The Book of Useless Information Read online

  The hula hoop was the biggest-selling toy in 1957.

  The yo-yo originated in the Philippines, where it is used as a weapon in hunting.

  When the divorce rate goes up in the United States, toy makers say the sale of toys also rises.

  The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was Periwinkle Blue.

  In the 1985 Boise, Idaho, mayoral election, there were four write-in votes for Mr. Potato Head.

  WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

  Camera shutter speed B stands for “bulb.”

  Mosquito repellants do not repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito’s sensors so they do not know you are there.

  Scotchgard is a combination of the words Scotch, meaning “Scotsman,” and a misspelling of guard, meaning “to protect.”

  The holes in flyswatters are used to lower air resistance.

  Scotch tape has been used as an anti-corrosive shield on the Goodyear Blimp.

  The Ramses brand condom is named after the great Pharaoh Ramses II, who fathered more than 160 children.

  HAMMER TIME

  The side of a hammer is called a cheek.

  The end of a hammer, opposite the striking end, is called a peen.

  THE IVORY TOWER

  Ivory bar soap floating was the result of a mistake. The manufacturer had been mixing the soap formula and causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told them how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.

  Approximately thirty billion cakes of Ivory Soap had been manufactured by 1990.

  FEELING A BIT AVERAGE

  The average person looks at eight houses before buying one.

  The average lead pencil can draw a line thirty-five miles long or write approximately fifty thousand English words.

  The average mouse pad is 8.75 inches by 7.5 inches.

  The average woman consumes six pounds of lipstick in her lifetime.

  The average woman’s handbag weighs three to five pounds.

  ALTERNATIVE FUNCTIONS

  Ketchup is excellent for cleaning brass, especially tarnished or corroded brass.

  Kleenex tissues were originally used as filters in gas masks.

  Mixing Sani-Flush and Comet cleaners has been known to cause explosions.

  People in China sometimes use firecrackers around their homes as fire alarms.

  DISHING THE DIRT

  Each of us generates five pounds of garbage a day; most of it is paper.

  It takes a plastic container fifty thousand years to start decomposing.

  According to a market research survey, 68 percent of consumers who receive junk mail actually open the envelopes.

  MEASURING UP

  A 60-minute cassette contains 565 feet of tape.

  The diameter of the wire in a standard paper clip is 1 millimeter, or about 0.04 inches.

  Aluminum is strong enough to support ninety thousand pounds per square inch.

  KEEPING YOUR COOL

  Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

  Some Eskimos have been known to use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.

  HOME DÉCOR

  A good-quality Persian rug, which contains one million knots in every three square inches, can last as long as five hundred years.

  A typical double mattress contains as many as two million house dust mites.

  HISTORY’S MYSTERIES

  HOW DO YOU PLEAD?

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

  According to a British law passed in 1845, attempting to commit suicide was a capital offense. Offenders could be hanged for trying.

  Celebrating Christmas was once illegal in England.

  Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

  Impotence is legal grounds for divorce in twenty-four American states.

  In a tradition dating back to the beginning of the Westminster system of government, the bench in the middle of a Westminster parliament is two-and-a-half sword lengths long. This was so the government and opposition couldn’t have a go at each other if it all got a bit heated.

  In Alaska, it is illegal to shoot at a moose from the window of an airplane or other flying vehicle.

  In Athens, Greece, a driver’s license can be taken away by law if the driver is deemed either “unbathed” or “poorly dressed.”

  In Baltimore, it is illegal to wash or scrub a sink, regardless of how dirty it is.

  In Cleveland, Ohio, it is illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.

  In England during Queen Victoria’s reign, it was illegal to be a homosexual but not a lesbian, the reason being that when the queen was approving the law, she wouldn’t believe that women would do that.

  In Hartford, Connecticut, it is illegal for a husband to kiss his wife on Sundays.

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

  In Italy, it is illegal to make coffins out of anything except nutshells or wood.

  In Jasmine, Saskatchewan, it is illegal for a cow to moo within three hundred kilometers of a private home.

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

  In Sweden, although prostitution is legal, it is illegal for anyone to use the services of a prostitute.

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

  In the United Kingdom, there is no Act of Parliament making it illegal to commit murder. Murder is only illegal due to legal precedent.

