Uncle John’s Did You Know? Read online

  Q: Why do mosquitoes bite?

  A: They need the protein in blood to produce their eggs—that’s why only female mosquitoes bite.

  Q: Beehives seem like pretty busy places, but how many bees have been known fit into one hive?

  A: A beehive can contain as many as 80,000 bees at a time.

  Q: Is it true that doctors once used bloodsucking leeches as a medical treatment for sick people?

  A: Yes. Back in the 1800s, doctors thought leeches could drain “bad blood” from sick patients. The practice was so widespread that leeches became an endangered species. (Some doctors still use them.)

  Q: How many legs does the biggest centipede have?

  A: The biggest, Scolopendra gigantea, only has 46 legs, but other centipedes have as many as 350. Millipedes can have up to 750 legs!

  Q: Why doesn’t a mayfly have a mouth?

  A: Because it has a life span of only one or two days, and doesn’t eat. (It does eat in its immature stage, when it’s called a naiad.)

  LOONY LAWS

  • It’s against the law to sing off-key in North Carolina.

  • You may be headed straight for jail if you dare to wear New York Jets clothing in Ada, Oklahoma.

  • Don’t box with a kangaroo in Myrtle Creek, Oregon. The law forbids it. (There are kangaroos in Oregon?)

  • It’s illegal to sleep on top of a refrigerator outdoors in Pennsylvania.

  • Curb your appetite! No one is allowed to bite off another person’s leg in Rhode Island.

  • In Charleston, South Carolina, the fire department is legally permitted to blow up your house.

  • In Texas, it’s illegal to sell your eye.

  • It may be inconvenient, but you’re not allowed to wash your mule on the sidewalk in Culpeper, Virginia.

  • Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly through any of its streets. (Has anyone told the bees?)

  • Whew! It’s against the law for a monster to enter the city limits of Urbana, Illinois.

  • In Zion, Illinois, you are not permitted to give lighted cigars to dogs, cats, or other animals kept as pets.

  • It’s illegal to go whale fishing in Nebraska.

  • In Hartford, Connecticut, it’s against the law to educate a dog.

  • In Chicago, Illinois, you’re breaking the law if you fish in your pajamas.

  • You’ll just have to let your nose run in Waterville, Maine, because it’s illegal to blow it in public.

  • In Louisiana, it’s against the law to gargle in public.

  • The state of Massachusetts absolutely forbids dueling with water pistols.

  • Not that you’d want to, but teasing skunks is against the law in Minnesota.

  • If a child burps during a church service in Omaha, Nebraska, his or her parents may be arrested.

  • In New Jersey, it’s illegal to slurp your soup.

  • Oklahoma law prohibits anyone from making “ugly faces” at dogs.

  • Don’t whistle underwater in Vermont. It’s against the law. (But how do you do it, anyway?)

  • According to Washington State law, you may not pretend your parents are rich.

  • In Mesquite, Texas, it’s illegal for children to have “unusual haircuts.”

  HANDY

  NUMBERS

  • In a group of 23 people, there is a 50% chance that two of them will have the same birthday.

  • When it’s written out as “forty,” 40 is the only number whose letters are in alphabetical order.

  • A two-inch-diameter garden hose will carry four times as much water as a one-inch-diameter hose.

  • If a person had started counting the moment they were born and continued without stopping until they turned 65, they still wouldn’t have counted to a billion.

  • Roll the dice. If one die reads “three,” what’s on the opposite side? Four. How do you know? The numbers on opposite sides of a die always add up to seven.

  • In case you ever want to call the White House with a comment, the phone number is (202) 456-1111.

  • Try this on a calculator: What is 11,111,111 multiplied by itself? 123,456,787,654,321

  • If you counted all the black spots on all the dalmations in every scene of 101 Dalmatians, you’d see 6,469,952 of them.

  • To date, the year 1888 requires the most Roman numerals: MDCCCLXXXVIII.

