Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (34 page)

One in 500 people have one blue eye and one brown eye.

A human eyeball weighs about an ounce.

A black eye is called a “periorbital ecchymosis.”

Blue eyes have less pigment in them than brown eyes.

In 2005, about 177 million out of the estimated 287 million U.S. population are expected to need vision correction.

About a third of the human race has 20/20 vision.

Forty-five million baby boomers age 35 to 49 wear spectacles or contact lenses.

Almost half of Americans would consider wearing glasses as a fashion accessory, even if they didn’t need them.

If you go blind in one eye, you’ll only lose about one fifth of your vision.

Why does your nose run when you cry? It’s excess fluid from your eyes.

Two out of three adults in the United States will need glasses at some point in their lives.

In 1979 a South African boy was found to have a marigold seed growing from his left eye.

When you’re looking at someone you love, your pupils dilate. When you’re looking at someone you hate, they do the same thing.

People who drink coffee are less likely to commit suicide than people who don’t.

The average American drinks 3.4 cups of coffee a day.

Thirty-seven percent of U.S. coffee drinkers use milk and sugar. Twenty-one percent drink it black.

There are 1,000 different chemicals in a cup of coffee—26 of them have been tested to see if they cause cancer in laboratory rats, and 13 of them do.

In the 1820s a temperance movement tried to ban coffee—and nearly succeeded.

Coffee beans aren’t beans, they’re fruit pits, making coffee the most-consumed fruit in the United States.

Why isn’t iron added to milk? Iron-fortified milk turns coffee green.

When coffee first arrived in Europe, it was known as Arabian Wine.

The French writer Voltaire drank 70 cups of coffee a day.

In a 12-year study, it was found that coffee does not—as was previously believed—cause high blood pressure.

Been to a coffee-klatsch lately? The term is from the German
Kaffeeklatsch
, a combination of the words for “coffee” and “gossip.”

One teaspoon of liquid nicotine or 1/2 ounce of pure caffeine are considered lethal doses for a 150-pound man.

Africa’s largest private-sector employer is Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

Dr. Pepper is said to contain 23 fruit flavors. Can you taste them?

World’s largest consumer of sugar: Coca-Cola Company. They also buy the most vanilla.

It costs the Coca-Cola Company more to buy the can than to make the cola.

Once America’s most popular soft drink, root beer now accounts for less than 4 percent of the national market.

Diet Pepsi was originally called Patio Diet Cola.

In 1900 the average American drank 12 sodas a year. Today it’s 600.

Coca-Cola was first marketed in 1885 as a remedy for hangovers and headaches.

Coca-Cola’s CEO once told a British newspaper that he wouldn’t be happy until people could turn on their taps and get Coke instead of water.

Original name for 7-Up: Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda.

Root beer was an herbal tea before it was a soda; its creator, Charles Hires, added carbonated water to over 25 herbs, berries, and roots, and the rest is history.

When Heinz ketchup leaves the bottle, it travels at a rate of 25 miles per year.

Most widely used herb in the world: parsley.

Hottest peppers: habaneros. Sweetest: bells.

Four tablespoons of ketchup contain as much nutrition as a medium-size tomato.

Piperine is the stuff in black pepper that makes you sneeze.

What part of the cinnamon tree is used to make cinnamon? The bark.

Vanilla comes from orchids.

The top-selling spice in the world? Pepper. Mustard comes in second.

When pizza became popular in the United States in the 1930s, sales of oregano shot up 5,200 percent.

Humans and Koshima Island monkeys are the only creatures that intentionally salt their food.

In the 1800s you could buy ketchup flavored with lobster, walnuts, oysters, or anchovies.

Pesto is most often made with basil, but variations can be made using parsley, spinach, or arugula instead.

I spent all of last
evening evening
out the pile.

That poor
invalid
, his insurance is
invalid
.

The bandage was
wound
around the
wound
.

They were much too
close
to the door to
close
it.

That buck sure
does
some odd things around the
does
.

The absentminded
sewer
fell down into the
sewer
.

Ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand.

Female canaries can’t sing.

Vultures fly without flapping their wings.

The bones of a pigeon weigh less than its feathers.

Chickens are the only birds that have combs.

Crows don’t fly in straight lines.

An ostrich’s eyes are bigger than its brains.

There are 4.5 million wild turkeys in the United States.

Approximately 56,000 carrier pigeons “fought” in World War II.

When migrating birds fly in V formation, it increases their range by as much as 70 percent.

Penguins have an organ on their foreheads that desalinizes water.

Egg shells are 90 percent calcium carbonate—the same thing your teeth are made of.

Eagles can’t hunt when it’s raining.

Hummingbirds hold their nests together with spiderwebs.

In her entire lifetime, a female hummingbird will lay at most two eggs.

The pelican breathes through its mouth because it doesn’t have nostrils.

Male birds in Australia have been observed mimicking the sound of a cell phone during courtship.

