Read Online Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! by Bathroom Readers’ Institute - Free Book Online

Victoria and Albert
    Sovereign of the Royal Family Order of King Edward VII
    Sovereign of the Order of the Companions of Honour
    Sovereign of the Royal Victorian Order
    Sovereign of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem

Special Occasions
    Most popular reason for eating out: birthdays.
    More babies are born on Tuesday than on any other day of the week.
    Every year, the U.S. Postal Service delivers 20 billion cards, letters, and packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
    New Year’s Eve and July 4th are the two deadliest holidays for car travelers. Reason: drunk drivers.
    Three percent of pet owners give Valentine’s Day gifts to their pets.
    An average Super Bowl party has 18 people.
    How much do Americans spend on Easter candy each year? $1.9 billion.
    What month do most couples get engaged? According to studies: December.
    Eight percent of pet owners dress up their dogs and cats for Halloween.
    Among Americans, 45 percent of women and 25 percent of men say they cried at their wedding.

Earth News
    The average American uses about 57 squares of toilet paper per day.
    The light put out by the sun is equal to that of 4 trillion trillion lightbulbs.
    The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred in the last two decades.
    Scientists believe a 1 percent drop in the atmosphere’s ozone levels causes up to a 6 percent rise in skin cancer cases.
    In a year, most elevators travel the equivalent of nearly halfway around the equator.
    About 27 percent of the food in developed countries is wasted each year.
    Acid rain was first identified and named in 1852.
    Every year, one ton of concrete is poured for every person on earth.
    Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring inspired measures to curb the use of the insecticide DDT.
    Every year, the average American uses paper and wood equivalent to one 100-foot-tall tree.
    Since the mid-18th century, 1.7 million species have been identified and described.
    From the fields to your fork, the average American dinner travels 1,500 miles.
    Americans consume nine pounds of food additives every year.
    If you yelled for eight years, seven months, and six days, you’d create enough energy to heat one cup of coffee.
    The average American household wastes 14 percent of the food it buys.

Name Changes
    The band Blondie was originally called Angel and the Snakes.
    Basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s given name: Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr.
    Writer Truman Capote’s real name was Truman Streckfus Persons.
    Crooner Bing Crosby’s first group, in 1925, was called Two Boys and a Piano.
    Ayn Rand’s own working title for her second book was Second-Hand Lives . Her editor suggested changing it to The Fountainhead .
    Producer Robert Stigwood came up with the name “Bee Gees.” The band preferred “Rupert’s World.”
    Neil Diamond once considered the stage name Neil Kaminsky.
    Charles Dickens’s character Tiny Tim was originally called Small Sam.
    Gene Simmons of KISS (real name: Chaim Witz) financed Van Halen’s first demo tape. He suggested that the band change its name to Daddy Longlegs. (They declined.)

Communications
    In the United States, more than 18 billion text messages are sent every month.
    American soldiers in Vietnam sometimes used Slinkies as radio antennae.
    Roman emperor Claudius was signaled to join his army by a chain of bonfires from Britain to Rome.
    James K. Polk’s 1845 presidential inauguration was the first reported by telegraph.
    The last Western Union Singing Telegram was delivered in 1974.
    In 2004, Billboard magazine added a “Hot Ringtones” chart.
    In 1929, Herbert Hoover was the first president to put a phone in the Oval Office.
    In 1871, five years before Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the telephone, inventor Antonio Meucci filed a patent for a similar device, but could not afford the $10 fee.
    Third-most-used language in the United States: American Sign Language. (English and Spanish are first and second.)

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