Uncle John’s Facts to Annoy Your Teacher Bathroom Reader for Kids Only! (6 page)

HAPPILY NEVER AFTER

Then, in 1981, Elsie and Frances finally confessed. The now-elderly women admitted they’d used paper cutouts and pins to pull off the fairy photos. Elsie had copied the images from a popular children’s book of the time.

It had all started out as a prank to fool Elsie’s mother, they said, but then it got completely out of control. The girls never imagined their pictures would end up circulating all over England, or that they’d be able to fool someone as famous as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Finally, the mystery was solved…or was it? The cousins had come clean about faking the photos, but they always insisted that they really had seen fairies on that long-ago summer day.

*      *      *

“Kids are great. That’s one of the best things about pro basketball, all the kids you get to meet. It’s a shame they have to grow up to be regular people and come to the games and call you names.”

—Charles Barkley

On average, twins are born 24 days earlier than single babies.

There’s so much for kids to learn that we sometimes worry they’re forgetting the important things. You may know how to do this, but in case you don’t, here are some tips in the art of spitballing.

W
hat you need:
Paper, of course, something not too stiff and not too soft. Notebook paper is great. (Hey, you’ve got plenty of that). You’ll also need a lot of spit. (You’ve got plenty of that, too.)

What to do:

1.
Tear off a square piece of paper that’s two inches long and two inches wide, and crumple it into a small ball.

2.
Stick that paper ball in your mouth. (Don’t swallow it.) Chew it up, tenderizing it with your teeth and saliva. You’re done when the paper is slimy and saturated with spit, but not quite falling apart.

3.
Take it out of your mouth and reshape the paper/spit chunk into a ball by rolling it in the palm of your hand. If it doesn’t stay in the ball shape, chew some more.

4.
Launch it! The classic way is to put it on your thumb and flick it with your forefinger. You can also stick it into one end of a straw and blow hard in the other end. And please, whatever you do, don’t shoot it at your little brother.

Q: What would you get if you crossed a galaxy with a toad?
A: Star Warts.

Here at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute, we love records—and the weirder, the better. These are some of our favorites.

M
OST PINS IN A HUMAN HEAD

In 2004, a Chinese doctor named Wei Sheng stuck 1,790 pins in his head to earn a record for the “most pins in a human head” from
Guinness World Records
. Four years later, to celebrate the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Sheng pierced his body with 2,008 pins in the five colors of the Olympic rings. Technically, that didn’t beat his own record, though, because the 2008 stunt included his head
and
shoulders. Maybe next time.

MOST PEOPLE INSIDE A SOAP BUBBLE

In 2007, Englishman Sam Heath set a world record by gathering 50 elementary school children and encasing them in a giant soap bubble. Heath—who is a professional “bubbleologist,” someone who specializes in the science of soap bubbles—built a special wooden wand for the event, and the kids stood on a round platform surrounded by soapy water. He gently dipped the wand in the soap and pulled it around the platform until the 5-foot-tall, 11-foot-wide bubble encircled all the kids.

It wasn’t Heath’s first attempt at breaking the soapy record. In 2006, he put 19 children inside a bubble. One of the girls at that event said, “It was really exciting. I really wanted to clap but we had to stay so still.”

Beware rare castor beans—they’re highly poisonous. Eating just one can be fatal.

MOST FINGERS AND TOES

This one’s a tie—four-year-old Pranamya Menaria and 14-year-old Devandra Harne, two kids from India, share the title. Both were born with 12 fingers and 13 toes. Having more than 10 fingers and 10 toes is a condition called polydactylism. It affects about 25 percent of people worldwide, but it’s not dangerous or deadly.

HEAVIEST CAR BALANCED ON A HUMAN HEAD

Englishman John Evans calls himself a “professional head balancer,” but until 1999, he stuck mostly to books and people. However, in May of that year, he earned a world record for balancing a Mini Cooper car (it weighed more than 3,000 pounds) on his head for 33 seconds. Why? He loves to break records and says he’ll keep trying for more.

LONGEST FEMALE BEARD

Vivian Wheeler from Illinois holds this record. She was able to grow a beard as a kid, but never did because her dad always encouraged her to shave it off. But in 1993, she stopped shaving, and today her beard is an incredible 11 inches long.

