The Book of Useless Information Page 6
Pineapples do not ripen after they have been picked.
Tomatina is the legendary Spanish tomato-throwing festival.
More than two hundred varieties of watermelon are grown in the United States.
JAVA TIME
Coffee is the world’s most popular stimulant. It is the second largest item of international commerce in the world.
When a coffee seed is planted, it takes five years to yield consumable fruit.
There are more than one hundred chemicals in one cup of coffee.
Coffee does not help sober up a drunk person. In many cases, it may actually increase the adverse effects of alcohol.
Too much caffeine can cause heart palpitations.
A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn’t give her coffee.
In Turkey in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, anyone caught drinking coffee was put to death.
YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY AVOCADO
A chili pepper isn’t a pepper. In fact, more than two hundred kinds of chili peppers aren’t peppers.
There is no such thing as blue food—even blueberries are purple.
THE SWEET SPOT
M&Ms stands for the last names of Forrest Mars Sr., the sweet maker, and his associate, Bruce Murrie. The candy was developed so soldiers could eat sweets without getting their fingers sticky.
There are more brown M&Ms in plain M&Ms than in peanut M&Ms.
The top layer of a wedding cake, known as the groom’s cake, is usually a fruit cake so it will last until the couple’s first anniversary, when they will eat it.
As much as fifty gallons of maple sap are used to make a single gallon of maple sugar.
There are more doughnut shops per capita in Canada than in any other country.
Pound cake is so called because the original recipe required one pound of butter.
The only food that does not spoil is honey. It is used as a center for golf balls and in antifreeze mixtures.
When honey is swallowed, it enters the blood stream within a period of twenty minutes.
The most popular ice cream flavor is vanilla.
Ice cream was originally made without sugar and eggs. Seaweed is one of the ingredients in some ice cream.
Five jelly flavors that flopped: celery, coffee, cola, apple, and chocolate.
Less than 3 percent of Nestlé’s sales are for chocolate.
Eleanor Roosevelt ate three chocolate-covered garlic balls every day for most of her adult life.
Eating chocolate was once considered a temptation of the devil.
NO WONDER WE’RE FAT
During your lifetime, you will eat sixty thousand pounds of food—the weight of six elephants.
The average American chews 190 sticks of gum, drinks 600 sodas and 800 gallons of water, and eats 135 pounds of sugar and 19 pounds of cereal per year.
The biggest-selling restaurant food is french fries.
The estimated number of M&Ms sold each day in the United States is two hundred million.
The amount of potato chips Americans eat each year weighs six times more than the Titanic.
A can of SPAM is opened every four seconds.
Americans on average eat eighteen acres of pizza every day. Saturday night is the biggest night of the week for eating pizza.
Dunkin’ Donuts serves about 112,500 doughnuts each day.
More popcorn is sold in Dallas than anywhere else in the United States.
Two million different combinations of sandwiches can be created from a Subway menu.
GREAT MOMENTS IN GASTRONOMIC HISTORY
The food of the Greek gods was called ambrosia.
The chocolate-chip cookie was invented in 1933.
Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.
California’s Frank Epperson invented the Popsicle in 1905, when he was eleven years old.
Chefs started using onions five thousand years ago to spice up their cooking.
Doughnuts originated in Holland.
Dry cereal for breakfast was invented by John Henry Kellogg at the turn of the twentieth century.
In 1983, a Japanese artist made a copy of the Mona Lisa completely out of toast.
Fortune cookies were actually invented in America by Charles Jung in 1918.
Jelly Belly jelly beans were the first jelly beans in outer space when they went up with astronauts in the June 21, 1983, voyage of the space shuttle Challenger.
WE’D LOVE TO HAVE YOU FOR DINNER…
Sawney Beane, his wife, eight sons, six daughters, and thirty-two grandchildren were a family of cannibals who lived in the caves near Galloway, Scotland, in the early seventeenth century. Although the total number is not known, it is believed they claimed more than fifty victims per year. The entire family was taken by an army detachment to Edinburgh and executed, apparently without trial.
British politician John Montagu, the 46th Earl of Sandwich, is credited with naming the sandwich. He developed the habit of eating beef between slices of toast so he could continue playing cards uninterrupted.
Ketchup originated in China.
Laws forbidding the sale of sodas on Sunday prompted William Garwood to invent the ice-cream sundae in Evanston, Illinois, in 1875.
Potato chips were invented in Louisiana in 1853.
Potatoes were first imported by Europe in the 1500s on Spanish ships returning from Peru.
