Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information by Bathroom Readers' Hysterical Society Read Free Book Online

in Middle English, “apple” referred to many fruits.
    Myth: Dogs sweat through their tongues.
    Fact: Dogs cool off by breathing rapidly, not by sticking their tongues out. Their tongues don’t have sweat glands—and the only large sweat glands they have are in their feet.
    Myth: For every cockroach you see in your house, there are 10 more you didn’t see.
    Fact: According to studies conducted by the Insects Affecting Man and Animals Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number is actually closer to 1,000 to 1.
    Myth: The artist Vincent van Gogh cut off his entire ear.
    Fact: The famous episode followed two months of hard work, hard drinking, and an argument with his best friend, Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh was despondent and cut off only a small part of his earlobe.
    Myth: The largest pyramid in the world is in Egypt.
    Fact: The Quetzalcoatl pyramid southeast of Mexico City is 177 feet tall, with a base covering 45 acres and a volume of 120 million cubic feet. Cheops, the largest in Egypt, though originally 481 feet tall, has a base covering only 13 acres and a volume of only 90 million cubic feet.
    Myth: A limb “falls asleep” because its blood supply gets cut off.
    Fact: This feeling of numbness—called neurapraxia—happens when a major nerve is pinched against a hard object or bone. This causes the harmless temporary sensation of numbness, but the blood continues to flow normally.

Sweet Tooth
     
    Americans consume more than 20 pounds of candy per person per year.
    The kid on the Cracker Jack box is named Robert.
    The seven Gummi Bears are named Gruffi, Cubbi, Tummi, Zummi, Sunni, Gusto, and Grammi.
    Bellysinkers, doorknobs, and burl cakes are nicknames for doughnuts.
    The double Popsicle stick was introduced during the Depression. It was designed so two people could share it.
    Animal Crackers come in 18 different “species.”
    In 1995 Kellogg Company paid $2,400 to a man whose kitchen was damaged by a flaming Pop-Tart.
    World’s best-selling cookie: Oreo.
    Five Jell-O flavors that flopped: celery, coffee, cola, apple, and chocolate.
    Twinkie inventor Jimmy Dewar ate 40,177 Twinkies in his lifetime.
    Sixty-nine percent of cake eaters eat the cake first, then the frosting.
    The average American consumes 1 ton of ice cream in his or her lifetime.
    Cranberry Jell-O is the only flavor that contains real fruit flavoring.
    About 8 percent of students at the Dunkin’ Donuts Training Center fail the six-week course.
    Aspartame is 200 times sweeter than sugar. Saccharin is 500 times sweeter.
    There are more places to buy candy in the United States than there are places to buy bread.

Your Average Kid
     
    A child laughs about 400 times a day. Adults laugh about 15 times.
    More children are accidentally poisoned by toxic houseplants than by household chemicals.
    The average American child uses 730 crayons by the age of 10.
    The price of a sleepover in the Bronx Zoo’s Congo Gorilla Forest exhibit for 15 kids: $4,500.
    The average American child takes his first trip to the mall at two months old.
    A child just starting school knows about 6,000 words.
    A four-year-old child asks about 437 questions a day.
    The average kid eats 15 pounds of cereal a year.
    The average child will eat 1,500 peanut butter sandwiches by high school graduation.
    On average, kids ages two to five put their hands in their mouths 10 times an hour.
    An American kid catches six colds a year. The average American kid in daycare catches 10 colds every year.
    Forty-six percent of American kids don’t get an allowance.
    Sixty-five percent of kids have had at least one imaginary friend by age seven.
    Kids’ favorite superheroes: Spider-Man, Superman, and Captain Underpants.
    Twenty-one percent of U.S. children say that if they were president, they’d “eat ice cream for every meal.”

Something’s Fishy
     
    Goldfish remember better in cold water than in warm water.
    One mother shark can give birth to as many as 70 baby sharks per