  HAIL TO

  THE CHIEF

  • In a survey of 500 historians, Warren G. Harding was voted the worst president in American history.

  • President Andrew Jackson believed the Earth was flat.

  • The tallest president was 6’4” Abe Lincoln; the shortest was James Madison, at 5’4”.

  • Julie Nixon, daughter of 37th president Richard Nixon, is married to David Eisenhower, grandson of 34th president Dwight Eisenhower.

  • President Jimmy Carter’s boyhood home was built from plans purchased from a Sears catalog.

  • The U.S. interstate highway system was the brainchild of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who based the idea on the German autobahns (highways) he’d seen after World War II.

  • The president gets a 21-gun salute; the vice president gets only 19.

  • Q: Which U.S. president served for only 32 days?

  A: William Henry Harrison. On his inauguration day, he caught a cold that developed into fatal pneumonia.

  • James Buchanan was the only bachelor president. Ronald Reagan was the only president who had been divorced.

  AMAZING

  ENGINEERING

  • How much soil had to be dug out to create the Panama Canal? More than 175 million cubic yards.

  • The Chinese used rice flour to strengthen the bricks when they were building the Great Wall.

  • The Eiffel Tower—the tallest structure in the world when it was completed in 1889—was built just to show that iron could be as strong as stone…but much lighter.

  • The first paved road was built around 2500 B.C. in Egypt. The ancient Egyptians used it to haul stones for the construction of the pyramids.

  • The deepest hole ever dug is in Russia, on the Kola Peninsula. Its purpose: to research the structure of the earth’s crust. Its depth: 7 miles.

  • It took more than 10 million bricks to build the Empire State Building.

  • Who’s taller? It happened in 1929 in New York City: Just when the Manhattan Trust Company finished what they thought was the world’s tallest building, workers at the Chrysler Building hoisted a spire—hidden inside the building—up through the top of the roof to steal the coveted title.

  ROCKOLOGY

  According to folklore, some gemstones have special powers.

  • Agate worn in jewelry was supposed to make other people believe you and to ward off bad dreams.

  • Lapis lazuli could help to break down barriers, allowing people to go beyond their limitations.

  • Clear quartz crystal was said to contain images of the future. (But few “crystal” balls at carnivals are really crystal—they’re usually made of glass.)

  • Amber (petrified tree sap) held in the hand was believed to help people think more clearly.

  • Bloodstone got its name because of the belief that it would stop the flow of blood from a wound.

  • Moonstones were thought to help you understand your feelings better and act on them decisively.

  • Citrine was supposed to make people more creative.

  • Malachite was believed to focus the mind and make life’s changes easier.

  • Jade is still associated with positive energy. At one time it was thought to be a healing stone that promoted charity, modesty, wisdom, serenity, and love.

  • Rose quartz was said to encourage caring and reduce anger. It was considered a wonderful gift to present to anyone you loved.

  HEALTHY LIVING

  • If you walk an extra 20 minutes every day, over a year you’ll burn off seven pounds of body fat. (Unless you’re walking to McDonald’s.)


  • Scientists have determined that having guilty feelings may actually damage your immune system.

  • Listening to music is good for digestion.

  • Average life span during the Middle Ages: less than 30 years. We’re getting healthier: Today it’s about 65.

  • Vegetarians make up about 25% of the world’s population.

  • Four out of five 10-year-old American girls have already been on a diet.

  • To stay healthy, the average person needs 37 grams of protein a day.

  • 12% of Switzerland’s population is obese, compared to over 30% in the U.S.

  • More than 40% of American women use hand moisturizer three times a day or more.

  • 13% of Brits are on a diet at any given time; at least twice that many Americans are.

  • One out of every 15 kids under 18 has asthma.

  • Walking on hard dirt burns more calories—7% more—than walking on pavement.

  NUMBER ONES

  • Officially, “bacteria” is plural; one bacteria is a “bacterium.”

