outperform the horse. By devising a system of measurement based on the power of a horse, customers could easily compare the work potential of his engine versus that of the beast. (
Everything You Pretend to Know and Are Afraid Someone Will Ask
, by Lynette Padwa)

The shark model in
Jaws
was called Bruce—Steven Spielberg named it after his lawyer.

In Japan the James Bond film
Dr. No
was originally translated as
We Don’t Want a Doctor
.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
is a remake of Spielberg’s 1964 amateur film
Firelight
.

Film with the most destructive car chase ever:
The Junkman
(1982). One hundred and fifty cars were destroyed.

In June 1989, two original carbon scripts of
Citizen Kane
sold for $231,000.

Most costumes used for a film was 32,000:
Quo Vadis
(1951).

Record for most costume changes by an actor in one film: 65, by Elizabeth Taylor in
Cleopatra
(1963).

The word
love
appears in more film titles than any other word. Second:
Paris
.

When actors are filmed in a car through the windshield, there’s usually no rearview mirror.

Number of Dalmatians used in the filming of the movie
101 Dalmatians
: 233.

Five hundred pairs of false sideburns were used in the making of
Gone With the Wind
.

No insurance company will underwrite Jackie Chan’s productions.

Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
has been adapted into a film 49 times.
Romeo and Juliet
, 27 times.

Americans spent $3.9 billion in movie rentals in the first half of 2005.

There are 10,800 feet of film in a two-hour movie.

Popcorn eaters are three times more likely to cry in the movies than non–popcorn eaters.

Of the 80,000 known species of plants, only 50 are cultivated regularly.

A typical redwood tree’s roots are only five to six feet deep—and spread out over an acre.

Mesquite bushes growing in Death Valley can have roots reaching 100 feet down for water.

Plants, like people, run fevers when they’re sick.

There are more varieties of orchid than of any other flower (30,000 at last count).

The kernel inside a peach pit is poisonous.

Seventy percent of the world’s oxygen supply is produced by marine plants.

The saguaro cactus does not grow its first arm until it’s at least 75 years old.

Largest living thing on earth: an underground mushroom in Oregon, 3.5 miles across.

The tomato comes in more than 4,000 varieties.

The first state to require license plates on cars: New York, in 1901.

First car to offer seatbelts: the 1950 Nash Rambler.

Best-selling passenger car ever: Toyota Corolla. At least 30 million have been sold since it was introduced in 1969.

About 200 million tires are discarded every year in the United States.

Raised-bump reflectors on U.S. roads are called Botts’ Dots. (Elbert Botts invented them.)

The world’s most popular car color is red.

The little statue on the grill of every Rolls Royce has a name: “Spirit of Ecstasy.”

The slowest time for car dealers is just before Christmas.

1. To get rid of a wart, tape a one-inch square of the inside of a banana peel over the wart. Change the dressing every day or so until the wart is gone—probably within a month or two.

2. Use the same treatment to get rid of a splinter. Tape a piece of peel over the splinter. By morning the splinter should be at the surface.

3. To draw the color from a bruise, hold a banana peel over it for 10 to 30 minutes.

4. To relieve a headache, tape or hold the inner side of a banana peel to the forehead and the nape of the neck. The peels increase the electrical conductivity between the two spots.

World’s muddiest river: the Yellow River, in China.

The only country in the Middle East without a desert: Lebanon.

Total land area of China: more than nine million square miles.

The official name of India is Bharat.

Leading cause of death in Papua, New Guinea: falling out of a tree.

Ninety-five percent of the population of Egypt live within 12 miles of the Nile River.

The largest country in Africa is the Sudan.

The Sahara desert is larger than the entire United States.

At their closest point, the Russian and U.S. borders are less than two miles apart.

Widest waterfall in the world: Victoria Falls in Africa, at almost a mile wide.

Only 20 percent of the Sahara is covered with sand; the rest is rocky.

In the 19th century, India imported ice harvested from ponds in the United States.

Half the world’s population live in temperate zones, which make up 7 percent of the earth’s land area.

About one quarter of all nations drive on the left side of the road. Most are former British colonies.

The United States has almost 4 million miles of roads and streets.

Each mile of a four-lane freeway takes up more than 17 acres of land.

Fifteen percent of drivers get 76 percent of all traffic tickets.