The Totally Awesome Book of Useless Information Read online

  The words racecar and kayak are palindromes, meaning they’re spelled the same whether they’re read left to right or right to left.

  Salt is the only rock humans can eat.

  The face of a penny can hold thirty drops of water.

  The first pennies minted in the United States were inscribed with the motto “Mind your own business.”

  Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

  The Popsicle was invented by an eleven-year-old boy.

  Pac-Man was originally going to be called Puck Man.

  The yo-yo was originally used as a hunting weapon.

  The elephant is the only mammal that can’t jump.

  The average pencil can write approximately fifty thousand English words.

  In Helsinki, Finland, instead of giving parking tickets, the police usually deflate tires.

  The Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II had 111 sons and 67 daughters.

  In California, it is illegal to eat oranges while bathing.

  The ancient Romans liked to eat flamingo tongues.

  Every citizen of Kentucky is required by law to take a bath at least once a year.

  In Omaha, Nebraska, it’s against the law to burp or sneeze in church.

  A woman in Los Angeles once married a rock.

  Honey is the only food that doesn’t spoil.

  In ancient Egypt, killing a cat was a crime punishable by death.

  Five jelly flavors that flopped: celery, coffee, cola, apple, and chocolate.

  During one lifetime the average person eats sixty thousand pounds of food—the weight of six elephants.

  It would take more than 150 million years to drive a car to the sun.

  Two hundred million M&M’s are sold every day in the United States.

  A two-hundred-year-old piece of cheese was once sold for $1,513.

  In a town in Canada, it is illegal to frown at cows.

  About five hundred million years ago, a day only lasted 20.6 hours instead of 24.

  The world’s youngest parents were eight and nine and lived in China in 1910.

  Before World War II, when guards were posted at the fence, anyone could walk up to the front door of the White House.

  A shrimp’s heart is in its head.

  During World War II, Americans trained bats to drop bombs.

  Monopoly games were used to smuggle items into enemy camps during World War II.

  Hershey bars were used as currency in some countries during World War II.

  Benjamin Franklin once designed an $8 bill.

  Before the 1800s, there were no separately designed shoes for right and left feet.

  Caterpillars have about four thousand muscles. Humans have only about six hundred.

  Up until 2006, there were officially nine planets in our solar system. That year Pluto was changed to a dwarf planet, so now there are only eight planets in the solar system.

  Russian men used to be taxed for growing a beard.

  The shortest war in history was between England and Zanzibar in 1896 and lasted thirty-eight minutes.

  Leif Erikson, not Christopher Columbus, was the first European to set foot in North America.

  Native Americans never actually ate turkey, even at Thanksgiving.

  Alligators cannot move backward.

  In Idaho, it is illegal to fish on a camel’s back.

  A group of rhinos is called a crash.

  The Japanese national anthem has the oldest lyrics, from the ninth century.

  It is physically impossible for pigs to look up at the sky.

  The oldest bridge still used in the United States was built in 1697.

  Gorillas often sleep for up to fourteen hours a day.

  The Empire State Building has 6,500 windows.

  The most common name for a goldfish is Jaws.

  No building in Washington, DC, can be built taller than the Washington Monument.

  In Connecticut, in order for a pickle to officially be considered a pickle, it must bounce.

  The Statue of Liberty’s mouth is three feet wide.

  The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude.

  There aren’t any clocks in Las Vegas casinos.

  In Massachusetts, gorillas are not allowed in the backseat of a car.

  The longest recorded sneezing fit lasted 978 days.

  The longest place name in the world is a hill in New Zealand called

  Japan has 3,900 islands.

  The Romans were the first people to exchange presents at Christmas.

  Boxing is the most popular sport to create a film about.

  Karate originated in India.

  At any time, there are eighteen hundred thunderstorms in progress over the Earth’s atmosphere.

  All the stars in the Milky Way revolve around the center of the galaxy every two hundred million years.

  Accounting for time zone differences, Santa Claus has thirty-one hours to deliver gifts on Christmas Eve, but that still means he has to visit 823 homes per second.

  The tail section of an airplane gives the bumpiest ride.

  A large, flawless emerald is worth more than a similarly large, flawless diamond.

  Bamboo is the world’s tallest grass.

  Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature.

  Because of the rotation of the Earth, an object can be thrown farther if it is thrown west.

  A jiffy is equal to one-hundredth of a second, which is where the saying, “I’ll be there in a jiffy!” comes from.

  It takes forty-two days for an ostrich egg to hatch.

  It can take more than two days for a chick to break out of its shell.