Julius Caesar suffered from ailurophobia—fear of cats.

In the
Peanuts
comics, Snoopy often imagines himself atop his flying doghouse, battling a fiendish foe called the Red Baron. But…who
was
the Red Baron
?

A
CE OF ACES

Manfred von Richthofen never intended to be a pilot. Born in 1892 in Germany, he was the son of a Prussian nobleman. His father was in the military, so it made sense that Manfred would be, too. The boy excelled at horseback riding, and when World War I began in 1914, Manfred thought he’d be going to battle on horseback. But mounted soldiers were being replaced by a new vehicle…the airplane.

Von Richthofen enrolled in aviation school and made his first solo flight after only 24 hours of training. He crash landed that first time out, but eventually passed his exams and took to the skies to attack Germany’s enemies—the French, Canadians, and English. On September 17, 1916, he shot down his first enemy plane—and began a string of aerial victories that remains unmatched to this day.

THE CRIMSON CRUSADER

By January 14, 1917, von Richthofen had his 16th victory, making him Germany’s number-one flying ace. The German government gave the young pilot a medal and a squadron of his own. He also painted his plane red—both to intimidate enemies and to make it recognizable to German troops on the ground so they wouldn’t shoot at him. Within weeks, his friends and enemies were calling him the Red Baron.

Q. The Nile is the world’s longest river, but what’s #2? A: The Amazon.

THE RED BARON RULES THE SKIES

Von Richthofen’s squadron became the most feared group of air fighters in World War I. During “Bloody April” 1917, the British lost 912 airmen to the Red Baron’s pilots. Von Richthofen himself shot down 41 planes. The German military, afraid of losing its best pilot, ordered him to take a couple of months’ vacation. But shortly after his return to duty in September, he upped his victory count to 60. By April 1918, the German ace had increased his total to an incredible 80 victories. There seemed no way to stop the Red Baron.

REVENGE OF THE SOPWITH CAMEL

Like most German pilots, von Richthofen usually flew a triplane, which had three wings and was more maneuverable than other airplanes, but didn’t always fly steady. In 1916, though, the British air force had introduced a new, sturdier fighter plane, the Sopwith Camel. And it was against one of these that the Red Baron finally met his match.

First character to speak in
Star Wars: A New Hope
: C-3PO.

On April 21, 1918, Canadian pilot Wilfrid May was on patrol over France in a Sopwith Camel when he found himself under attack by the Red Baron. (Canada and Britain were allies.) May was not an experienced flyer, and he later said that it was because of his erratic, jerky turns that he survived the battle. Nonetheless, the young Canadian held his own.

May finally decided to head back to his own territory, but the German ace followed him. Another Canadian pilot named Arthur “Roy” Brown saw the dogfight and chased after von Richthofen’s plane, as friendly troops on the ground opened fire. But the Red Baron easily avoided Brown and continued after May, who cringed as machine-gun bullets whipped past his ears.

GOING DOWN

Then suddenly, the firing stopped. May circled back to see the Red Baron’s plane making a bouncy emergency landing below. When it came to a stop, the soldiers on the ground approached warily. The plane’s motor was still running, and the propeller still turning, but there was no movement in the cockpit. When one of them finally looked inside, he found the Red Baron barely alive. A single bullet had come up through the floor of the plane and lodged in the ace’s chest. One of the soldiers on the ground had fired a lucky shot.

The Red Baron died in his cockpit soon after. He was only 25, and legend has it that just before he died, he whispered, “Kaput”—finished.

Number of mammal species identified (so far) by scientists: 5,416.

HOW TO MAKE A VOODOO DOLL

People around the world actually practice voodoo, but what’s the story behind the superstition.

I
S VOODOO REAL?

Voodoo is a religion that merges African pagan beliefs and Roman Catholicism. In the 1500s and 1600s, the French (who were mostly Catholic) brought slaves to Haiti from Africa, and those men and women carried their tribal rituals with them. As the two cultures merged, so did the religions. Today, voodoo is an official religion in Haiti and is also widely practiced in Louisiana, where many former Haitian slaves moved in the 18th and 19th centuries.