  • In 2005 Germany surpassed the United States to become the world’s number-one exporter.

  • The word “one” has appeared in the titles of more than 500 movies.

  • Odd fact? The ancient Greeks considered the number 1 to be both odd and even. They regarded the number 3 as the first odd number.

  • The word “hiccup” appears exactly once in the works of Shakespeare.

  • Only one U.S. president has had the astrological sign Gemini: George H.W. Bush.

  • The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901 to Jean Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross.

  • One human being out of five (on the entire planet) is a Chinese farmer.

  • Creepy fact: You can fit 1,815 standard-size graves into one acre of land.

  • Nottingham, England, was the first city to have braille signs in its shopping malls.

  • The average Haitian spends one minute per year making international phone calls.

  REPTILES

  • Iguanas can stay underwater for nearly 30 minutes.

  • Crocodiles dig underground burrows in extremely hot weather…and can live in them for several months without eating or drinking.

  • All reptiles are vertebrates, meaning they have a backbone. And except for snakes and a few lizards, they all have four legs.

  • Snakes don’t have ears like other animals, but they have inner ears that sense ground vibrations.

  • Reptiles don’t perspire, and they don’t have any sweat glands in their skin.

  • The brain of a reptile accounts for less than 1% of its body mass.

  • How do they pull their heads and legs inside their shells? Turtles are the only animals whose hips and shoulders are inside their rib cages.

  • Some lizards have a “third eye,” a tiny, light-sensitive, transparent structure on top of the head that helps them regulate how long they stay in the sun.

  • Snakes have no eyelids; transparent eye “caps” protect their eyes.

  • We’ve all got one: The lowest part of your brain stem is called the “reptilian brain.” It’s the part of your brain that controls survival instincts.

  IF YOU SAY SO

  How hard can it be to learn Japanese? All the kids in Japan do it. Here are a few words to get you started.

  • Pika means “flash of light” in Japanese, and chu is the squeak of a mouse. So the Pókemon name Pikachu literally means “flashing mouse squeak.”

  • First-grade students in Japan are called pika-pika ichi nen sei, or “shiny first graders.”

  • Rice is so popular in Japan that the words for breakfast, lunch, and dinner literally translate as “morning rice,” “noon rice,” and “evening rice.”

  • Some Japanese animal sounds: Pig: buu-buu. Dog: wan-wan. Frog: kero-kero. Rooster: ko ke kokkou.

  • In Japanese, kara means “empty.” So karate means “empty hand” (no weapon) and karaoke means “empty orchestra” (no voice).

  • The Japanese love to shorten phrases, especially foreign ones. “Remote control” is rimokon (pronounced ree-mo-cone). “Schwarzenegger” is Shuwa-chan. And “Brad Pitt” is Burapi (that seems longer, but the Japanese pronunciation of his full name has five syllables).

  • The Japanese word for “meow” is nyan-nyan. So the catlike Pókemon, Meowth, is called Nyasu in Japan.

  • We say “two peas in a pod” to describe two nearly identical things. In Japanese, it’s “two cucumbers.”

  BASEBALL

  TEAM NAMES

  • “Mets” is short for “Metropolitans,” taken from the team’s corporate name, The New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, Inc.

  • Not so “innocent,” after all: The Pittsburgh Pirates were called the Innocents until 1891, when the team “stole” second baseman Lou Bierbauer from the Philadelphia Athletics. Bierbauer’s former fans started calling the team the Pirates, and it stuck.

  • In the 1890s, Cleveland’s team was called the Spiders. One of their players, Louis Sockalexis, was a Native American, so fans started calling the team the “Indians.” The name was officially changed in 1913.

  • At first the Astros were called the Colt .45s, but when Houston got its new NASA Space Center in 1965, Astros seemed more appropriate.

  • The Minnesota Twins are named after the “twin cities” of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

  • If you know anything about Milwaukee, you’ll know it’s home to lots of beer breweries; the Milwaukee Brewers seemed like a natural choice.