  The Asiatic elephant takes over twenty months to give birth.

  Earth is traveling through space at 660,000 miles per hour.

  The leech has thirty-two brains.

  A species of earthworm in Australia grows up to ten feet in length.

  The harmonica is the world’s most popular instrument.

  Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they can’t find food.

  If you attempted to count the stars in a galaxy at a rate of one every second, it would take around three thousand years to count them all.

  After eating, the housefly regurgitates its food and eats it again.

  Grasshoppers have green blood.

  South Africa produces two-thirds of the world’s gold.

  Mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.

  Clouds fly higher during the day than at night.

  Bees do not have ears.

  The right lung takes in more air than the left lung.

  Bees have five eyes: three small eyes on the top of a bee’s head and two larger ones in front.

  Spider silk is stronger than steel.

  The human tooth has about fifty-five miles of canals in it.

  The planet Saturn has a density lower than water so, if there was a bathtub large enough to hold it, Saturn would float.

  The tongue is the only muscle in the human body that is only attached at one end.

  Frogs move faster than toads.

  Babies are born without kneecaps.

  The white area at the base of a fingernail is called the lunula.

  The skin that peels off after a sunburn is called blype.

  Frogs drink and breathe through their skin.

  The straw was invented by ancient Egyptians.

  Bats cannot walk because their leg bones are too thin.

  The single dot over the lowercase letter i is called a tittle.

  Left-handed people cannot write Mandarin Chinese.

  Basilisks can run on water.

  People in Japan eat fried chicken and strawberry shortcake on Christmas Eve.

  The scientific name for a gorilla is Gorilla gorilla gorilla.

  Pound for pound, hamburgers cost more than new cars.

  In ancient Greece, writing had no space between the words.


  South Africa has eleven official languages.

  Singapore is the only country with only one train station.

  Moose have very bad vision. They sometimes mistake cars for other moose.

  Butter is naturally white. Its yellow color is artificial.

  Bats eat as many as six hundred bugs per hour.

  JELL-O is the official state snack of Utah.

  The longest lizard in the world is the Komodo dragon, at ten feet long.

  The only continent without reptiles or snakes is Antarctica.

  A “vamp” is the upper front top of a shoe.

  Pigs can learn the same tricks dogs can in a shorter amount of time.

  The first dinosaur appeared about 225 or 230 million years ago. It was called the Staurikosaurus, and it survived for about five million years.

  Mr. Potato Head once got four votes for mayor of Boise, Idaho, in an election.

  Napoleon Bonaparte was afraid of cats.

  Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

  The Oval Office is thirty-five feet long.

  There is approximately one library book for every person on Earth.

  A “keeper” is the loop on a belt that holds the loose end.

  The most commonly misspelled word in the English language is supersede.

  Almost half the newspapers in the world are published in the United States and Canada.

  One out of every three American homes contains a Scrabble game.

  Lime JELL-O gives off the same brain waves as adult humans when hooked up to an EEG machine.

  A portrait of rapper Eminem was once created out of M&M’s candies.

  July is National Ice Cream Month.

  Grasshoppers are the most popular insect snack in some parts of the world.

  The average French citizen eats five hundred snails a year.

  France eats the most cheese of any country, averaging 43.6 pounds per person per year.

  A group of frogs is called an army.

  Tug-of-war used to be an Olympic event.

  The most cans of chicken noodle soup are sold in January.

  Some pumpkins can grow fifteen miles of roots.

  Onions, apples, and potatoes all have the same taste. Their smells are what gives them different flavors.

  Tomatoes with a strawberry inside have been successfully grown.

  Urine was once used as a detergent for washing.

  Bamboo can grow three or four feet in one day.

  Dirty snow melts faster than white snow because it reflects less light.

  The longest lightning bolt ever recorded was 118 miles long.

  In China, there are six hundred bicycles for every car.

  The Netherlands has the most bicycles in the world.

  The world’s longest escalator is in Hong Kong and rises 377 feet.

  Some babies suck their thumb before they are born.

  A Venus flytrap can eat a whole cheeseburger.

  It takes an average of forty-eight to one hundred tries to solve a Rubik’s Cube puzzle. If done perfectly, any Rubik’s Cube combination can be solved in seventeen turns.

  One brow wrinkle is the result of two hundred thousand frowns.

  The average person has about ten thousand taste buds.

  Right-handed people tend to chew food on the right side of their mouths, and vice versa for left-handed people.

  The brain is more active sleeping than it is watching TV.

