Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (40 page)

Windmills originated in Iran.

Twenty thousand silver teaspoons are stolen from the Washington, D.C., Hilton each year.

Odds that someone caught shoplifting is a teenager: 50 percent.

U.S. shoplifters steal an estimated $2 billion worth of merchandise every year.

The retail industry loses more inventory to employee theft than it does to shoplifting.

Items most likely to be shoplifted from a supermarket: cigarettes, beauty aids, and batteries.

Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

Justice Department prediction: one in 20 babies born today will serve time in prison.

Half of all crimes are committed by people under the age of 18.

According to criminal law, only three people are necessary for a disturbance to be called a riot.

A 15-year-old burglar was charged with armed robbery after pointing his pet boa constrictor at a man and ordering him to hand over all his cash.

More Americans are arrested for drunk driving than for any other crime.

Russia has almost twice as many judges and magistrates as the United States; the United States has eight times as much crime.

Nearly 50 percent of all bank robberies take place on Friday.

When burglars break into a home, they usually go straight for the master bedroom.

Ransom paid for a kidnap victim can be tax-deductible.

Canada has the longest national coastline in the world: 151,400 miles.

More than 50 percent of all the lakes in the world are in Canada.

Thirty-six percent of the Great Lakes lie within Canadian territory.

Forty percent of the world’s newspapers are printed on paper that comes from Canadian forests.

Per capita, Canadians buy more diamonds than anyone on earth.

Both English and French are official languages of Canada.

The first North American YMCA opened in 1851 in Montreal, Quebec.

The name
Canada
is derived from the Huron-Iroquois kanata language and means a “village or settlement.”

Per capita, the cities of Winnipeg and Calgary drink the most Slurpees in the world.

Canada has more doughnut shops per capita than any other country.

Canada has six time zones.

Canada is the largest importer of American automobiles.

Canadian citizens consume more Kraft Macaroni & Cheese per capita than any other nation.

In 2004 alone, UFO sightings in Canada increased by 31 percent.

Roman statues were often made with heads that could be removed and replaced with other heads.

The actual title of Da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa
is
La Gioconda
.

It took Leonardo da Vinci about five years to paint the
Mona Lisa
.

X-rays of the
Mona Lisa
show that there are three different versions underneath.

The
Mona Lisa
has no eyebrows. Shaved eyebrows were the fad when she was painted.

A pietà is any representation of the Virgin Mary mourning over the dead body of Christ, not just the famous one by Michelangelo.

It took Michelangelo four years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Rembrandt was his first name; his last name was van Rijn.

Rembrandt painted more self-portraits than any other world-famous artist: 62.

Whistler’s Mother
(which James McNeill Whistler called
Arrangement in Grey and Black
) is in Paris at the Musée d’Orsay, a branch of the Louvre. The painting is about five feet by five feet.

Henri Rousseau, famous for his exotic jungle scenes, never left Paris. He would go to the park, lie down among the grass and weeds, and sketch the plants hundreds of times their size.

Matisse coined the term
cubism
in 1908 as an insult to another painter’s work.

The most expensive painting ever auctioned: Pablo Picasso’s
Garçon a la Pipe (Boy With a Pipe)
. It fetched $104 million in 2004.

Two most dangerous jobs in the United States: commercial fishing and logging.

The average computer worker types 90,000 keystrokes in an eight-hour shift.

One in six employees says they got so mad at a coworker last year that “they felt like hitting them, but didn’t.”

Fifty-three percent of Americans think they’re paid “the right amount.”

A cashier entering digits by hand will average one error for every 350 characters.

The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas has 12 gardeners on its staff to care for artificial plants.

An estimated 12 percent of U.S. businessmen wear their ties so tight that they restrict the blood flow to their brain.

Six in ten Americans say they would continue to work if they won $10 million in the lottery.

The Pentagon uses up 666 rolls of toilet paper on an average day.

Most-requested care package item by U.S. troops in Iraq: toilet paper.

Buculets are those little bumpers on the underside of your toilet seat.

On average, Americans buy 1.5 toothbrushes a year.

If you took a shower today, you used about 30 gallons of water.

The average water temperature for showers in the United States is 105°F.

A doniker is circus slang for “toilet.”

