Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (41 page)

Origin:
“[This phrase] originated in the days of slave galleys. To keep the oarsmen rowing in unison, a drummer beat time rhythmically on a block of wood. When it was time to rest or change shifts, he would give a special knock, signifying that they could knock off.” (
Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, Vol. 2
, by William and Mary Morris)

BEAT THE RAP

Meaning:
Avoid punishment for a wrongdoing

Origin:
“It is likely that this slang Americanism originated in another expression, take the rap, in which rap is slang for ‘punishment,’ facetiously, from a ‘rap on the knuckles.’ One who takes the rap for someone else stands in for the other’s punishment. Beat the rap . . . often carries with it the connotation that the miscreant was actually guilty, though acquitted.” (
The Whole Ball of Wax
, by Laurence Urdang)

BE ABOVEBOARD

Meaning:
Be honest

Origin:
Comes from card playing. “Board is an old word for table.” To drop your hands below the table could, of course, be interpreted as trying to cheat—by swapping cards, for example. “But if all play was above board this was impossible.” (
To Coin a Phrase
, by Edwin Radford and Alan Smith)

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

Ettore Sceccone invented the window squeegee in 1936.

Benjamin Franklin “invented” daylight saving time.

Charles Darwin’s cousin invented the IQ test.

Nobody remembers who invented eyeglasses.

Garrett Morgan’s claims to fame: inventor of the traffic light and the gas mask.

NASA invented the DustBuster.

Stilts were invented by French shepherds who herded sheep in marshes near the Bay of Biscay.

Mark Twain invented a Trivial Pursuit–like game called Mark Twain’s Memory-Builder.

In about 250 B.C., Archimedes invented the screw.

Leonardo da Vinci figured out that the rings of a tree reveal its age.

The filaments for the first electric lamp were made of bamboo.

The telephone was invented in 1876. The telephone booth was patented in 1883.

Carpenter’s pencils are square so they don’t roll off roofs.

The man who created the Thighmaster was a Buddhist monk.

The chair was invented in about 2500 B.C. Benjamin Franklin invented the rocking chair.

The first person to use an elevator: King Louis XV, whose “flying chair” went between floors at Versailles in 1743.

The typewriter was invented before the fountain pen.

There are six pounds of pennies in the average American home.

It is estimated that 75 percent of all U.S. dollars contain traces of cocaine.

There are an estimated 140 billion U.S. pennies in circulation.

The one-ounce Platinum American Eagle has the highest denomination of any U.S. coin. Value: $100.

U.S. mints stamp out 19.5 million pennies, 3.8 million nickels, 7 million dimes, 7 million quarters, and 19,178 half-dollars in an average day.

Paper money doesn’t disintegrate when it goes through the washing machine because it’s made from cotton or linen rags; the fibers bond much more firmly than fibers in regular paper.

Highest denomination ever issued by the U.S. Treasury: $100,000 bill. Lowest: $.05 bill.

A roll of coins wrapped in paper is called rouleau.

Odds that a piece of paper money printed by the U.S. Treasury is a one-dollar bill: 45 percent.

There are an estimated three hundred $10,000 bills in circulation in the United States.

Because of the weight of its face, a penny is slightly more likely to land “heads” than “tails.”

Average life span of a major league baseball: five pitches.

First baseball team to pay its players: Cincinnati Red Stockings.

Mickey Mantle is credited with the longest home run ever: 643 feet.

Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his baseball cap to keep cool during games.

In pro baseball, you can’t replace an umpire unless he’s injured or sick.

Number of baseball gloves that can be made from a single cowhide: five.

Babe Ruth’s bat was nicknamed Black Betsy.

The name of Los Angeles’s professional baseball team in 1900 was the Tourists.

First baseball player to be named Rookie of the Year: Jackie Robinson, in 1947.

Fernando Tatis of the Cardinals is the only major leaguer to hit two grand slams in one inning.

At the first professional baseball game, the umpire was fined 6¢ for swearing.

Four baseball promotions that ended in riots: Beer Night, Scrap Metal Night, Wet T-Shirt Night, and Disco Demolition Night.

The Dodgers’ original name was the Bridegrooms. Reason: lots of newlyweds on the team.

Since 1876, 91 pro baseball players have hit a home run their first time at bat. Nineteen of them have never hit another.

S
ince 1957 the United States and the former Soviet Union have carried out approximately 4,000 space launches. Those launches account for the vast majority of the 10,000 large objects and the millions of smaller pieces of debris that orbit aimlessly above the earth. Most of the little stuff is too small to see on radar, but it’s big enough to cause serious injury if it collided with a spacecraft. With every new space launch—an average of one every four days—the problem gets worse.

WHAT’S THE DAMAGE?

A small piece of space junk, say two to three inches across, would rip a five-inch hole in the wall of a pressurized spacecraft. And because objects in orbit move about six miles per second (more than 20,000 mph), the collision would liquefy both the piece of debris and the wall of the craft. With a flash of heat and blinding light, molten metal would splatter the inside of the cabin. Air would stream out of the hole, leaving any surviving astronauts just a few moments to escape. If the piece of debris were larger, the craft could “unzip,” that is, its exterior would come away from the frame like the peel off a banana, and the contents of the craft would spew out. And, incidentally, add to the space junk tally. Here’s the short list of what’s up there:

 •   Used-up satellites

 •   The rockets that carried the satellites up in the first place

 •   Discarded fuel tanks

 •   Equipment from scientific experiments

 •   Your basic nuts and bolts

 •   Lens caps

 •   Thermal blankets

 •   The coolant from Soviet spy satellites, which is congealing into balls about an inch in diameter

 •   The 400 million tiny and long-obsolete antennae the air force released into orbit in 1963 to see if radio waves would bounce off them

Most American Indians prefer to be called just that, not Native American.