  One reason phone numbers are only seven digits (not including the area code) is because most people can only remember between five and nine digits in their short-term memory.

  The human eye is constantly moving. It quivers thirty to fifty times per second.

  The maximum heartbeat possible for a human is 220 beats per minute.

  The human heart is about the size of a fist.

  Men have more blood than women.

  Tomatophagia is an eating disorder that causes people to crave things like ice, detergent, starch, clay, and dirt.

  Synesthesia is a condition in which people can see speech, taste colors and shapes, and smell flavors.

  One in three men picks his nose while driving.

  The average person will walk far enough in a lifetime to go around the world four and a half times.

  Ninety-nine percent of the life forms that have ever existed on Earth are extinct.

  Turtles can breathe through their bottoms.

  The world’s longest cucumber was forty-seven inches.

  There are twice as many chickens in the world as humans.

  A cockroach’s favorite food is the glue on the back of stamps.

  The giant cricket of Africa enjoys eating human hair.

  A deltiologist collects postcards.

  Cows can smell odors six miles away.

  King Henry III of England kept pet lions in the Tower of London. He also once received a polar bear as a gift from the king of Norway and an elephant from the king of France.

  Venice has four hundred bridges.

  The Atlantic Ocean is the youngest of the world’s oceans.

  The world’s largest alphabet is Cambodian, with seventy-four letters.

  The Hundred Years’ War actually lasted 116 years.

  The world’s largest gingerbread man weighed more than 1,308 pounds.

  The first cloned mammal was Dolly the lamb, in 1996.

  The first asteroid to be discovered is also the largest to be discovered so far, at six hundred miles long.

  Comets speed up as they approach the sun and slow down as they move away from it.

  Venus is brighter than any other planet and can sometimes be seen during the day.

  All the planets in the solar system could be placed inside Jupiter.

  The ancient Romans often paid their taxes in honey.

  In ancient Rome, it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose.

  Maine was once known as the Earmuff Capital of the World since earmuffs were invented there.

  The Tyrannosaurus Rex at the Field Museum in Chicago is named Sue.

  Lions, leopards, tigers, and jaguars do not purr. They are also the only cat species that can roar.

  Twinkies were originally called Little Shortcake Fingers.

  Lobsters and grasshoppers cannot feel pain.

  Dolphins do not breathe automatically like humans do.

  New York was once called New Amsterdam.

  Shark fossils have been found that are more than twice as old as dinosaur fossils.

  Male sea lions sometimes go three months without eating.

  The hippopotamus gives birth underwater but cannot swim.

  Greenland has more ice on it than Iceland does, and Iceland has more grass and trees than Greenland.

  Sheepdogs can smell forty-four times better than humans.

  Elephants only get about two hours of sleep a day.

  Twenty billion cards and packages are delivered every year in the United States between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

  A rhinoceros’s horn is made of compacted hair.

  The only purple animal is the South African Blesbok.

  The world’s smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, which weighs less than a penny.

  Camels have three eyelids to protect their eyes from blowing sand.

  The giant African snail grows to a foot long.

  The Oreo is the world’s bestselling cookie.

  The giant squid is the largest creature without a backbone. It can grow to fifty-five feet long. Each eye is a foot or more in diameter.

  A giraffe moves both legs on one side of its body together when it runs.

  The world’s heaviest motorcycle weighed 10,470 pounds.

  Texas is the only state that permits residents to vote from space.

  Ancient Romans used urine as an ingredient in toothpaste.

  The ice cream sundae was invented in 1875.

  The giraffe’s
heart weighs twenty-five pounds and is two feet long.

  Porcupines are excellent swimmers because their quills are hollow.

  Jupiter has the most moons in the solar system—possibly as many as sixty-six.

  Porcupines love salt.

  Anteaters prefer termites to ants.

  Woodpecker scalps, porpoise teeth, and giraffe tails have all been used as money.

  The average person spends about two years on the phone in a lifetime.

  The longest kiss on record lasted 417 hours.

  Polar bear fur is not white, it’s clear.

  The world record for carrying a milk bottle on your head is twenty-four miles.

  About one out of every seventy people who pick their nose actually eats their boogers.

  August is the month when most babies are born.

  The first fish in space was a guppy.

  The ancient Egyptians trained baboons to wait on tables.

  The world record for most children born to one mother is sixty-nine children.

  Owls are the only birds that can see the color blue.

  Bugs Bunny was originally called Happy Rabbit.

  All female bees in a hive are sisters.

  Artists had to draw more than six million spots for the Disney animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians.