Uncle John's Top Secret Bathroom Reader for Kids Only! Read online

  SCOOBY SNACKS

  • A live-action version of Scooby-Doo hit movie theaters in 2002. The TV theme song was remade as a reggae/hip-hop song for the movie. It’s sung by—who else—Shaggy.

  • Considered for starring roles in the movie: Christina Ricci (Velma), Brendan Fraser (Fred), and Heather Graham (Daphne).

  • In the original cartoon, Scooby-Doo was almost a sheepdog named Too Much.

  • Fred was named for the TV executive responsible for creating Scooby-Doo, Fred Silverman.

  Grasshoppers hear with the fronts of their knees.

  GLADIATORS

  Today kids have posters of movie stars and athletes on their walls. In ancient Rome, the poster boys were a little more dangerous.

  LET THE GAMES BEGIN

  The granddaddy of all sports arenas was the Roman Colosseum, opened by Emperor Titus in 80 A.D. But no games of baseball, football, or soccer were played in this arena. Instead, 50,000 people would come to watch fierce games of killing and bloodshed.

  The “stars” of the games were gladiators—warriors who fought each other in hand-to-hand combat…to the death. Occasionally they had to fight exotic animals like lions, tigers, and hippos. Other times, the Colosseum would be filled with water so that they could fight “sea battles” in ships.

  LEARNING TO FIGHT

  Gladiators were trained in special schools. Some were volunteers, but most were prisoners of war, slaves, or criminals. If they were skillful—or lucky—they won their fights and their lives were spared. But not always. A wounded gladiator had to plead for mercy…and the emperor made the ultimate decision.

  The first gladiators were captured soldiers who were forced to fight with their own weapons. Since the men came from many countries, their styles of weapon, tactics, and dress were very different. Over time these various looks became associated with different types of gladiator. Pitting different styles of fighter against each other made the fight even more exciting to the Romans.

  Rocks in her head? In 1976 Jannene Swift officially married a 50-pound rock.

  • Samnites. Named after soldiers from the southern part of Italy, they wore the most armor. They had helmets with visors and carried oblong shields and short swords. They wore heavy metal guards on their left legs along with protective ankle and wrist guards.

  • Thracians. Named after the soldiers of northern Greece, they wore little armor and fought with curved swords and small round shields. They were among the most popular gladiators. One inscription on a wall in Pompeii describes the Thracian gladiator Celadus as “the sigh and glory of girls.”

  • Mirmillo. The name means “fish man.” He wore a helmet with a high crest in the shape of a fish. He carried a long shield that covered his legs and wore arm guards and metal leg shields.

  • Retiarius. The “net man” fought with a lead-weighted net and a trident (a three-pronged spear). He wore no helmet and little armor. A wide leather belt protected his stomach, and an arm guard with a shoulder shield protected one side of his body. The retiarius generally fought the mirmillo.

  • Secutor. The “pursuer” also fought the retiarius, chasing him around the arena. He wore a curved helmet, making it harder to be caught under the net. The helmet covered his face but had oddly spaced eyeholes, making it difficult to see. The secutor’s entire left side was protected by a heavy curved shield and a metal leg guard. He wore metal or leather bands on his right arm.

  Emergency tip: If you’re ever chased by a crocodile or an alligator, run in a zigzag line.

  GLADIATOR FACTS

  • Emperors and ordinary Roman citizens often “fought” as gladiators in the arena, although their opponents were usually unarmed. Emperor Commodus was said to have killed 1,000 victims this way.

  • Women sometimes became gladiators, too. Most were slaves who fought other women or male dwarfs.

  • Some gladiators were so popular that they were given gold and other gifts. Emperor Nero even gave a palace to the gladiator Spiculus.

  • The ancient Romans believed that drinking a gladiator’s blood would make them strong. People lined up with cups to catch the blood of wounded gladiators.

  • Most gladiators eventually died in the arena, but if the crowd truly loved a certain competitor, they could vote to free him. Then he could retire in peace.

  Cosmic question: How can you draw a blank?

  FART PROUDLY

  Uncle John loves fart stories (as long as they’re not about him).

  BLAST FROM THE PAST

  It’s bad enough being haunted by a ghost—but a ghost who farts? Workers at a computer factory in England have reported being haunted by a ghost who does just that.

  The factory was built on the site of a 19th-century chapel, and workers are convinced the ghost is the embarrassed spirit of a girl who passed gas while singing in church. “On several occasions,” says one employee, “there has been a faint girlish voice singing hymns, followed by a loud raspberry sound, and then a deathly hush.”

  ON YOUR MARK…GET SET…FART!

  A girl wrote to a teen magazine with this moving story. It seems she was about to race in a big swim meet. Her boyfriend was in the bleachers, ready to cheer her on. When the starting judge told the swimmers to take their marks, she bent into her starting crouch…and ripped a fart. It was so loud that the swimmer next to her thought the noise was the starter’s pistol and dove into the pool. When the judges realized what had happened, they called it a false start and the swimmers had to start over. The girl was so humiliated she could hardly swim and finished last. (The staff of the BRI give this Embarrassing Moment our highest rating—5 plungers!)

  Zap! Lightning strikes Earth 100 times every second.

  THE WRITE STUFF

  It’s the original word processor. It’s very user-friendly: you can easily delete mistakes, it doesn’t need electricity, and it fits in your pocket. What is it? A pencil.

  GET THE LEAD OUT

  Is there really lead in a pencil? Nope. That dark stuff is actually a mineral called graphite. People call it “lead” because the men who first discovered a huge graphite deposit in England in 1564 thought it was lead. When scientists later discovered that it wasn’t—it’s a form of carbon—they renamed it graphite, from a Greek word meaning “to write.” But for some reason, the term “lead” has stuck.

  Using graphite for writing wasn’t new—the Aztecs had been doing it long before Columbus arrived in the New World. But it was new to Europeans. They discovered that the soft graphite made rich, dark lines, so they carved pointy “marking stones” out of it.

  The only problem with the marking stones: the black stuff got all over the writer’s hands. Eventually, people figured out that they could wrap string around the stones to keep their hands clean, and unwind the string as the graphite wore down. And that was the first version of the modern pencil.

  In China, bats are symbols of happiness.

  DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSION

  Today, more than 14 billion pencils are produced every year. Placed end to end, that’s enough to circle the Earth 62 times. Pencils are now available in different styles and varying levels of hardness and darkness. The number printed on the side of a pencil tells you how dark your writing will be. The higher the number, the darker the writing.

  HOW PENCILS ARE MADE

  1. First, the graphite is ground up and mixed with fine clay. The more clay added, the harder the pencil lead.

  2. Then the mixture is forced through an extruder to make a long, thin rod.

  3. The rod is baked in an oven at a temperature of 2,200°F to harden it.

  4. Then it is treated with wax for smoother writing.

  5. Wood is sawed into very small boards that are the length of one pencil, the width of seven pencils, and the thickness of half a pencil.

  6. Seven tiny grooves are cut lengthwise in the boards.

  7. Then seven rods of lead are laid into each of them, and an identical board is glued on top.

 
8. A machine cuts the boards into seven individual pencils.

  9. The finished pencils are then painted with several layers of nontoxic paint (so you can chew on them!).

  At 50 tons, the Hoba Meteorite is the heaviest known meteor to fall on Earth. (It’s in Namibia.)

  FLYBOY SLANG

  Look here, nugget, check six and don’t get beaded up if you can’t tell a bogey from a bandit! Military pilots have their own special lingo—here are some examples.

  • Bandit: Enemy aircraft

  • Fangs out: Ready for a dogfight

  • Speed of heat: Fast…very fast

  • Beaded up: Worried or excited

  • Kick the tires, light the fires: Let’s get this jet in the air right now!

