The Totally Awesome Book of Useless Information Read online

  In 1946, the first TV toy commercial aired. It was for Mr. Potato Head.

  Seventy-five percent of people who play the car radio while driving also sing along to it.

  The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was periwinkle blue.

  In 1955, a book was returned to Cambridge University Library 288 years overdue.

  The tomato is both the state vegetable and the state fruit of Arkansas.

  When offered a new pen to write with, 97 percent of people will write their own name.

  Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

  Brontology is the study of thunder.

  A Virginia law requires all bathtubs to be kept out in the yard, not inside the house.

  The most landed-on squares in Monopoly are New York Avenue, Illinois Avenue, B&O Railroad, and Reading Railroad.

  Celebrating Christmas was once illegal in England.

  Japan has the world’s largest bowling alley.

  It’s possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.

  Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb, was afraid of the dark.

  No two cornflakes look the same.

  Four thousand people are injured by teapots every year.

  Forty thousand Americans are injured by toilets every year.

  There are more than 980 species of bats.

  There are eighteen different animal shapes in the Animal Crackers cookie zoo.

  In Texas, it is illegal to put graffiti on someone else’s cow.

  Paper can be made from asparagus.

  It is against the law to stare at the mayor of Paris.

  Two-thirds of the world’s eggplants are grown in New Jersey.

  In Arizona, it is illegal to hunt camels.

  China uses 45 billion chopsticks per year, using 25 million trees to make them.

  In Sweden, it is illegal to train a seal to balance a ball on its nose.

  A typical lightning bolt is only one inch wide and five miles long.

  The world’s largest watermelon weighed 268.8 pounds.

  It would take eighty moons to equal the weight of the Earth.

  Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone.

  Farts have been clocked at a speed of ten feet per second.

  If you were to dig a hole from one side of the Earth to the other and jump into it, it would take about forty-two minutes to reach the opposite end. At that point you would fall back into the hole and repeat the trip back and forth forever.

  Fortune cookies were invented in Los Angeles.

  Babies like pretty faces better than plain ones.

  Caesar salad was invented in Mexico.

  Six-year-olds laugh an average of three hundred times a day.

  Pilgrims ate popcorn at the first Thanksgiving.

  There are more bacteria in the mouth than there are people in the world.

  There are 294 or 296 steps to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa depending on which staircase you are climbing.

  The city of Denver, Colorado, claims to have invented the cheeseburger.

  It takes seventeen facial muscles to smile, but forty-two muscles to frown.

  Shrimp swim backward.

  Buckingham Palace has more than six hundred rooms.

  The side of a hammer is called a cheek.

  Most people’s legs are slightly different lengths.

  Water is the official state beverage of Indiana.

  The Eiffel Tower’s height varies as much as six inches depending on the temperature, so it is shorter in the winter.

  There is a town in Texas called Ding Dong.

  The average person sheds more than eight pounds of skin each year.

  Roast camel is sometimes served at Bedouin wedding feasts.

  The San Diego Zoo has the largest collection of animals in the world.

  The average human eyelash lives about 150 days.

  Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.

  The average eyeball weighs about one ounce.

  A baseball has exactly 108 stitches.

  On average, adults spend seventy-seven minutes eating per day.

  In South Africa, termites are often roasted and eaten like pretzels or popcorn.

  Baseball’s home plate is seventeen inches wide.

  Boys are more likely to be left-handed than girls are.

  Bears that appear in movies can earn around $20,000 a day.

  When two words are combined to form a new word (like breakfast + lunch = brunch), the new word is called a portmanteau.

  It takes about eight seconds to make a baseball bat in a baseball bat factory.

  Fear of spiders is the most common phobia, followed by fear of snakes.

  People dream an average of five times a night.

  Kite-flying is a professional sport in Thailand.

  Baby squirrels are called “kittens.”

  The national sport of Japan is sumo wrestling.

  Horses can sleep standing up.

  A hockey puck is one inch thick.

  A normal raindrop falls at about seven miles per hour.

  Fish and snakes don’t have eyelids.

  It takes one fifteen- to twenty-year-old tree to produce seven hundred paper grocery bags.

  Some spas in China offer fish pedicures, where live fish eat away the dead skin on the feet.

  For every person on Earth, there are 200 million insects.

  An iceberg contains more heat than a match.

  Dogs do not have an appendix.

  The smallest unit of time is the yoctosecond.

  In Kentucky, it is illegal to carry ice cream in your back pocket.

  In India, men can wear pajamas in public as they are standard daytime apparel.

  Recycling one glass jar saves enough energy to power a TV for three hours.

