Read Online Uncle John’s Did You Know? by Bathroom Readers’ Institute - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
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Pierre Parrant, the city’s first settler (and a notorious whiskey merchant).
• Istanbul, Turkey, was once called Constantinople after Roman emperor Constantine. But it was founded by Greeks who named it Byzantium…after King Byzas.
THE AVERAGE…
• …roll of toilet paper is 114.8 feet long.
• …human body has 29 feet of intestines.
• …person laughs 17 times a day.
• …American consumer spends $1,508 on clothes every year.
• …ratio of yellow kernels to white kernels in a bag of popcorn is 9 to 1.
• …Frenchman drinks 140 bottles of wine per year.
• …American uses about 100 gallons of water a day.
• …cat has 24 whiskers (12 on each side).
• …adult human body contains 28 pounds of carbon.
• …adult has approximately 45 billion fat cells in his or her body.
• …whole chicken from the grocery store weighs 3 pounds, 12 ounces.
• …person has about 25 moles on their body.
• …iceberg weighs 20 tons.
• …water droplet contains 100 quintillion water molecules. (That’s 100,000,000,000,000,000,000.)
• …American police officer will walk 1,632 miles on the job this year.
OH, HONEY!
Sweet facts about bees and honey .
• A honeybee will make only 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its entire lifetime (about four months).
• Worker honeybees have the toughest job in the hive—gathering the nectar for the honey. To make just one pound of honey, they will fly more than 55,000 miles and visit two million flowers.
• Honeybees “dance” to communicate with each other. When a worker bee returns to the hive with nectar, it gives everyone a taste and then, through its dance, it tells the other bees the location, quantity, and quality of the nectar supply.
• Even though their wings beat very fast, honeybees fly only about 15 miles per hour.
• European colonists introduced the honeybee to North America in 1638. Native Americans called it “white man’s fly.”
• Aside from adding it as an ingredient in food or drinks, American colonists used honey to make cement, varnish, medicine, and furniture polish.
• Not only did ancient Egyptians use honey to sweeten their bread, but they also fed it to sacred animals.
• In the Middle Ages, German peasants sometimes paid their rent with honey and beeswax.
NOT-SO-
FAMOUS PEOPLE
• Astronomer Carolyn Shoemaker has discovered 32 comets and approximately 300 asteroids.
• Every photograph of the first American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton.
• Kevlar, the synthetic fiber used in bulletproof vests, was invented by chemist Stephanie Kwolek.
• In 1876, Maria Spelterina was the first woman to ever cross Niagara Falls on a high wire.
• Richard Pavelie solved the Rubik’s cube underwater with only five breaths of air.
• As of 2005, there were 37 taxi drivers in New York City named Amarjit Singh.
• Youngest TV host: 6-year-old Luis Tanner, host of TV’s Cooking for Kids With Luis .
• A Ukrainian monk, Dionysius Exiguus, created the modern-day Christian calendar.
• Russian pilot I. M. Chisov survived a 21,980-foot plunge from an airplane with no parachute. (He landed in three feet of snow, which cushioned his fall.)
• Louise J. Greenfarb of Las Vegas, Nevada, has 35,000 refrigerator magnets. She’s been collecting them since the 1970s.
THAT’S MORE
DISGUSTING!
• When you sneeze, your body ejects a lot—snot, spit, and pretty much anything else in your mouth and nose—at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour.
• Dung beetles gather poop into apple-size balls, and the females lay their eggs inside. After they hatch, the baby beetles eat their way out of it.
• If your head is chopped off, your brain will keep functioning for about 15 seconds!
• What, exactly, is snot? Mostly water, plus salt and chemicals that help it stay sticky. It may look similar to saliva, but it’s not; saliva comes from the salivary glands in your mouth.
• Earwax naturally dries up and
• Istanbul, Turkey, was once called Constantinople after Roman emperor Constantine. But it was founded by Greeks who named it Byzantium…after King Byzas.
THE AVERAGE…
• …roll of toilet paper is 114.8 feet long.
• …human body has 29 feet of intestines.
• …person laughs 17 times a day.
• …American consumer spends $1,508 on clothes every year.
• …ratio of yellow kernels to white kernels in a bag of popcorn is 9 to 1.
• …Frenchman drinks 140 bottles of wine per year.
• …American uses about 100 gallons of water a day.
• …cat has 24 whiskers (12 on each side).
• …adult human body contains 28 pounds of carbon.
• …adult has approximately 45 billion fat cells in his or her body.
• …whole chicken from the grocery store weighs 3 pounds, 12 ounces.
• …person has about 25 moles on their body.
• …iceberg weighs 20 tons.
• …water droplet contains 100 quintillion water molecules. (That’s 100,000,000,000,000,000,000.)
• …American police officer will walk 1,632 miles on the job this year.
OH, HONEY!
Sweet facts about bees and honey .
• A honeybee will make only 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its entire lifetime (about four months).
• Worker honeybees have the toughest job in the hive—gathering the nectar for the honey. To make just one pound of honey, they will fly more than 55,000 miles and visit two million flowers.
• Honeybees “dance” to communicate with each other. When a worker bee returns to the hive with nectar, it gives everyone a taste and then, through its dance, it tells the other bees the location, quantity, and quality of the nectar supply.
• Even though their wings beat very fast, honeybees fly only about 15 miles per hour.
• European colonists introduced the honeybee to North America in 1638. Native Americans called it “white man’s fly.”
• Aside from adding it as an ingredient in food or drinks, American colonists used honey to make cement, varnish, medicine, and furniture polish.
• Not only did ancient Egyptians use honey to sweeten their bread, but they also fed it to sacred animals.
• In the Middle Ages, German peasants sometimes paid their rent with honey and beeswax.
NOT-SO-
FAMOUS PEOPLE
• Astronomer Carolyn Shoemaker has discovered 32 comets and approximately 300 asteroids.
• Every photograph of the first American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton.
• Kevlar, the synthetic fiber used in bulletproof vests, was invented by chemist Stephanie Kwolek.
• In 1876, Maria Spelterina was the first woman to ever cross Niagara Falls on a high wire.
• Richard Pavelie solved the Rubik’s cube underwater with only five breaths of air.
• As of 2005, there were 37 taxi drivers in New York City named Amarjit Singh.
• Youngest TV host: 6-year-old Luis Tanner, host of TV’s Cooking for Kids With Luis .
• A Ukrainian monk, Dionysius Exiguus, created the modern-day Christian calendar.
• Russian pilot I. M. Chisov survived a 21,980-foot plunge from an airplane with no parachute. (He landed in three feet of snow, which cushioned his fall.)
• Louise J. Greenfarb of Las Vegas, Nevada, has 35,000 refrigerator magnets. She’s been collecting them since the 1970s.
THAT’S MORE
DISGUSTING!
• When you sneeze, your body ejects a lot—snot, spit, and pretty much anything else in your mouth and nose—at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour.
• Dung beetles gather poop into apple-size balls, and the females lay their eggs inside. After they hatch, the baby beetles eat their way out of it.
• If your head is chopped off, your brain will keep functioning for about 15 seconds!
• What, exactly, is snot? Mostly water, plus salt and chemicals that help it stay sticky. It may look similar to saliva, but it’s not; saliva comes from the salivary glands in your mouth.
• Earwax naturally dries up and
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