For thousands of years the preferred method of killing buffalo on the plains was to chase them off a cliff.

Sitting Bull was not an Indian chief. He was a medicine man.

The word
Illinois
is Algonquin for “tribe of superior men.”

Sacagawea was 16 years old and a new mother when her trek with Lewis and Clark began.

Jay Silverheels, who played Tonto on TV’s
The Lone Ranger
, was a Canadian Mohawk.

A Hopi reservation in Arizona lies entirely within the boundaries of a much larger Navajo reservation.

Pensacola means “place of the bearded people” in some Seminole languages.

The Sioux confederacy consists of the Lakota, the Dakota, and the Nakota.

American Indians and Alaskan natives account for less than two percent of federal employees.

Alaska
is most likely derived from the Aleut for “the great country” or “mainland.”

The Hawaiians are considered “indigenous” but not “Native American.” Neither are the Inuits of Alaska.

The Indian hero Geronimo joined the Dutch Reformed Church, but was kicked out for gambling.

A black widow’s poison is 15 times more powerful than rattlesnake venom.

A spider’s blood is transparent.

There are about 37,500 known species of spider.

Spiders can eat their own weight in one meal.

Some small spiders don’t build webs of their own; they live near webs and eat the leftovers.

Spiders live on all continents except Antarctica.

Young spiders can regenerate a leg if it’s lost.

Spiders have been known to lay up to 300 eggs in a single egg sac.

Spiders have 48 “knees”: eight legs with six joints on each.

Little Miss Muffet of the nursery rhyme really existed. She was the daughter of 16th-century physician Dr. Thomas Mouffet, who believed spiders had healing powers and forced his daughter to eat them.

The weight of insects eaten by spiders every year is greater than the total weight of the entire human population.

Spiders can go for long periods without food, some even up to a year.

A jumping spider can jump up to 25 times its own body length.

Black widows like warm, dark places, and in pre-indoor plumbing days, were “fond of hiding in outhouses, where they often spin webs across toilet seats.”

Q: DO I REALLY HAVE TO SHAMPOO TWICE?

A:
Of course not. Soaps are really efficient; one washing removes about 99 percent of the oil. But initially, that dirt and oil prevent the shampoo from forming the nice firm bubbles, which together make up lather. In fact, the only point of reapplying shampoo is that it’s psychologically pleasing. (
Why Things Are, Vol. II
, by Joel Achenbach)

Q: HOW DID
LEFT
AND
RIGHT
COME TO REPRESENT THE ENDS OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM?

A:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary: This use originated in the French National Assembly of 1789, in which the nobles as a body took the position of honor on the president’s right, and the Third Estate sat on his left. The significance of these positions, which was at first merely ceremonial, soon became political. (
Return of the Straight Dope
, by Cecil Adams)

Q: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HORNS AND ANTLERS?

A:
The horns of antelopes and the antlers of deer, although comparable in function, differ considerably in structure. Horns, usually possessed by both sexes, are permanent features that continue to grow throughout the animal’s life. They are bony projections from the skull, covered with keratin, which is tougher than bone. Antlers, by contrast, are pure bone and are formed and shed every year. They are normally grown only by male deer, with the exception of reindeer and caribou, whose females have them as well. (
Can Elephants Swim?
, by Robert M. Jones)

Q: WHAT IS THAT “NEW CAR SMELL”?

A:
There’s nothing quite like it, and all attempts to reproduce it artificially for colognes and air fresheners have fallen short. It is a
combination of scents from things one wouldn’t normally smell voluntarily, condensed in intensity by the size of the relatively airtight passenger compartment. The odor components that go into it include fresh primer and paint, plastic, leather, vinyl, rubber, glues, sealers, and carpeting. The smell fades with time, as residual solvents leech away from exposure to light, heat, and air. (
Just Curious, Jeeves
, by Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett)

Q: WHY DO EYES COME OUT RED IN PHOTOGRAPHS?

A:
The flash from the camera is being reflected on the rear of the eyeball, which is red from all the blood vessels. The solution: “Use a flash at a distance from the camera, or get your subjects to look somewhere else. Another trick is to turn up the lights in the room, making them as bright as possible, which causes the subject’s pupil to contract and admit less of the light from the subsequent flash. (
Why Things Are
, by Joel Aschenbach)

Q: HOW CAN YOU COOL OFF YOUR MOUTH AFTER EATING HOT PEPPERS?

A:
Drink milk, says Dr. Robert Henkin, director of the Taste and Smell Clinic in Washington, D.C. Casein, the main protein in milk, acts like a detergent, washing away capsaicin, the substance in hot peppers responsible for their “fire.” (
Parade
magazine, November 14, 1993)

Q: DO INSECTS SLEEP?

A:
Let’s put it this way. They get quiet and curl up and look like they’re sleeping. But what’s really going on inside those molecule-sized brains nobody knows. The one sure way to know if an animal is sleeping is to hook it up to a machine that measures electrical patterns in the brain. That’s how we know that birds and mammals—animals like dogs, cats, cows, and pigs—actually sleep. The problem with bugs is they don’t have enough brains to hook the wires to. So we don’t really know what they’re doing. (
Know It All!
, by Ed Zotti)