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

  In Singapore, it is against the law to urinate in an elevator.

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

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

  In Bladworth, Saskatchewan, it is illegal to frown at cows.

  It is illegal to grow or sell pork in Israel.

  In Arizona, it is illegal to hunt camels.

  In Malaysia, it is illegal for restaurants to substitute toilet paper as table napkins. Repeat offenders go to jail.

  It used to be law in France that children’s names had to be taken from an official government list.

  In Iceland, it was once against the law to have a pet dog in a city.

  In one city in Switzerland, it was once against the law to slam your car door.

  Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the United States since 1916, when a man mailed a forty-thousand-ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.

  Pennsylvania was the first colony to legalize witchcraft.

  A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.

  According to the United States Refuse Act of 1899, every industrial discharge into bodies of water since 1899 has been a crime.

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

  If you live in Michigan, it is illegal to put a skunk in your boss’s desk.

  In Hartford, Connecticut, you may not, under any circumstances, cross the street walking on your hands.

  In Idaho, a citizen is forbidden by law to give another citizen a box of candy that weighs more than fifty pounds.

  In Indiana, it is illegal to ride public transportation for at least thirty minutes after eating garlic.

  In Minnesota, it is illegal for women to be dressed up as Santa Claus on city streets.

  In Morrisville, Pennsylvania, women need a legal permit before they can wear lipstick in public.

  In some parts of Alabama, it is illegal to carry a comb in your pocket.

  In the Rhode Island legislature during the 1970s, it was proposed that there be a tax of $2 on every act of sexual intercourse.

  In Oklahoma, it is against the law to hunt whale.

  It is illegal for boys in ninth grade to grow a mustache in Binghamton, New York.

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

  In Kansas, it’s against the law to catch fish with your bare hands.

  It’s against the law to ride down the streets of Brewton, Alabama, in a motorboat.

  Most burglaries occur in the winter.

  The state legislature in North Dakota has rejected a proposal to erect signs specifically warning motorists not to throw human waste on to the roadside. Maintenance workers report at least twenty incidents of road crews being sprayed with urine after rupturing urine-filled plastic bottles that became swollen in the hot sun. Opponents of the measure say they’re afraid the signs would discourage tourism.

  Under the law of Mississippi, there’s no such thing as a female Peeping Tom.

  THAT’S WHAT WE CALL A MILESTONE

  In 1976, a Los Angeles secretary named Jannene Swift officially married a fifty-pound rock. The ceremony was witnessed by more than twenty people.

  ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS

  Ancient Sybarites taught their horses to dance to music to make their parades more glamorous.

  Ancient Sumerians thought the liver made blood and the heart was the center of thought.

  The ancient Etruscans painted women white and men red in the wall paintings they used to decorate tombs.

  Abdul Kassam Ismael, Grand Vizier of Persia in the tenth century, carried his library with him wherever he went. The 117,000 volumes were carried by 400 camels trained to walk in alphabetical order.

  At the turn of the previous millennium, Dublin had the largest slave market in the world, run by the Vikings.

  A two-hundred-year-old piece of Tibetan cheese was auctioned off for $1,513 in 1993.

  Aztec emperor Montezuma had a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant “plenty of excrement.”

  In 1281, the Mongol army of Kublai Khan tried to invade Japan but was ravaged by a hurricane that destroyed their fleet.

  The Toltecs, seventh-century native Mexicans, went to battle with wooden swords so as not to kill their enemies.

  There was a pony express in Persia many centuries before Christ. Riders on this ancient circuit, wearing special colored headbands, delivered the mail across the vast stretch of Asia Minor, sometimes riding for hundreds of miles without a break.

  In ancient Japan, public contests were held to see who in a town could break wind loudest and longest. Winners were awarded many prizes and received great acclaim.

  UNRECORDED HISTORY

  During the Cambrian period, about five hundred million years ago, a day was only 20.6 hours long.

  The name of the asteroid that was believed to have killed the dinosaurs was Chixalub (pronounced sheesh-uh-loob).

  WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN

  Ra was the sun god of ancient Egypt.

  In ancient Egypt, the apricot was called the egg of the sun, killing a cat was a crime punishable by death, and Egyptians paid their taxes in honey.

  Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the death of their cats.

  Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone.

  About three hundred years ago, most Egyptians died by the time they were thirty.

  According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Egyptian men never became bald. The reason for this, Herodotus claimed, was that as children, Egyptian males had their heads shaved, and their scalps were continually exposed to the health-giving rays of the sun. In Egypt around 1500 B.C.E., a shaved head was considered the ultimate in feminine beauty. Egyptian women removed every hair from their heads with special gold tweezers and polished their scalps to a high sheen with buffing cloths.

  If a surgeon in ancient Egypt lost a patient while performing an operation, his hands were cut off.

  Pharaoh Ramses II died in 1225 B.C.E. At the time of his death, he had fathered 111 sons and 67 daughters.

  The Egyptian city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C.E.

  The Egyptian hieroglyph for one hundred thousand is a tadpole.

  The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C.E.

  Cleopatra married two of her brothers.

  Preparing an Egyptian mummy sometimes took up to seventy days. Dead Egyptian noblewomen were given the special treatment of being allowed a few days to ripen so the embalmers wouldn’t find them too attractive.

  On some mummies that have been unwrapped, the total length of the bandages has been about 1.5 miles.

  Tomb robbers believed that knocking off Egyptian sarcophagi’s noses would stall curses.

  A golden razor removed from King Tut’s tomb was still sharp enough to be used.

  IT’S GREEK TO ME

  The ruins of Troy are located in Turkey.

  In 290 B.C.E., Aristarchus was the first Greek astronomer to suggest that the sun was the center of the solar system.

  At the height of its power, in 400 B.C.E., the Greek city of Sparta had twenty-five thousand citizens and five hundred thousand slaves.

  In ancient Greece, women counted their age from the date they were married.

  ROMAN HOLIDAY

  High-wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high-wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum, there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.

  Trivia is the Roman goddess of sorcery, hounds, and the crossroads.

  After the great fire of Rome in 64 C.E., the emperor Nero ostensibly decided to lay the blame on Christians residing in the city of Rome. He gathered them together, crucified them, covered them in pitch, and burned them. He walked around his gardens admiring the view.

  Ancient Romans believed that birds mated on February 14.

  Flamingo tongues were a common delicacy at Roman feasts.

  Hannibal had only one eye after losing the other to a disease he caught while attacking Rome.

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

  In ancient Rome, weasels were used to catch mice.

  It was decreed by law in the Roman Empire that all young maidens be fed rabbit meat because it would make them more beautiful and more willing.

  Julius Caesar tried to beef up the population of Rome by offering rewards to couples who had many children.

  Spartacus led the revolt of the Roman slaves and gladiators in 73 C.E.

  The Pantheon is the largest building from ancient Rome that survives intact.

  The Roman emperor Caligula made his horse a senator.

  The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find and had them brought to the Colosseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.

  The saying “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye” is from ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was no eye gouging. Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone’s eyes out.

  All office-seekers in the Roman Empire were obliged to wear a certain white toga for a period of one year before the election.

  THE CHINA CLUB

  Slaves under the last emperors of China wore pigtails so they could be picked out quickly.

  The Chinese ideogram for trouble depicts two women living under one roof.

  The Chinese Nationalist Golf Association claims the game is of Chinese origin (ch’ui wan—the ball-hitting game) from the third or second century B.C.E. There were official ordinances prohibiting a ball game with clubs in Belgium and Holland from 1360.

  The Chinese, in historic times, used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery.

  The Great Wall of China, which is more than 4,000 miles long, too
k more than 1,700 years to build. There is enough stone in the Great Wall to build an eight-foot wall encircling the globe at the equator.

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

  IN THEIR PRIME

  William Pitt, elected in 1783, was England’s youngest prime minister at the age of only twenty-four.

  Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.

  “GREAT” WARS

  During World War I, almost fourteen million people died in battle.

  During World War I, cigarettes were handed out to soldiers along with their rations.

  Charles de Gaulle’s final words were “It hurts.”

  At age ninety, Peter Mustafic of Botovo, Yugoslavia, suddenly began speaking again after a silence of forty years. The Yugoslavian news agency quoted him as saying, “I just didn’t want to do military service, so I stopped speaking in 1920; then I got used to it.”

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