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

  RED EYE

  Q: Why do eyes sometimes come out red in photographs?

  A: The flash from the camera is being reflected on the rear of the eyeball, which is red from all the blood vessels. So how do you stop that? Use a flash that is not attached to the camera or get your subjects to look somewhere else. Another trick is to turn up the lights in the room, making them as bright as possible, which will cause the subject’s pupils to contract and admit less of the light from the flash. (From Why Things Are, by Joel Achenbach)

  According to zoologists, sheep are the dumbest animals in the world.

  FRECKLES

  Q: What causes freckles?

  A: Unless you’re albino, your skin has cells called melanocytes, which produce melanin, a dark pigment that absorbs ultraviolet light. When your skin is exposed to sunlight, these cells make melanin at a faster rate, which is why you get a suntan.

  All melanocytes are not created equal—some are more active than others. Result: When groups of very active melanocytes are surrounded by less active melanocytes, you get little islands of color…known as “freckles.” (From Can Elephants Swim?, by Robert Jones)

  ICE SCREAM

  Q: What causes an ice cream headache?

  A: When you eat ice cream or drink really cold water, the second that cold touches the roof of your mouth, the nerves in your palate send out an alert causing the blood vessels in your head to instantly swell up. The swollen blood vessels act like a vise grip on your head and give you that instant headache.

  Want to stop the pain? Try pressing your tongue to the top of your mouth to warm up your palate. (From Oh, Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty, by Joy Masoff)

  President Grover Cleveland had an artificial jaw. It was made of rubber.

  WISE WORDS

  Some wise quotes from some wise folks.

  “We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.”

  —John F. Kennedy

  “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”

  —Helen Keller

  “When we care more about the future of our children than on avenging the past, there is hope for peace.”

  —Madeleine Albright

  “If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

  —Michael Jordan

  “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

  —The Dalai Lama

  “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”

  —Thomas Jefferson

  “Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.”

  —Oprah Winfrey

  “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

  —Mahatma Gandhi

  “Joy is not in things! It is in us!”

  —Benjamin Franklin

  Calendar rule of thumb: Any month that starts on a Sunday will have a Friday the 13th.

  WILD KIDS

  You’ve heard of Tarzan the Ape Man, and Mowgli, the boy who was raised by wolves in The Jungle Book. But did you know there are real kids who have been raised by animals?

  GAZELLE GUY

  In 1960 Jean-Claude Armen went into the Spanish Sahara in search of a wild child who lived with a herd of gazelles. Natives pointed him to the place where the boy had been seen, and sure enough, Armen found him “galloping in gigantic bounds among a long cavalcade of white gazelles.”

  The boy, who was about 10, walked on all fours, pulled up desert roots with his teeth, and constantly twitched his muscles, ears, and nose like the rest of the herd. He had thick muscular ankles from leaping and running. Armen observed that the boy had even learned to speak the gazelle “language”: He would stamp to indicate the distance of a food source and greet the other gazelles by sniffing and licking them.

  Running Like the Wind

  Armen chased the boy with a Jeep to see how fast he could run and was astonished to discover the boy hit speeds of 32 miles per hour. (Olympic sprinters can only reach about 25 miles per hour in short bursts.)

  Though several people tried, the gazelle boy was never captured. He may still be out there in the Spanish Sahara, leaping and running with the gazelles.

  Pumice is the only rock that floats in water.

  MONKEY BOY

  When John Ssabanya was only two, he was abandoned in the dense jungle of Uganda and left to die. Luckily for John, some monkeys found him and adopted him as part of their family. For the next four years, John climbed trees and hunted for fruit, nuts, and berries, just like a monkey.

  In 1991 a woman out gathering firewood spotted the naked boy with his monkey family and told the people in her village. When they tried to catch John, he ran up a tree and hurled sticks at them. His monkey parents put up a ferocious fight to protect him. But he was finally caught and later adopted by Paul and Molly Wasswa, who run the Kamuzinda Christian Orphanage in Masaka.

  Straightening Up

  It took John nine years to learn to speak and to stand up straight like a human. He still has an odd, lopsided walk, and when he smiles, he pulls his lips back just like a monkey. John greets people with a powerful hug, which is the way monkeys say hello. When he was taken to visit monkeys, he avoided eye contact and approached them from the side with open palms, just as he’d been taught to do by his monkey parents.

  An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

  Now in his teens, John still speaks a little slowly, but he has a big singing voice and is a member of the Pearl of Africa Children’s Choir.

  WOLF GIRLS

  Near Godamuri, India, villagers found two little girls living in a giant anthill with their adopted family—a pack of wolves. The mother wolf fought hard to protect her two “cubs,” but villagers killed the she-wolf, took the girls, and gave them to Reverend Singh, a Christian missionary.