  • Painted: Scanned by radar

  • Check six: “Watch your back! Be careful!” (Pilots use a clock system: 12 o’clock is straight ahead. 6 o’clock is directly behind.)

  • Whiskey Charlie: “Who cares?”

  • Zoombag: Flight suit

  • Fur ball: Confused air battle with lots of planes

  • Spooled up: Excited

  • Bogey: Unidentified, possibly hostile aircraft

  • Nugget: Pilot on his or her first tour of duty

  • Pucker factor: How scary something is

  • Go Juice: Coffee

  • Wingman: Second pilot in a two-plane formation (always makes sure the leader’s “6 o’clock” stays clear)

  • Goo: Cloudy weather that makes it hard to see

  • Nylon letdown: Parachute ride

  • Bravo Zulu: “Good job!”

  Does it bug you? There are at least 1 million species of insects in the world.

  ANIMAL ANTICS

  Uncle John’s talking dog, Elbow Room, does a few funny tricks—but even he can’t top these!

  NINE LIVES AT SEA

  During World War II, a cat named Oscar was ship’s cat on the German battleship Bismarck. In 1941 the Bismarck was torpedoed and sank, but Oscar was rescued by a sailor from the British ship HMS Cossack. Five months later the Cossack was sunk in a collision, but Oscar was saved by sailors on the HMS Ark Royal. Three weeks after that a German submarine blew up the Ark Royal…and Oscar was rescued again! That’s when the British naval authorities decided to “ground” Oscar, since he seemed to bring bad luck to any ship he was on. According to naval records, Oscar the cat died peacefully in 1955…on dry land.

  FOWL PLAY

  When small fires kept breaking out near the holy Japanese shrine of Fushimi Inari Taisha, local police suspected an arsonist was setting them deliberately. They set up security cameras to catch the culprit in the act. But the firebug caught by the cameras wasn’t a person at all. It was a flock of birds!

  It turned out that crows were stealing candles from around the shrine. Some of the candles were lit, and when they became too hot to carry, the crows dropped them on piles of leaves, which started the fires.

  Those were the days: In the Middle Ages, boys began training to become knights at age 7.

  As Hiroyoshi Higuchi, a Tokyo professor of ornithology, explained: “Crows love oily food, which is probably why they stole the wax candles.” The candles were made of paraffin wax, which is made from oil. Yum.

  HOLE IN ONE

  A golfer in Wales hit such a powerful drive on the 18th hole that it shot straight up the butt of a sheep grazing beside the golf course. Imagine the sheep’s surprise as it bolted across the golf course, taking the ball with it. Imagine the golfer’s surprise when the sheep galloped onto the green…and dropped the ball right next to the 18th hole!

  LLAMA DRAMA

  Milo the llama takes his job seriously. As leader of a herd of llamas on the Bailey farm in Northamptonshire, England, he guards the sheep and other animals, protecting them from foxes and stray dogs. Milo also looks after his owner, Graham Bailey.

  One day while feeding the llamas, the 72-year-old farmer fell and broke his hip. Milo sprang into action. He danced excitedly around Farmer Bailey, leading the other llamas in a circle formation. There they stayed, like an honor guard while Bailey yelled for help. Two hours later, a dog walker heard Bailey and called for an ambulance.

  About 4,000 stars are visible from Earth without a telescope.

  Unfortunately, the llamas didn’t know the ambulance crew was there to help their owner. They kicked fiercely at the paramedics to keep them away from Bailey. The medics had to call for an air ambulance as backup. That did it. Milo and the llamas stampeded away from the strange hovering craft…and Farmer Bailey was rescued.

  JAILBIRDS

  As far back as the Roman Empire, geese have been used as guards. Historians point to the events of 390 B.C., when a group of temple geese sounded the alarm as barbarian troops surprise-attacked Rome. This gave the Romans enough time to mount a defense. It may sound far-fetched, but it makes sense—geese have exceptional eyesight, and they honk loudly at strangers.

