Uncle John’s Did You Know? by Bathroom Readers’ Institute Read Free Book Online Page A

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,