  Saying “rabbit, rabbit” upon waking the first day of every month is supposed to bring good luck for that month. If you forget to say it, say it backward or say “moose, moose” on the second day of the month.

  The world’s population grows by 100 million people each year.

  A baby blue whale is twenty-five feet long at birth.

  One in every five people lives in China.

  A baby giraffe is about six feet tall at birth.

  People who are lying tend to look up and to the left.

  An estimated 80 percent of creatures on Earth have six legs.

  A dragonfly has a life span of four to seven weeks.

  Antarctica is the only land on the planet that is not owned by any country.

  Butterflies taste with their hind feet.

  Most burglaries occur in the winter.

  Panama is the only place in the world where someone can see the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean and set over the Atlantic.

  The original name for the butterfly was the flutterby.

  In London, it is illegal to drive a car without sitting in the front seat.

  In Somalia, it has been decreed illegal to carry old chewing gum stuck on the tip of your nose.

  Soccer is played in more countries than any other sport.

  Frogs must close their eyes to swallow.

  The average person speaks about 31,500 words a day.

  In Arizona, donkeys are not allowed to sleep in bathtubs.

  Toads don’t have teeth, but frogs do.

  The longest sustained fart was two minutes, forty-two seconds.

  The maximum number of points that can be scored in the game Pac-Man is 3,333,360. The first time a perfect game was played was in 1999.

  Pirates thought having an earring would improve their eyesight.

  It is estimated that, within the entire universe, there are more than a trillion galaxies.

  Dinosaurs lived on Earth for nearly 150 million years—seventy-five times longer than humans have now lived on Earth.

  The first living creature to orbit the Earth was a dog named Laika in 1957.

  The woolly mammoth had tusks almost sixteen feet long.

&nbs
p; Some dinosaurs were as small as hens.

  Light from the moon takes about a second and a half to reach Earth. The moon is about 238,000 miles away and is our closest neighbor.

  Lions sleep up to twenty hours a day.

  The cheetah can reach a speed of up to forty-five miles per hour in just two seconds.

  The moon orbits Earth every 27.32 days.

  The polar bear is the only bear that has hair on the soles of its feet. This protects the animal’s feet from the cold and prevents slipping on the ice.

  It takes food seven seconds to travel from the mouth to the stomach.

  It takes 8.5 minutes for light from the sun to reach the Earth.

  The mouse is the most common mammal in the United States.

  The Simpsons is the longest-running animated series on TV.

  Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.

  The sun is nearly six hundred times bigger than all the planets combined.

  The loudest bird in the world is the male bellbird, found in Central and South America. It can be heard from miles away.

  Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

  The magic word abracadabra was originally intended to be spoken to cure hay fever.

  There are more than three hundred species of parrot.

  A duck has three eyelids.

  The sun produces more energy every minute than all the energy used on Earth in a whole year.

  A sheep, a duck, and a rooster were the first passengers in a hot-air balloon.

  The only person to ever play golf on the moon was astronaut Alan Shepard. His golf ball was never found.

  Halley’s Comet will next appear in 2061.

  Felix the Cat was the first cartoon character to be made into a parade balloon.

  An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

  The most common set of initials for Superman’s friends and enemies is L.L.

  The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backward.

  Sitcom characters rarely say good-bye when they hang up the phone.

  Flamingos can only eat with their heads upside down.

  All the coal, oil, gas, and wood on Earth would keep the sun burning for only a few days.

  The penguin is the only bird that can swim but not fly.

  The Earth is not round. It is an oblate spheroid, meaning it is flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator.

  Jellyfish are composed of more than 95 percent water and don’t have a brain, heart, bones, or actual eyes.

  Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street are named after characters in the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life.

  If you yelled for eight years, seven months, and six days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat a cup of coffee.

  Dolphins swim in circles while they sleep, with the eye on the outside of the circle open to keep watch for predators. After a certain amount of time, they reverse and swim in the opposite direction with the opposite eye open.

  The coldest place in the universe is something called the Boomerang Nebula, about five thousand light-years away.

  It is illegal to swim in the Central Park reservoir in New York City.

  Sharks can travel up to forty miles per hour.

  Dolphins jump out of the water to conserve energy. It is easier to move through the air than through the water.

  Hawaii’s Mount Waialeale is the wettest place in the world. It rains about 90 percent of the year.

  Some sharks swim in a figure eight when frightened.

  Kermit the Frog is left-handed.

  There once were more sea lions on Earth than people.

  Astronauts get taller when they are in space.

  The farthest point from any ocean is in China.

