Uncle John’s Facts to Annoy Your Teacher Bathroom Reader for Kids Only! (26 page)

For scholars only:
Who Cut the Cheese: A Cultural History of the Fart
was a 1999 book by Jim Dawson.

And just for the record, Frank Abagnale Jr. didn’t always cheat. He legitimately passed the Louisiana bar exam when he was 19…or so he says.

THIS GUY CAN HACK IT

Kevin Mitnick started hacking into computers when he was 12. That’s when he figured out how to rig his bus pass to get free rides on the Los Angeles transit system. Then in high school, he used a computer to make free long-distance telephone calls. By the time he was in his 20s, he was using the Internet to steal cell-phone service and breaking into companies’ computer systems to steal their software.

He was arrested twice, in 1988 and 1995. The second time, he went to jail for five years and was on probation for another eight. The rules of his probation: he couldn’t use the Internet at all for the entire time.

Today, all that’s behind him, and Mitnick runs a computer security company in Nevada. His clients actually
pay
him to break into their computers—but now it’s to find out how real hackers might do it so the companies can protect themselves against computer crime.

When Uncle John gets tired of writing and feels like goofing off, where does he go? To some of his favorite Web sites.

P
ANDORA

Tell Pandora what bands you like, and it tailors a streaming audio feed for you based on those. It’s like your very own radio station where you hear the music you like and discover new, similar music you’ll probably like too. (
pandora.com
)

EHOW

You can learn how to do virtually anything here—from how to take a photograph to how to potty-train your new puppy. (
ehow.com
)

KONGREGATE

Hundreds of video games you can play for free online. ’Nuff said. (
kongregate.com
)

You can buy emu jerky from Australian vending machines.

I LIKE TOTALLY LOVE IT!

This is a site full of ridiculous stuff you didn’t know existed that might become ridiculous stuff you absolutely must have. For example: a bar of soap that looks like a Popsicle, a wallet that looks like a piece of toast, and hot pink toilet paper. (
iliketotallyloveit.com
)

VIRTUAL BUBBLEWRAP

Do you think the best part about getting a package is popping the bubble wrap? (We do.) Well, on this site, you can pop all the bubbles you want. All you have to do is point your mouse at the bubble you want to pop and click—it pops! The bubble even makes that great popping sound and looks “popped” when you’re done. It also includes a timer to try to beat your time for completing a whole “sheet.” Pop till you drop! (
virtual-bubblewrap.com
)

SPORCLE

This site is home to hundreds of quizzes on every subject, from history and geography to music and sports. Can you name all the presidents, planets, and
Sesame Street
characters in the time provided? (
sporcle.com
)

FUNOLOGY

Bored? This Web site has plenty of ideas for things to do to pass the time…and almost all of them involve
not
sitting at a computer. You’ll find things like puzzles, magic tricks, science experiments, and scavenger hunts. (
funology.com
)

The world-record jump by a kangaroo: 42 feet.

You may know that Buffalo Bill Cody became famous for his rodeo tricks. But few people know he went on a heroic journey when he was just 10 years old.

R
OUGH BEGINNINGS

Bill Cody grew up in Kansas in the 1850s. Back then, the area was a battleground for the fight over slavery. The violence became so intense that people called the state “Bleeding Kansas.”

Bill’s father, Isaac Cody, opposed slavery. But the family’s neighbors were mostly for it, and often used violence to intimidate people who disagreed with them. When Bill was eight, several neighbors stabbed his father during a town meeting. Isaac Cody didn’t die, but he received even more death threats, and that drove him into hiding.

The rest of the family stayed on their farm, and over the next few months, pro-slavery raiders stole their horses and livestock. Other gangs set their crops on fire.

BOY HERO

Two years passed, but the bad blood between the two groups continued. One day, when 10-year-old Bill was at home and sick with the flu, he overheard a friend tell his mother that pro-slavery hoodlums had tracked down his father and planned to ambush him. So the boy got up, saddled his horse, and took off to warn his father. After Bill had ridden for eight miles, the gang started chasing him. But the boy kept going.

Penguins pant to cool themselves off.

Bill dug in his spurs and made it nine more miles to a friend’s house. His pursuers finally ran off, but by then, Bill was very sick—he’d thrown up and could barely stand. So he spent the night with his friend and took off again in the morning. He reached his father the next day—and the gang started chasing him again. But he and his dad hid out until the men were gone.

