The Book: Of the Most Useful-Useless Information

By Jim Nelson

Its in the book.
Jim Nelson



Did you know? 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.

"When possums are playingpossium, they are not playing. They actually pass out from sheer terror.

"In the 1940s, the FCC assigned televisions channel 1 to mobile services, two-way radios in taxicabs, etc. They never did assign any other channels. Thats why our TVs today start with channel 2.

"Hersheys Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like its kissing the conveyor belt.

"The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when horses pulled the fire engines. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight stairways.

"The only two days of the year that do not have any professional sports games, MLB, NBA, NHL, or the NFL are the day before and the day after the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.



I have not failed. Ive just found ten thousand ways that wont
work. Thomas Edison

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514417201

Jim Nelson

Jim Nelson is an amateur entomologist, photographer and poet. This is his second book (The Methuselah Project). He lives in Englewood, Colorado. 

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Jim Nelson.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015917154

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-1718-8

                Softcover        978-1-5144-1719-5

                eBook             978-1-5144-1720-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/18/2015

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

A

Abbreviations of the United States and Canada

Abbreviations

American Can Sizes

Animal Names

Animal Trivia

B

Books

Bridges/Tunnels/Waterways

C

Calendar Trivia

Canals

Car Trivia

Tire Sizes

Children Trivia

Cities Nicknames

Computer Alt Keys

The Seven Continents

Conversions

Cooking Conversions

Cooking Terms

Cooking Trivia I

Cooking Trivia II

D

Deaths of Famous People

The Deepest

Discoveries

E

Edible Flowers

Etiquette

Explorers

Expressions

F

Great Fires

First for Woman

The American Flag

Founders

G

Gardening Trivia

Plants to Help Get Rid of Garden Pests

General Information

H

Health Trivia

First Time in History

Buying a House

I

International Morse Code

International Phone Numbers

Inventors

Islands

Items for every home

J

Jets

Justice Department

K

Kitchen Trivia

Kites

L

The Largest Trivia

The Longest Trivia

Lovers Trivia

Treated Lumber

M

Math Fun

Medical Trivia

Military Trivia

Movies/Theaters

Magazines/Comics

Music

N

Nails Common Sizes

Nobel Peace Prize

Numbers

O

Oceans and Main Bodies of Water

Old Age Trivia

The Oldest

P

Patents Trivia

Phobias

Planet’s Trivia

Planets

Full Moon Names

Political Trivia

President’s Quotes

President’s Trivia

Presidents of the United States

Q

Quotations

R

Radio Trivia

Rail Road Trivia

Real Names

Religious Trivia

Children’s letters to God

Resume (level-1)

Professional Resume

S

Science Trivia

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Smallest

Space Trivia

Sports Trivia

The Star-Spangled Banner

State Trivia

Study of—Ology

Stupid Laws

Super Bowl

T

The Tallest

Time Zones in North America

The First Time on Television

Famous Television Addresses

Answers Famous Television Addresses

U

Unbelievable (but true)

United States Currency

The fifty United States

V

What is a Veteran?

Visit The USA

W

Weather Trivia

Word Fun

XYZ

YMCA

Zodiac Signs

Zoos in the United States

About the Author

James R. Nelson

I have been married four times, at present I’m a widower but still looking.

(I’m not dead yet)

I have worked as an electrical controls engineer for over thirty years. For over twenty, I have been gathering bits of information that had a special interest to me and hope to other people too; a lot of the information is from my own experience and things that I have seen. I hope you will enjoy this book and maybe learn something.

I defy anyone, regardless of their IQ or general knowledge, to read this book and not learn something. Maybe a couple of things.

You have your bestsellers, great novels, night-stand books, and even coffee-table books. I consider this as more of a bathroom book.

This book is dedicated to all the women in my life that I have loved. A couple of special ones and they know who they are, and that I still love them.

A special thanks to Crystal Fenwick who helped me put the final touches together to finally get this done.

To: Flo

You don’t love a woman because she is beautiful, but she is beautiful because you love her.

—Jim Nelson

This says it all. Have a good day!

Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (made in Japan) for 6:00 a.m. While his coffeepot (made in China) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (made in Hong Kong). He put on a dress shirt (made in Sri Lanka), designer jeans (made in Singapore) and tennis shoes (made in Korea).

After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (made in India) he sat down with his computer (made in Germany) and continued his search for a good paying American Job. At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (made in Brazil) and poured himself a glass a wine (made in France) and turned on his TV (made in Indonesia), and then wondered why he can’t find a good paying job in … America.

"It’s in the book.

—Jim Nelson

If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

—Harry S. Truman

A

D id you know?

Bamboos can grow up to three feet in a twenty-four-hour period.

The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monuments.

"Some people consider the one-dollar bill unlucky because there are so many thirteens on it: thirteen stars, thirteen steps, thirteen arrows, and the olive branch has thirteen leaves on it.

"The Mona Lisa, one of the most famous oil painting of all time, wasn’t painted on canvas but on a 77cm x 53cm piece of poplar wood.

The only real person on a Pes dispenser was Betsy Ross.

Time brings all things to pass.

—Aeschylus

The shortest distance between two points is

always under construction.

—Noelie Alito

Why does man kill? He kills for food, and not only food,

frequently there must be a beverage.

—Woody Allen

Trust in God, but lock your car.

—Anonymous

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then,

is not an act, but a habit.

—Aristotle

Abbreviations of the United States and Canada

Canada Territories

Abbreviations

(Common Everyday Abbreviations)

AKA: Also Known As

ATF: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms & