Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (7 page)

Q: IS THERE SOUND IN SPACE? IF SO, WHAT’S THE SPEED OF SOUND THERE?

A:
No, there is no sound in space. That’s because sound has to travel as a vibration in some material such as air or water or even stone. Since space is essentially empty, it cannot carry sound, at least not the sorts of sound that we are used to. (
How Things Work
, by Louis A. Bloomfield)

Q: HOW DO WOODPECKERS AVOID BRAIN DAMAGE AFTER HITTING THEIR HEADS AGAINST TREES ALL DAY?

A:
The force generated by the woodpecker pecking does not pass through its braincase—it travels along the bird’s upper jaw, which connects below the brain and allows shock to dissipate throughout the bird’s entire body. Naturally, some of the blow does reverberate back into the cranium, but since the woodpecker’s brain surface area is relatively large, the impact is absorbed as a slap, not a punch. And because the avian skull fits tightly around its bird brain—like a bicycle helmet—it prevents internal bruising. Every bit of cushioning
helps: according to experts, the acceleration force felt by a common acorn woodpecker measures between 600 and 1,200 g’s—enough that its eyeballs would literally pop out on impact if it didn’t blink. (
The Wild File
, by Brad Wetzler)

Q: DOES THE FOURTH SPATIAL DIMENSION REALLY EXIST?

A:
That depends on what you mean by space. There are only three dimensions to our everyday, commonsense kind of‘space, the space we can perceive and move in. But physicists have developed persuasive theories using an extra six spatial dimensions. These higher dimensions are curled up into tiny circles, or similar closed surfaces. This curling up of dimensions is like our observing, say, a piece of string from a distance and seeing it as a line, then moving closer and observing that it actually has an extra, circular dimension. If we could observe any point (say a subatomic particle) at a large enough magnification, we would similarly see that it is not a point, but has further dimensions in unexplored directions. (
The Best Ever Queries
, by Joseph Harker)

Thomas Parr was thought to be England’s oldest living man in the 17th century. He was supposedly 152 years old in 1635, when King Charles invited him to a royal banquet in hopes of learning the secret to his longevity. Parr’s answer: “Simple meals of grains and meats.”

Final Irony:
According to one account: “‘Marvelous,’ said the King as he offered Parr goose livers and baby eels basted in butter and onions, followed by fried sheep’s eyeballs. Throughout the banquet, Parr regaled the King with stories while the King saw to it that Parr’s plate and glass were always full. Unfortunately, Parr, overwhelmed by the food, expired during the meal. The distraught King, feeling responsible, had him buried in Westminster Abbey.”

Kangaroos are lactose-intolerant.

Crab-eating seals don’t eat crabs.

Elephants adopt orphans.

Foxes pollinate plants.

Otters can get herpes.

Gophers are hermits.

Cows get hair balls.

Horses can’t sit.

Sheep snore.

Squirrels can’t see red.

Armadillos can be housebroken.

Elephants breathe 12 times a minute.

Not only is Lake Titicaca the highest navigable lake in the world, it’s also the most fun to say.

Angel Falls in Venezuela is 15 times higher than Niagara Falls. It was named after U.S. pilot Jimmy Angel.

The Mayan Empire lasted six times as long as the Roman Empire.

The Caribbean island of St. Bart’s is named for Bartolomeo Columbus, Christopher’s brother.

North America uses over eight times as much energy per person as does Latin America.

Quetzal is the name of Guatemala’s national bird and its national currency.

The Bahamas are made up of of more than 700 islands.

Panama hats originally came from Ecuador. They got the name Panama from the gold rush prospectors who bought them in Panama on their way to California.

Women in Guatemala work longer days than any other women in the world: an average of 11 hours a day.

Odds are that the next cherry you eat will come from Chile. It’s the leading exporter of cherries to the United States.

El Salvador leads the world in deaths per capita from contact with centipedes and venomous millipedes.

There are only two landlocked countries in South America: Bolivia and Paraguay.

Lake Nicaragua in Nicaragua is the only freshwater lake with sharks in the world.

.05 seconds for a human muscle to respond to stimulus

.06 seconds for an automotive air bag to fully inflate

.2 seconds for the International Space Station to travel one mile

.46 seconds for a 90-mph fastball to reach home plate

.6 seconds for an adult to walk one step

One second for a hummingbird’s wings to beat 70 times

1.25 seconds for light to travel from the moon to Earth

Three seconds for 475 lawsuits to be filed around the world

Four seconds for 3,000,000 gallons of water to flow over Niagara Falls

Ten seconds for 50 people to be born

Twenty seconds for a fast talker to say 100 words

CORN.
The most versatile of all food plants, it can be eaten at every stage of development. You can find it in more than 3,000 grocery items. In fact, according to
The Great Food Almanac
, “the average American eats the equivalent of three pounds of corn each day in the form of meat, poultry, and dairy products.”