  TONGUE

  TWISTERS

  The kind you have to say free times thast…tree thimes… Oh, you know what we mean.

  • Sixish

  • Truly rural.

  • Greek grapes.

  • Peggy Babcock.

  • Flash message!

  • Knapsack straps.

  • Three free throws.

  • Thieves seize skis.

  • Fat frogs flying past.

  • The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.

  • Betty better butter Brad’s bread.

  • Mrs. Smith’s Fish Sauce Shop.

  • Toy boat. Toy boat. Toy boat.

  • Moose noshing much mush.

  • Girl gargoyle, guy gargoyle.

  • The epitome of femininity.

  • The myth of Miss Muffet.

  • Freshly fried flying fish.

  CRIME AND

  PUNISHMENT

  • How many police officers are there in the United States? About 561,000.

  • The most: New York City has more than 30,000 officers.

  • The rest: 90% of the nation’s police departments have fewer than 25 officers.

  • The FBI has more than 200,000,000 fingerprints on file.

  • 70% of all violent crimes are committed by only 6% of the criminal population.

  • The results of a lie-detector test are not allowed as evidence in most U.S. courts.

  • Shoplifters in the United States pocket $35 million worth of merchandise every day.

  • In a police lineup, the suspects are numbered 2 through 9; no one wears the number 1. Why? So no one person looks any guiltier than the others.

  • Thefts from vending machines cost the soft-drink industry $100 million a year.

  • Out of every six robberies, one involves a robber who knows the victim.

  • Most burglaries occur during the daytime.

  • In Finland, a man once got a $200,000 speeding ticket. Why? Because in Finland, traffic fines are based on the income of the offender…and the speeder’s family was extremely rich. (They owned a sausage company.)

  • In 1985, a woman was accused of stealing a basketball. It turned out that she was pregnant.

  • The most common excuse drivers give police officers after they’re caught speeding: “I didn’t see the sign.”

  • Have you heard the term “M.O.” on a cop show? It stands for modus operandi,
which is Latin for “method of operating.”

  • Forensic fact: Police have a special type of wax that can lift a shoe print from snow.

  • 53% of people polled believe the police are good at catching criminals.

  • Middle children are less likely to end up in prison than first- and last-born children.

  • Pink in the clink: There’s a color called “Jailhouse Pink” that’s been proven to soothe angry prisoners—but it only works for about half an hour.

  • In 2004 a woman was arrested for trying to pass a $1 million bill at a Wal-Mart in Georgia. (It was fake—there’s no such thing as a $1 million bill.)

  • A police sergeant in Texas was fired for taking a soda from the refrigerator in a house he was searching.

  BIG CATS

  • When cheetahs run, they appear to be flying because most of the time all four feet are off the ground.

  • Tigers like to attack from behind. To prevent attacks, farmers in India wear masks with eyes on the back of their heads.

  • Snow leopards who live in the Himalayan mountains have such long tails that they can wrap themselves in them for warmth.

  • A lion’s muzzle is like a fingerprint—no two have the same pattern of whiskers.

  • Lions usually roar in the hours between dusk and dawn.

  • Big cats live almost twice as long in captivity as in the wild.

  • A lion’s scientific name is Panthera leo, a tiger’s is Panthera tigris.

  • A black panther isn’t a separate species: It’s simply a jaguar, leopard, or puma that’s black.

  • Mountain lions don’t roar—they whistle or shriek.

  • Tigers are the largest members of the cat family, and the Siberian tiger is the largest of them all.

  • Cheetahs don’t growl, but they make other kinds of noises, like yelping and humming and even purring.

  DOWN UNDER

  From the land that gave us kangaroos, koalas, and Crocodile Dundee.

  • Why are the emu and kangaroo both on the Australian coat of arms? Because neither can walk backwards, thus signifying the forward-thinking character of Australians.