  The girls were named Kamala and Amala. Kamala appeared to be about eight years old, and Amala was not quite two. Though they were undoubtedly human, they behaved completely like wild beasts. They walked on all fours and snarled and showed their teeth to anyone who came near. They lapped water out of a bowl and howled when they were unhappy.

  The average person has more than 1,500 dreams a year.

  Adapting to Life in the Wild

  Their time in the forest with the wolves had completely changed the girls’ bodies. Their jawbones and canine teeth had grown longer. Like wolves, their night vision had become very keen, and they liked to roam the missionary compound at night. They could hear the slightest sound from miles away and could smell raw meat from a distance. When Amala, the youngest, died of an illness, Kamala wandered the house sniffing Amala’s clothes, bowl, and bed, searching for her.

  Kamala lived with the Singh family for eight more years. She learned to speak a few words but never really adapted to life among humans. When she died at the age of 16, Kamala was still the little wolf child that had been found deep in the forests of India.

  * * *

  “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

  —Nelson Mandela

  There are 6,809 languages spoken in the world—46 of them spoken by only one person.

  BELLY BUTTONS

  Some people have innies and others have outies—but we all have one. Why? And what do they do for us? Read on.

  NAVEL EXERCISES

  The most common name for the belly button is navel, from an Old English word that means “the center.” The Romans called the belly button the umbilicus, after the umbilical cord. For the Greeks, it was the omphalos, meaning “knob” or “hub.” But what is it?

  Your belly button is the spot where your umbilical cord once joined you to your mother’s placenta (that’s the organ inside the mother that brings food and ox
ygen to the baby, and draws off waste). Moments after you were born, the doctor or midwife cut your umbilical cord and tied the end attached to you into a knot. That became your very first scar.

  Most of your body is covered with a layer of fat that plumps up your skin, but at the belly button the skin attaches directly to your abdominal wall, like a stitch between two pieces of fabric. That’s why most belly buttons are indented.

  NAVEL IDEAS

  Once you are born, your belly button has no real function. Some people, however, refuse to accept that fact and have invented uses for it.

  The balata tree, also known as the cow tree, produces sap that looks (and tastes) like milk.

  • MEDITATION. Have you ever heard the terms “contemplating your navel” or “navel gazing?” Well, there’s an official word for it: omphaloskepsis—omphalos for “navel,” and skepsis for “the act of looking, or inquiry.” An omphalopsychic is a person who becomes hypnotized by staring at his own navel.

  Christian monks on Mount Athos, Greece, have actually been doing just that since the 10th century. They’re called hesychasts. Every day they stare at their navels and chant “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, a sinner.” They believe that if they do this long enough, they will become one with God.

  • TELLING THE FUTURE. Some people read tea leaves to tell the future; others read palms. Then there are those who read belly buttons. Omphalomancy is an ancient form of fortune telling in which the number of children a girl will later bear is determined by counting the knots in her umbilical cord at birth.

  * * *

  DO ANIMALS HAVE BELLY BUTTONS?

  Fish, reptiles, birds, and insects don’t—their young are nourished inside of eggs, not by umbilical cords. Only mammals have belly buttons…and not even all mammals. Marsupials, like kangaroos and opossums, have pouches in which their young develop—they don’t have umbilical cords, which means they don’t have navels. Most mammals, however, including dogs, cats, humans, gorillas, cows, yaks, mice, elephants, and whales, do.

  An average honeybee produces only one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.

  ACRONYM QUIZ

  An acronym is a word composed of the first letters of each word in a phrase. For example, SWAK stands for Sealed With A Kiss. See if you can match these common acronyms with their correct meanings.

  1. ASAP

  a) American Students Against Poetry

  b) A Seriously Asinine Person

  c) All Scars Are Permanent

  d) As Soon As Possible

  2. AWOL

  a) Access While OnLine

  b) Absent WithOut Leave

  c) Authentically Written Obsolete Language

  d) Australian Wallaby Outback League

  3. NASA

  a) Noble Association of Spacemen and Astronauts

  b) North American Strategic Alliance

  c) New Approach to Saving America

  d) National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  4. NATO

  a) North Atlantic Treaty Organization

  b) Nations Against Total Obliteration

  c) Not Another Time Out

  d) Nepalese Alliance of Trained Orangutans

  The American habit of pouring soy sauce on rice is considered offensive in Japan.

  5. LASER

  a) Liquid Accumulated to Shoot Electric Rays

  b) Lethal Atomic System and Elimination Refractor

  c) Low Alpha Stream Energy Release

  d) Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

  6. MASH

  a) Mobile Army Surgical Hospital

  b) Medical Aid-Station and Housing

  c) Military Ambulance Safe Haven

  d) Mothers Against Shaggy Haircuts

  7. NIMBY

  a) Next Idea Might Be Yours

  b) Not In My Back Yard

  c) Need It Manufactured By Yesterday

  d) Now I Mean Business, Y’all

  8. RADAR

  a) Red Alert Detect And Retaliate

  b) RAdical Dish-Activated Recognition

  c) Readable Ambitron Device And Recorder

  d) RAdio Detection And Ranging

  9. SCUBA

  a) Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

  b) Submerged Civilian Utilizing Backpack Air

  c) South Carolina University Bathospheric Army

  d) Situation Critical: Unstable Breathing Atmosphere

  Answers:

  1. d; 2. b; 3. d; 4. a; 5. d; 6. a; 7. b; 8. d; 9. a

  Internet is an acronym for “International Network.”

  GET REAL!

  What’s the biggest new TV fad? Reality shows. Here are the origins of some favorites.

  AMERICAN IDOL

  Simon Cowell may seem mean when he puts down contestants on American Idol, but he’s allowed to be: it’s his show. Besides, he really knows his stuff. In the 1990s, Cowell created the British boy bands Five and Westlife, who racked up 10 number-one hits between them.

  In 2001 he teamed up with Simon Fuller, creator of the Spice Girls, to create a TV show called Pop Idol. Concept: Thousands of contestants would audition for a chance to get on the show, only a few dozen would make it, and viewers would pick the winner.

  The show was a huge hit in England, so the two Simons created versions for Canada, Germany, Norway, Poland, the Netherlands, the Middle East, and South Africa. But nowhere has it been more successful than in the United States. American Idol became an instant hit for Fox TV and in two years has produced three super-stars: Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, and Clay Aiken.

  SURVIVOR

  Another show that began in Europe, Survivor is actually based on two classic novels: Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson, both about civilized people forced to survive on a deserted island. The show was created by an Englishman named Charlie Parsons. He called it Expedition Robinson, and when it premiered on Swedish television it was very popular, airing seven nights a week. From there it spread across Europe and eventually to the United States, where it was renamed Survivor and became the most-watched primetime show on CBS.

  Ignorance is bliss: Scientists say that stupid people laugh more than smart people.

  THE BACHELOR

  In 1925 a movie called Seven Chances was released. It was about a man who will inherit his grandfather’s fortune if he gets married by 7 p.m. on his 27th birthday. He has to pick among dozens of eligible women to get his $1 million but only has a few hours in which to choose. The movie was remade in 1999, this time titled The Bachelor, starring Chris O’Donnell. Executives at ABC, who were trying to find their own reality TV hit, decided to create a new show based on the concept.

  FEAR FACTOR

  Reality show producer J. Rupert Thompson loves action movies (and Jackass) so much that he decided to make an action reality show. “It’s all about the stunts, and how contestants navigate the crazy environments we put them in,” says Thompson. “If we don’t make the stunts scary or gross enough, then we don’t have a show.”

  • Memorable stunts: Being dragged by a horse, crawling through rancid water, lying down in a snake pit, and getting attacked by dogs.

  • Gross eating dares: Beetles, worms, sheep eyes, cow eyeball juice, crickets, cow brains, and live snails.

  Old folk remedy: To cure bed-wetting, eat a mouse.

  RESCUE TURTLE

  Look! Down in the water! It’s a fish! It’s a submarine! No, it’s Rescue Turtle!

  TURTLE LIFE RAFT

  In 1975 a woman was shipwrecked in the waters off the coast of Manila, in the Philippines. Completely alone and far from land, she was certain her life would soon be over.

  Suddenly she saw a giant turtle swimming toward her. Desperately, she flung her arms around the turtle’s shell, holding on for dear life. The turtle began swimming. For two days the turtle swam with the woman on its back, towing her toward land. Not once did it dive underwater, which sea turtles need to do to find food. For some reason, the turtle
was so determined to save the woman that it gave up eating.

  A cruise ship finally spotted the woman floating in the sea. The crew thought she was clinging to an empty oil drum, so imagine their surprise when the “drum” began swimming circles around the woman! The remarkable turtle continued to circle until she was rescued, then it dove beneath the waves and disappeared.

  Double-0-Heaven: There’s a church in Toronto named the St. James Bond United Church.

  FISH FRIGHT

  Uncle John’s advice: Do not pick up, poke, tease, kick, or step on any blobby, jellylike creature—or anything else—while on the beaches of Australia.

  POISON IN PARADISE!

  Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is home to some of the most dangerous sea life in the world, such as the tiger shark and the barracuda. But it’s the smaller creatures—some no larger than a peanut—that make this wildlife refuge really scary. Meet six of the most dangerous sea creatures on the reef—and in the world.

  1. BOX JELLYFISH

  Description: The body of a box jellyfish (also known as a sea wasp) is the size of a human head. Pale blue and transparent, it has about 15 long tentacles on each corner of its box-shaped body. Running the length of each tentacle are thousands of stinging cells. It may look like a lifeless blob, but the box jellyfish can swim at a speed of 5 feet per second.