GARLIC.
One of the first foods ever cultivated. First written reference: 5,000 years ago, in Sanskrit. At banquets ancient Greeks served each guest a bowl of parsley, believing it would mask “garlic breath.” A vestige of this custom survives. Many restaurants still drop a sprig of parsley on every plate.

LETTUCE.
The name comes from the Latin
lactuca
(milk) because of the white liquid that oozes from broken stalks. The Romans prized it so highly that any slave caught eating lettuce was given 30 lashes.

EGGPLANT.
Originated in China, where it was grown as a decoration. The Chinese called eggplants mad apples, believing they caused insanity. It was accepted as a food only after it was brought to the Mediterranean.

LEEKS.
These members of the onion family originated in Egypt, then spread to Rome. (Emperor Nero drank a quart of leek soup every day, thinking it improved his singing voice.) The Romans introduced the leek to Wales, and it became the Welsh national symbol in 640, when Saxons invaded from England. With no uniforms, it was hard to tell friend from foe in the battlefield, so each Welsh soldier pinned a leek on his cap to identify himself. They won, and every March 1, St. David’s Day, the Welsh pin a leek to their hats or lapels to commemorate the victory.

?
QUESTION MARK

When early scholars wrote in Latin, they would place the word
questio
—meaning “question”—at the end of a sentence to indicate a query. To conserve valuable space, writing it was soon shortened to
qo
, which caused another problem—readers might mistake it for the ending of a word. So they squashed the letters into a symbol: a lowercase
q
on top of an
o
. Over time the
o
shrank to a dot and the
q
to a squiggle, giving us our current question mark.

!
EXCLAMATION POINT

Like the question mark, the exclamation point was invented by stacking letters. The mark comes from the Latin word
io
, meaning “exclamation of joy.” Written vertically, with the
i
above the
o
, it forms the exclamation point we use today.

=
EQUAL SIGN

Invented by English mathematician Robert Recorde in 1557, with this rationale: “I will sette as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles, or Gemowe [i.e., twin] lines of one length, thus:====, bicause noe 2 thynges, can be more equalle.” His equal signs were about five times as long as the current ones, and it took more than a century for his sign to be accepted over its rival: a strange curly symbol invented by Descartes.

&
AMPERSAND

This symbol is a stylized
et
, Latin for “and.” Although it was invented by the Roman scribe Marcus Tullius Tiro in the 1st century B.C., it didn’t get its strange name until centuries later. In the early 1800s schoolchildren learned this symbol as the 27th letter of the alphabet:
X, Y, Z, &
, but the symbol had no name. So they ended their ABCs with “and, per se, and” meaning “&, which means ‘and.’” This phrase was slurred into one garbled word that eventually caught on with everyone:
ampersand
.

#
OCTOTHORPE

The odd name for this ancient sign for numbering derives from
thorpe
, the Old Norse word for a village or farm that is often seen in British place names. The symbol was originally used in mapmaking, representing a village surrounded by eight fields, so it was named the octothorpe.

$
DOLLAR SIGN

When the U.S. government began issuing its own money in 1794, it used the common world currency: the peso—also called the Spanish dollar. The first American silver dollars were identical to Spanish pesos in weight and value, so they took the same written abbreviation: Ps. That evolved into a
P
with an
S
written right on top of it, and when people began to omit the circular part of the
P
, the sign simply became an
S
with a vertical line through it.

Most species of bats live 12 to 15 years, but some live as long as 30 years. Some species can fly as fast as 60 miles per hour and as high as 10,000 feet.

Bats are social animals and live in colonies, in caves. The colonies can get huge: Bracken Cave in Texas contains an estimated 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats.

Vampire bats drink blood through a “drinking straw” that the bat makes with its tongue and lower lip. Their saliva contains an anticoagulant that keeps blood flowing by impeding the formation of blood clots.

It’s not uncommon for a vampire bat to return to the same animal night after night, weakening and eventually killing its prey.

In 1990 the U.S. government tested 29,000 federal employees for drugs. Cost: $11.7 million. Positive tests: 153. Cost per positive test: $76,470.

The CIA once called an assassination team the Health Alteration Committee.

Green Cards (the permanent resident IDs for the United States) are yellow.

The only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution is treason.