It takes an estimated 2,893 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop.

Cracker Jack is the world’s largest purchaser of popcorn.

The U.S. military specifications for fruitcake are 18 pages long.

In the year 2000, Italian pastry chefs built an edible Ferrari out of 40,000 cream pies.

Per capita, Alaskans eat twice as much ice cream as the rest of the nation.

What’s the difference between jam and preserves? Jam has minced fruit; preserves have whole.

Remember tan-colored M&M’s? They’re gone. They were replaced by the blue ones in 1995.

According to experts, dark chocolate is the candy most likely to cause tooth decay.

Hostess Twinkies are 68 percent air.

Why is pound cake called pound cake? The original recipe called for a pound of butter.

Most popular Popsicle flavor: cherry.

World record for keeping a Lifesaver in the mouth with the hole intact: 7 hours, 10 minutes.

There are 24 flowers on every Oreo cookie.

America’s most popular candy bar? Snickers.

It’s estimated you’ll eat some 35,000 cookies in your lifetime.

The three safest modes of transportation: ship, train, and commercial airplane (in that order).

When filled, the oil tanker
Jahre Viking
weighs 1.13 billion pounds.

Blackbeard’s pirate ship was named
Queen Anne’s Revenge
.

An American living in Japan in 1869 invented the rickshaw to transport his invalid wife.

The SS in a ship’s name stands for “steamship.”

In 1870 it took eight days to cross the United States by train.

The world’s longest traffic jam was 84 miles long and took place in Japan in 1990.

In skywriting, the average letter is nearly two miles high.

In 1997 three times as many bikes as cars were manufactured.

The 10.1 mile tunnel in Saint Gotthard, Switzerland, is the longest vehicular tunnel in the world.

It is generally agreed that new cars are kept an average of at least five years.

One escalator carries as many people as 13 elevators.

An astronaut can reach the moon in less time than it took a stagecoach to travel the length of Great Britain in the 19th century.

The diesel cruise liner
Queen Elizabeth II
gets about 50 feet to the gallon.

The term
hell on wheels
originally applied to the Union Pacific Railroad’s saloon railcars.

How long will a person wait for an elevator without fidgeting? About 40 seconds.

It is estimated that you’ll walk more than 65,000 miles in your lifetime.

THE PLAYBOY BUNNY

When Hugh Hefner was little, one of his prized possessions was “a blanket with bunnies all over it.” Apparently, he never outgrew it—when he started
Playboy
magazine, he used the same bunny as his symbol.

THE JOLLY GREEN GIANT

In the early 1920s the Minnesota Valley Canning Company introduced a large variety of peas to the American market. They called the peas “green giants,” and—because the law required it to protect their trademark—they put a picture of a green giant on the label. Oddly enough, the original giant (lifted from a volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales) was white, not green; he looked like a dwarf, not a giant; and he wasn’t jolly—he was scowling. His image eventually softened, and he became such a powerful symbol that the company changed its name to the Green Giant Company.

BETTY CROCKER

The Washburn Crosby Company, a Minneapolis flour maker, got so many letters asking for baking advice that, in 1921, they made up a character to write back to consumers. They picked
Betty
because it sounded “warm and friendly,” and
Crocker
was picked to honor a former company director. To come up with a signature for Betty (so she could sign “her” letters), the company held a contest for its women employees. The winner—still used today—was submitted by a secretary.

THE PILLSBURY DOUGHBOY

In 1965 Rudy Pera was trying to design an advertising campaign for Pillsbury’s new refrigerated dough product . . . but he couldn’t think of anything that would make the brand stand out. One day he began playfully pounding on a container of the dough, hoping to drum up ideas. “I imagined what could pop out,” he recalls. “A dough man? A dough baker? A dough boy!”

RONALD MCDONALD

Willard Scott, weatherman on NBC’s
Today Show
, was the first McClown. Here’s the story he tells:

“The folks at the NBC television station in Washington—WRC-TV—had signed on a national kiddie show [called “Bozo the Clown”], and they tapped me to star in the thing . . . I did a lot of personal appearances as Bozo—at shopping malls, local fairs, that sort of thing. After a while a local McDonald’s asked me to appear at an opening, and before too long my Bozo was a regular fixture at area franchises. When WRC dropped [the show], McDonald’s didn’t like the idea of having to drop a successful promotion. They were hooked on clown. And so—you guessed it—Ronald McDonald was born. He was almost christened Donald McDonald, but Ronald sounded just a touch more natural, so we went with that.”

THE QUAKER OATS MAN

In 1891 seven oatmeal millers combined to form the American Cereal Company. One of the seven was Quaker Mill of Ravenna, Ohio, which had trademarked the Quaker man 14 years earlier. In 1901 the American Cereal Company changed its name to Quaker Oats, and the Quaker man was revived as its symbol. The real Quakers weren’t too happy about this. They tried unsuccessfully to get Congress to prohibit manufacturers from using religious names on products.