THE REST OF THE STORY

Bill Cody grew up to live a wild life. He was a scout for the U.S. Army and a buffalo hunter—that’s how he got his nickname. But he’s most famous for the Wild West shows he produced. Those shows included exciting acts and tales of thrilling escapes, and when Cody wrote the story of his life, he talked about many of the tales as though they’d actually happened. But in reality, he exaggerated the facts and “borrowed” most of the adventures from other cowboys he met. The one story he never exaggerated, though, was how he left his sickbed and rode more than 15 miles to save his dad.

*      *      *

Real Headline:
M
AN
G
LUED TO
T
OILET
S
EAT
S
TICKS TO
S
TORY
.

Great men never feel great. Small men never feel small. —Chinese proverb

Being a copycat in school can get you into loads of trouble. But for many animals, insects, and plants, copying is a great way to survive.

Y
OU STINK!

The corpse flower—which can grow to be taller than most humans—gives off a smell that mimics the stench of a dead, rotting animal. That may seem gross to us, but it’s inviting to flies, carrion beetles, and other insects that feed on dead animals. And corpse flowers use these insects to reproduce. When an insect lands on a corpse flower, its pollen sticks to the bug’s legs. As the insect goes from flower to flower, it drops bits of pollen into each new plant, which allows the flowers to make seeds and grow new stinky plants.

EIGHT-LEGGED COWBOY COPYCAT

The bolas spider makes use of a scent copycat trick, too. Its favorite nighttime snack is a male moth. So how does a spider catch a flying bug in the dark? Female moths use special scents called pheromones to attract their mates. The bola spider can produce chemicals that mimic the scent of the moth’s pheromones. When male moths pick up the scent, they fly toward the spider. But instead of finding a lady friend, they are greeted by a hungry spider with a secret weapon: the bolas spider holds a short thread of silk with a sticky blob on the end. When the moth gets close, the spider swings the sticky thread like a lasso, catches the moth, and reels it in for lunch.

President Chester A. Arthur owned more than 80 pairs of pants.

COPYCAT-ERPILLAR

No animal would want to eat a nasty splat of bird poop, right? That’s exactly what the swallowtail butterfly caterpillar counts on. This caterpillar has gray-brown skin with white and black spots, and from a distance, it looks like an unappetizing pile of dry bird droppings. During the day, the caterpillar rests and barely moves at all, so most predators simply mistake it for a pile of poop…and pass it by.

COSTUMED COPYCAT

Another animal that uses poop to its advantage is the Borneo crab spider, which creates a bird-dropping costume to
attract
butterflies. First, it spins a few strands of white silk around its black body. Then it tucks in its legs so it looks like a white-and-black blob. Then it lies in wait. When a butterfly lands nearby to sip some salt and minerals from what looks like fresh bird droppings, the crab spider grabs the butterfly with its front legs and makes a meal of it.

Step aside, Mickey: Walt Disney’s first cartoon character was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Throughout history, so-called scientists proposed a lot of theories that just weren’t true.

A PUMPING…LIVER?

Today, everyone knows that the heart pumps blood throughout the body. But in ancient Greece, doctors believed the liver was actually the center of the circulatory system. Most historians give Englishman William Harvey credit for being the first to correctly explain how blood circulated in the body; he wrote about it in 1628. But Arab physician Ibn al-Nafis performed many dissections on human and animal bodies, and actually identified the process in the 13th century.

IN A FIT OF SELF-ABSORPTION

The ancient Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy said that Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. He was wrong, of course, but for more than 1,000 years people believed him. Finally, in the 1500s, Polish scientist Nicolaus Copernicus had a completely different view: the Sun was actually at the center and Earth revolved around it. (Copernicus probably wasn’t the first to say this, but he was the first to widely publish his findings.) Then, in the early 1600s, Italy’s Galileo Galilei invented the telescope and proved Copernicus’s theory. It took about 100 years, but eventually, the Sun-centered theory caught on.

“Spaghetti” comes from the word
spago
, Italian for “cord” or “string.”

HAVE LEAD, NEED GOLD…HMMM?

During the 12th century, men studying the field of alchemy had some interesting ideas. Many of them were looking for the “elixir of life,” a substance with magical properties that could make a person live forever. (They never found it.) They also believed that, by using a series of chemical reactions, they could turn lead into gold. (They had no success with that, either.) Today, scientists know that you can’t turn one substance into another that has completely different chemical properties.