Beijing boasts the world’s largest Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.
Almost 425,000 hot dogs and buns and 160,000 hamburgers and cheeseburgers were served at Woodstock ’99.
The English word soup comes from the Middle Ages word sop, which means a slice of bread over which roast drippings were poured.
COUNTERINTUITIVE BUT TRUE
Vanilla is used to make chocolate.
RECORD BREAKERS
The highest lifetime yield of milk for a single cow is 55,849 gallons.
The hottest chili in the world is the habanero.
The largest apple pie ever baked was forty feet by twenty-three feet.
The largest hamburger in the world weighed in at 5,520 pounds.
The largest ketchup bottle is a 170-foot water tower.
INTERNATIONAL PALETTES
Dinner guests during the medieval times in England were expected to bring their own knives to the table.
In eighteenth-century France, visitors to the royal palace in Versailles were allowed to stand in a roped-off section of the main dining room and watch the king and queen eat.
In certain parts of India and ancient China, mouse meat was considered a delicacy.
Each year, Americans spend more on cat food than on baby food.
It is estimated that Americans consume ten million tons of turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Due to turkey’s high sulfur content, Americans also produce enough gas to fly a fleet of seventy-five Hindenburgs from Los Angeles to New York in twenty-four hours.
The Southern dish “chitlins” is made up of pigs’ small intestines.
Yogurt intake among North Americans has quadrupled in the past twenty years.
In Australia, the number-one topping for pizza is eggs. In Chile, the favorite topping is mussels and clams. In the United States, it’s pepperoni.
The world’s number-one producer and consumer of fresh pork is China.
China produces 278,564,356,980 eggs per year.
China’s Beijing Duck Restaurant can seat nine thousand people at one time.
If China imported just 10 percent of its rice needs, the price on the world market would increase by 80 percent.
France has the highest per capita consumption of cheese. More than half of the different types of cheese in the world come from France.
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
Japan is the largest exporter of frogs’ legs.
A company in Taiwan makes dinnerware out of wheat, so you can eat your plate.
CULINARY ER
Astronauts
are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages it.
Since 1978, at least thirty-seven people have died as a result of shaking vending machines in an attempt to get free merchandise. More than one hundred have been injured.
Some people drink the urine of pregnant women to build up their immune systems.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma in an emergency.
You should not eat a crayfish with a straight tail. It was dead before it was cooked.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
A LITTLE BIT GRAINY
There are more than fifteen thousand different kinds of rice. Rice is grown on more than 10 percent of the earth’s farmable surface and is the main food for half of the people of the world.
Rice is thrown at weddings as a symbol of fertility.
Shredded Wheat was the first ready-to-eat breakfast cereal.
The wheat that produces a one-pound loaf of bread requires two tons of water to grow.
No two cornflakes look the same.
SO THAT’S WHERE OUR TAX DOLLARS GO
The U.S. government spent $277,000 on “pickle research” in 1993.
NO, I SAID CONDIMENTS
Salt is the only rock humans can eat. Only 5 percent of salt produced ends up on the dinner table. The rest is used for packing meat; building roads; feeding livestock; tanning leather; and manufacturing glass, soap, ash, and washing compounds.
Salt is one of the few spices that is all taste and no smell.
Table salt is the only commodity that hasn’t risen dramatically in price in the last one hundred fifty years.
Tabasco sauce is made by fermenting vinegar and hot peppers in a French oak barrel that has three inches of salt on top and is aged for three years until all the salt is diffused through the barrel.
Worcestershire sauce is basically anchovy ketchup.
The number 57 on a Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of varieties of pickle the company once had.
THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO “MOOO…”
Pound for pound, hamburgers cost more than new cars.
Reindeer’s milk has more fat than cow’s milk.
Sheep’s milk is used to produce Roquefort cheese.
The fat molecules in goat’s milk are five times smaller than those found in cow’s milk.
AROUND THE HOUSE
DEUCES ARE WILD
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: spades—King David, clubs—Alexander the Great, hearts—Charlemagne, and diamonds—Julius Caesar.
Each of the suits in a deck of cards represents the four major pillars of the economy in the Middle Ages: hearts represented the Church, spades represented the military, clubs represented agriculture, and diamonds represented the merchant class.
In every deck of cards, the King of Hearts is sticking his sword through his head. That’s why he’s often called the Suicide King.
For a deck of cards to be mixed up enough to play with properly, it should be shuffled at least seven times.
Playing cards became the first paper currency of Canada in 1685, when the French governor used them to pay off some war debts.
