Read Uncle John’s Did You Know? Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Did You Know? (22 page)
• President George Washington made sure his six horses had their teeth brushed every day.
• America’s first bank, the Bank of North America, was established in Philadelphia in 1781.
• The first woman to run for U.S. president: Victoria Woodhull, in 1872. (She lost to Ulysses S. Grant.)
• There were 11 states in the Confederacy, 23 states in the Union.
• 102 Pilgrims sailed to America on the Mayflower in 1620. Fewer than half survived the first winter.
• Patrick Henry owned 65 slaves when he threw down the challenge “Give me liberty or give me death.”
• July 4th didn’t become a legal holiday until 1941.
• Annapolis, Maryland, served as the capital of America from 1783 to 1784.
• President Ulysses S. Grant once got a speeding ticket for riding his horse too fast. The fine? $20.
• Trilobites, ancient relatives of shrimp, spiders, and insects, were the first creatures on Earth to have eyes.
• The most common fossil animals are brachiopods, a type of shellfish.
• It used to be thought that the smallest dinosaur was the compsognathus, which was about the size of a chicken, but the fossil of a smaller one, the microraptor, was recently found in China. It’s about the size of a crow.
• The first shellfish made their appearance about 570 million years ago.
• The first plant known to grow on land, the
Cooksonia
—named after Australian scientist Isabel Cookson—had no roots, leaves, or flowers.
• Magnolias are the first known flowering plants.
• 450 million years ago, the Sahara desert was covered in ice.
• 200 million years ago, Antarctica was near the equator and joined to Africa, Australia, India, and the tip of South America.
• Neanderthals were named for the valley (the
thal)
where they were discovered in 1856: the Neander Valley in Germany.
• Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
has been translated into 44 languages.
• Wow! Writer Tom Wolfe used 2,343 exclamation points in his novel
Bonfire of the Vanities
.
• Watch your language: Shakespeare used the word “damned” 105 times in his plays. (But don’t
you
use it!)
• There are only 17 syllables in the Japanese poetry form called
haiku
. Most haiku focus on the beauty of nature, but the form is open to wordplay like this:
After the warm rain
the sweet smell of camellias.
Did you wipe your feet?
•
Where the Wild Things Are
author Maurice Sendak named his dog “Herman” after Herman Melville, the author of
Moby Dick
.
• The monster in Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley’s book
Frankenstein
doesn’t die at the end of the story like he does in the movies. He’s last seen running across an Arctic ice field.
• British author Charles Dickens wrote
Little Dorritt
based on his own life experience: He had to go to work when he was only 12 years old because his father was put into debtor’s prison.
• The only mammals who feed exclusively on blood: vampire bats.
• Electrifying fact: Carnivorous animals (meat eaters) won’t eat an animal that’s been hit by lightning.
• A baby robin eats 14 feet of earthworms every day.
• The Yanomami Indians of South America call jaguars “The Eaters of Souls,” because of the legendary belief that they consume the spirits of the dead.
• The anaconda snake’s teeth aren’t for chewing. They hold onto prey so it can’t escape.
• Tigers have a reputation as man-eaters, but usually it’s only old or injured tigers who attack humans. Why? They have trouble keeping up with their usual prey.
• Rabbits love licorice (but don’t feed them candy!).
• Swimming along the surface of the water, an archer fish can shoot water out of its mouth to knock down flying bugs.
• The polar bear has an enormous appetite—it can eat as much as 100 pounds of whale blubber in a single sitting.
• Dromedary camels (one-hump camels) can drink 30 gallons of water in 10 minutes.
• You won’t find a fourth floor in a Japanese hospital, because the Japanese word for “four” sounds a lot like the Japanese word for “death.”
• Scandinavian superstition: A boy and girl who eat from the same loaf of bread are bound to fall in love.
• Some people think it’s bad luck to put a hat on a bed or put shoes on a table.
• Chinese folks clean their homes from top to bottom
before
New Year’s Day. Cleaning
on
New Year’s Day might sweep away good fortune.
• In folklore, owls are notorious prophets of doom: A hooting owl is thought to be giving a warning of death.
• In some parts of England, rum is used to wash a baby’s head for good luck.
• A common good-luck custom in Spain is to eat one grape per second for the last 12 seconds of every year. (Eat small grapes…or you might choke, and there goes your good luck.)
• Don’t sing Christmas carols out of season. It’s bad luck.
• Men who collected and sold secondhand clothes were called
ragpickers
.
• Animals used to be the main means of transportation, and they can be pretty messy. So one of the jobs of a
carter
was to remove animal poop from the streets.
• A
fuller
was a person who cleaned dirty clothes.
•
Peddlers
, riding horses laden with pots, pans, needles, and cutlery, traveled through villages and towns trading their goods for other products offered by local people.
• From at least 3000 B.C., when few people knew how to write,
scribes
held important positions at temples and palaces because they could write and record information.
• The
tinker
traveled from door to door on horseback, carrying his tools in his saddlebags. His jobs included plugging holes in leaky basins, making handles for iron dippers, and fixing spoons and bowls.
• Every village had a
town crier
who announced the important news of the day.
• Medieval
viziers
listened to problems and impartially decided who was right and who was wrong. The vizier of yesterday is what we’d call a judge today.
• 13th-century
wandering minstrels
were street entertainers who hoped to be rewarded with money by onlookers.
•
Coachmen
transported wealthy people in comfortable, closed, four-wheeled carriages pulled by one or more horses.
•
Cotters
were hired by wealthy landowners to work on farms at harvest time, dig ditches, plant crops, and thatch roofs.
• In the old days,
doorkeepers
didn’t just guard the entrances to temples and private homes—they were also responsible for guarding the sheep at night.
• The main job of
apothecaries
was to grind minerals, vegetable oils, and animal fats to make medicines, cosmetics, and perfumes.
• People who carry your bags—porters and bellmen—were once known as
baggage smashers
.
• Penguins do not live in the Arctic, the region around the North Pole. Penguins live only in the southern hemisphere.
• Emperor Penguin Fact #1: Unlike most bird species, it is the male Emperor penguin, not the female, who hatches the eggs.
• Emperor Penguin Fact #2: A father Emperor penguin will withstand the Antarctic cold for 60 days or longer to protect his egg, which rest on his feet covered with a feathered flap.
• Emperor Penguin Fact #3: During this entire time the papa penguin doesn’t eat a thing. Most lose about 25 pounds while they wait for their babies to hatch.
• Emperor Penguin Fact #4: The fathers feed the chicks a special liquid from their throats. When the moms finally return to care for the young, the dads head for the sea to eat…and rest.
The words that turned ordinary school kids (well, maybe not so ordinary) into winners of the National Spelling Bee
.
• 2006:
Ursprache
(
noun
), a parent language, especially one reconstructed from the evidence of later languages
• 2005:
Appoggiatura
(
noun
), in music, an embellishing note, usually one step above or below the note it precedes and indicated by a small note or special sign
• 2004:
Autochthonous
(
adjective
), aboriginal, indigenous, native
• 2003:
Pococurante
(
adjective
), indifferent, apathetic; (
noun
) one who does not care
• 2002:
Prospicience
(
noun
), seeing ahead, knowing in advance, foreseeing
• 2001:
Succedaneum
(
noun
), something that can be used as a substitute (especially any medicine that may be taken in place of another)
• 2000:
Démarche
(
noun
), course of action, maneuver
• 1999:
Logorrhea
(
noun
), excessive talkativeness, especially when the words are uncontrolled or incoherent, as is seen in certain psychiatric illnesses
• 1998:
Chiaroscurist
(
noun
), an artist who uses light and shade in painting or drawing