  So in 1992, when authorities at the Berga prison in Sweden brought in 20 guard geese, everyone thought it was a pretty good plan. Now the prison would have low-cost guards who would never get bored patrolling the fences of the prison. And they could be counted on to raise a noisy racket if a prisoner tried to escape.

  Everything went well until the warden put prisoners in charge of feeding the geese. The birds quickly shifted their loyalty to their feeders and would honk angrily whenever the guards came near. And when a group of prisoners tried to escape, the geese let them by without making a single honk. Result: The geese were retired from guard duty. Now their only job is to provide eggs for breakfast.

  One ton of iron weighs three tons after it has completely rusted.

  RIDDLES

  See if you can stump your friends with these classic riddles.

  Q: What room has no door, no windows, no floor, and no roof?

  A: A mushroom.

  Q: What starts with “e” and ends with “e” and contains only one letter?

  A: An envelope.

  Q: What did the sea say to the sand?

  A: Not a lot—it usually just waves.

  Q: What’s blue, green, yellow, purple, brown, black, and white?

  A: A box of crayons.

  Q: What’s small and black and carries a suitcase?

  A: A handle.

  Q: What’s a wombat for?

  A: Playing wom.

  Q: A man takes a barrel that weighs 20 pounds and then puts something in it. It now weighs less than 20 pounds. What did he put in the barrel?

  A: A hole.

  Q: What is hard to beat?

  A: A broken drum.

  Q: Even if you give this to someone else, you still get to keep it. What is it?

  A: Your word.

  Q: When I point up, it’s bright, but when I point down, it’s dark. What am I?

  A: A light switch.

  Newborn babies have more than 300 bones. Adults have only 206.

  WATER WORLD

  It’s easy to take for granted—there’s so much of it. But water is one of our most precious resources.

  • 70% of Earth is covered with it. From outer space, our planet looks like a blue and white sphere: the blue is water; the white is water vapor.

  • Four to six gallons goes down the toilet every time you flush.

  • Only 3% of the water on Earth is fresh water—the rest is salt water in the oceans.

  • A 10-minute shower uses about 55 gallons of water.

  • The amount of water in the Earth’s environment has been virtually the same for billions of years. It doesn’t increase or decrease. It just constantly goes through the water cycle: from ice…to liquid…to vapor…to ice…

  • Turn it off! The average person uses around two gallons of water every day—just to brush their teeth.

  • Two-thirds of the water used in an average home is used in the bathroom.

  • When plants take water from the soil, some of it evaporates out into the air. That’s called transpiration. On
a hot day, a single large tree can transpire more than 50 gallons per hour.

  • A leaky faucet can waste up to 100 gallons a day!

  • Is it really is a water world? Consider this fact: Scientists estimate that 95% of all living organisms on Earth live in the oceans.

  The Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific Ocean.

  ALSO KNOWN AS…

  Leonardo DiCaprio’s agent told him to change his name to Lenny Williams so people would remember it. He refused—but these other well-known personalities all started out with different names.

  WHOOPI GOLDBERG

  Birth Name: Caryn Elaine Johnson

  Also Known As: She was nicknamed Whoopi (as in whoopee cushion) because she farted a lot. She took the name Goldberg from the Jewish side of her family.

  PINK

  Birth Name: Alicia Moore

  Also Known As: Pink tells several different stories about her stage name. Story #1: She took the name from the 1992 movie Reservoir Dogs because she resembled the Steve Buscemi character, Mr. Pink. Story #2: She turns pink whenever she is embarrassed or shy. Story #3: She picked the name because, “We’re all pink on the inside.”

  JACKIE CHAN

  Birth Name: Chan Kong-sang, which means “born in Hong Kong”

  Also Known As: While working on a construction site in Australia, a co-worker named Jack had trouble pronouncing Kong-sang, so he nicknamed Chan “Little Jack.” Little Jack eventually morphed into Jackie.