First issue of
USA Today
hits stands

Graceland opens to the public (adults: $6.50; kids: $4.50)

First permanent artificial heart transplant performed

Time
magazine man of the year: Pac-Man

Falklands War begins and ends

Late Night with David Letterman
debuts on NBC

#1 movie:
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

It is common in Brazil to take 3 or 4 showers a day; visitors may be asked if they would like to shower before a meal.

The Amazon River is visible from space.

The Andes are the longest mountain range in the world, stretching more than 4,000 miles through seven countries.

São Paulo, Brazil is the fifth-largest city in the world and the largest in South America.

Quibido, Colombia, receives more than 350 inches of rain annually.

According to tradition, Brazilian cats have seven lives, not nine.

Ninety percent of Brazilian women classify beauty products as an essential rather than a luxury.

Brazil produced a coffee-scented postage stamp in 2001.

Before the arrival of the Spanish, the Incan Empire covered 35,000 square miles, almost twice the size of California.

La Paz, Bolivia, is the highest capital city in the world.

The first settlers of Patagonia were Welsh.

The Amazon River basin is the largest contiguous tropical rain forest in the world.

Peru’s Inca Indians were the first to cultivate potatoes, around 200 B.C.

The native people of the Andes Mountains have 2 to 3 more quarts of blood in their bodies than people who live at lower elevations.

In 1910 about 32 million Americans lived on farms. Today fewer than 5 million do.

Of the 1,000 varieties of cherries grown in the United States, only 10 are grown commercially.

A year’s worth of sap from a full-grown sugar maple tree will make only 1/3 gallon of syrup.

It takes about 12 ears of corn to produce a single tablespoon of corn oil.

Benjamin Franklin invented crop insurance.

It takes seven to eight tons of sugarcane to produce a ton of sugar.

It takes 345 squirts from a cow’s udder to get a gallon of milk.

1. Big Beefhead

2. The Buffalo Hangman

3. The Dumb Prophet

4. The Stuffed Prophet

5. The Pretender

6. His Accidency

7. Uncle Jumbo

PUT ON YOUR THINKING CAP

Meaning:
Carefully and thoughtfully consider something

Origin:
In previous centuries, it was customary for judges to put a cap on before sentencing criminals. Because judges were respected thinkers, it was referred to as a “thinking cap.” (
Gordon’s Book of Familiar Phrases
)

PLAY FAST AND LOOSE

Meaning:
Stretch the truth or meaning of words or rules, deceive or trifle with someone

Origin:
This term dates from the 16th century. It comes from a game called “fast and loose,” which was played at fairs. Operators rolled up a strap and left a loop hanging over the edge of a table. To win, a player had to catch the loop with a stick before the strap was unrolled. But they never won. Cheating operators rolled it up in such a way that the feat was impossible. (
Have a Nice Day—No Problem!
, by Christine Ammer)

GET OFF SCOT-FREE

Meaning:
Escape punishment

Origin:
“In the thirteenth century, scot was the word for money you would pay at a tavern for food and drink, or when they passed the hat to pay the entertainer. Later, it came to mean a local tax that paid the sheriff’s expenses. To go scot-free literally meant to be exempted from paying this tax.” (
How Does Olive Oil Lose Its Virginity
?, by Bruce Tindall and Mark Watson)

SLUSH FUND

Meaning:
A hidden cache of money used for illegal or corrupt political purposes

Origin:
“Derived from Scandinavian words meaning ‘slops,’ this phrase is derived from the nineteenth-century shipboard practice of
boiling up large pots of pork and other fatty meats. The fat that rose to the top of the kettles was stored in vats and then sold to soap and candle makers. The money received from the sale of the ‘slush’ was used for the crew’s comfort and entertainment.” (
Eatioms
, by John D. Jacobson)

TOUCH AND GO

Meaning:
A risky, precarious situation

Origin:
“Dates back to the days of stagecoaches, whose drivers were often intensely competitive, seeking to charge past one another, on narrow roads, at grave danger to life and limb. If the vehicle’s wheels became entangled, both would be wrecked; if they were lucky, the wheels would only touch and the coaches could still go.” (
Loose Cannons and Red Herrings
, by Robert Claiborne)

KNOCK OFF WORK

Meaning:
Leave work for the day