  There are more than one hundred million dogs and cats in the United States.

  On at least two occasions, it has snowed in the Sahara Desert.

  A geep is a cross between a goat and a sheep.

  Reindeer like to eat bananas.

  There is a town in West Virginia called Looneyville.

  An armadillo can walk underwater.

  Giant tortoises can live to be over 150 years old.

  The state flag of Alaska was designed by a thirteen-year-old boy.

  Children between the ages of two and seven color, on average, for twenty-eight minutes every day.

  At their nearest point, Russia and America are less than three miles apart.

  The mudskipper fish can actually walk on land.

  The average adult spends about twelve minutes in the shower.

  Tarantulas cannot spin webs.

  The pistol shrimp makes a noise so loud it can shatter glass.

  The tallest president was Abraham Lincoln at six feet, four inches.

  The average four-year-old child asks more than four hundred questions a day.

  Squirrels usually live longer in captivity than in the wild—fifteen or twenty years versus often only one year.

  Every U.S. president has worn glasses or contact lenses.

  Every U.S. president has had at least one sibling; none have been only children.

  Tuna can swim at a steady rate of nine miles per hour for an indefinite period of time—and they never stop moving because they need a continual flow of water across their gills to breathe.

  The world’s smallest painting was painted onto a grain of corn.

  It took Leonardo da Vinci twelve years to paint the Mona Lisa’s lips.

  The most money that can be lost in one trip around a Monopoly board is $26,040.

  Charlie Brown’s father is a barber.

  Bats are the only mammals that can fly.

  Sixty-six percent of Americans admit to reading in the bathroom.

  Dr. Seuss pronounced his name so it would rhyme with rejoice.

  The last word in the Bible is Amen.

  There is no such thing as blue food—even blueberries are purple.

  Clinophobia is the fear of going to bed.

  A funambulist is another name for a tightrope walker.

  The two ends of a magnet are called poles.

  Presidents Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Monroe all died on the Fourth of July.

  Goofy’s son is named Goofy Jr.

  The first movie theater charged a nickel for admission. It opened in 1905.

  Paedophobia is the fear of children.

  President Andrew Johnson sometimes made his own clothes.

  Mozart wrote his own melody to the nursery rhyme “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” at the age of five.

  Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

  Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than by the U.S. Treasury.

  Mariah Carey’s favorite food is pizza.

  Punctuation didn’t exist in writing until the fifteenth century.

  President William Taft once got stuck in his bathtub.

  The Queen of England has two birthdays—one real and one official.

  Tonsurphobia is the fear of haircuts.

  People used to say “ahoy” instead of “hello” when they answered the phone.

  The Old English word for sneeze is fneosam.

  Peanuts characters Linus and Lucy have another brother named Rerun.

  The word coward originally referred to a boy who took care of cows.

  The letter W is the only letter in the alphabet that has more than one syllable.

  The longest word in the English language is 1,909 letters long and refers to a part of DNA.

  It would take 3.6 billion people holding hands to reach all the way around the sun.

  Justin Bieber’s favorite food is spaghetti and meatballs.

  All dogs are descendents of wolves.

  There are only twelve letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.

  Maine is the only state whose name is only one syllable.

  There are believed to be more than six thousand different languages spoken on Earth.

  No Spanish words begin with the letter W.
/>   The most common name in Italy is Mario Rossi.

  Four hundred quarter-pounder hamburgers can be made out of one cow.

  The longest one-syllable word in the English language is screeched.

  Coca-Cola was originally green.

  Actor Tom Hanks is related to Abraham Lincoln.

  It takes more than five hundred peanuts to make one twelve-ounce jar of peanut butter.

  Jaguars are scared of dogs.

  The only real food U.S. astronauts are allowed in space are pecans.

  Bookkeeper and bookkeeping are the only words in the English language with three consecutive double letters.

  Pomology is the study of fruit.

  Doughnuts originated in Holland.

  Mickey Mouse’s ears are always turned to the front, no matter which direction his head is pointing.

  The sandwich was invented by and named after the Earl of Sandwich.

  Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy. His sister is named Dumbella.

  The most milk a single cow can produce is 55,849 gallons.

  There are one hundred squares on a Snakes and Ladders board.

  Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the movie The Wizard of Oz were once auctioned off for $165,000.

  The most popular pizza topping in Australia is eggs. In Chile, it is mussels and clams. In America, it is pepperoni.

  An octopus will eat its own arms if it gets really hungry.

  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was the first novel written on a typewriter.

  The world’s largest ketchup bottle is 170 feet tall.

  Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages it.