Playing cards in India are round.
The Nine of Hearts playing card is considered the symbol of love.
The Ace of Spades playing card symbolizes death.
COMMON CENTS
The ridges on the sides of coins are called reeding or milling. A dime has 118 ridges around the edge. A quarter has 119 ridges.
How valuable is the penny you found lying on the ground? If it takes just a second to pick it up, a person could make $36 per hour just picking up pennies.
It’s rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a Breathalyzer to read zero.
On the new U.S. $100 bill, the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.
The Australian $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 notes are made of plastic.
The face of a penny can hold thirty drops of water.
The first coins issued by authority of the United States government were minted in 1787. These pennies were inscribed with the plainspoken motto, “Mind your own business.”
The original fifty-cent piece in Australian decimal currency had around $100 worth of silver in it before it was replaced with a less-expensive twelve-sided coin.
At the height of inflation in Germany in the early 1920s, approximately two dollars were equal to a quintillion German marks.
KISSABLY FRESH
Colgate faced a big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish-speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command “go hang yourself.”
More people use blue toothbrushes than red ones.
Oral-B is a combination of “oral hygiene” and the letter B, which stands for the word better.
Some toothpaste contains antifreeze.
Dentists recommended that a toothbrush be kept six feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.
Americans spend $1.5 billion every year on toothpaste.
JUST A SCRATCH
Four thousand people are injured by teapots every year.
A toothpick is the object most often choked on by Americans. Every year, more than 8,800 people injure themselves in some way with a toothpick.
On average, one hundred people choke on ballpoint pens every year.
Forty thousand Americans are injured by toilets every year.
In 1981, a man had a heart attack after playing the game Berserk—video gaming’s only known fatality.
In 1990, there were about fifteen thousand vacuum cleaner–related accidents in the United States.
THE ROYAL THRONE
A flush toilet exists today that dates back to 2000 B.C.E.
About a third of people flush while they are still sitting on the toilet.
Alaska has more outhouses than any other state.
In 1825, the first toilet was installed in the White House.
In true kingly fashion, Elvis passed away while sitting on the throne.
Most toilets flush in E flat.
Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house, in 1840.
The first toilet ever seen on television was on Leave It to Beaver.
The Soviet Sukhoi-34 is the first strike fighter with a toilet in it.
Toilets in Australia flush counterclockwise.
SIMPLY SARTORIAL
Bill Bowerman, founder of Nike, got his first shoe idea after staring at a waffle iron. He got the idea of using squared spikes to make shoes lighter.
The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside, the fit will be snugger around your big toe.
North Americans spend almost $18 billion on footwear a year.
Jeans were named after Genoa, Italy, where the first denim cloth was made.
The YKK on the zipper of your Levi’s stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha, the world’s largest zipper manufacturer.
Neckties were first worn in Croatia. That’s why they were called cravats (cro-vats).
Most people button their shirts upward.
The armhole in clothing is called an armsaye.
The bra Marilyn Monroe wore in the movie Some Like It Hot was sold for $14,000.
In 1955, one-third of all watches sold were Timexes.
The quartz crystal in your wristwatch vibrates 32,768 times a second.
TOYING AROUND
Since the Lego Group began manufacturing blocks in 1949, more than 189 billion pieces in 2,000 different shapes have been produced. This is enough for about thirty Lego pieces for every living person on Earth. Five-thousandths of a millimeter is the tolerance of accuracy at the Lego mold factories.
Ninety-four percent of all hous
eholds in Belgium with children under the age of fourteen years old own Lego products.
Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts. Barbie’s measurements if she were life-size would be 5 feet, 9 inches tall, 33-18-31½.
There are more Barbie dolls in Italy than there are Canadians in Canada.
Totally Hair Barbie is the best-selling Barbie of all time.
Slinkys were invented by an airplane mechanic; he was playing with engine parts and realized the possible secondary use of one of the springs.
The Slinky is sold on every continent of the world except Antarctica. If you took a standard Slinky and stretched it out, it would measure eighty-seven feet.
In 1946, the first TV toy commercial aired. It was for Mr. Potato Head.
In 1980, Namco released Pac-Man, the most popular video game (or arcade game) of all time. The original name was going to be Puck Man, but executives saw the potential for vandals to scratch out part of the P in the game’s marquee and labeling.
It takes an average of 48 to 100 tries to solve a Rubik’s Cube puzzle. If done perfectly, any Rubik’s Cube combination can be solved in seventeen turns.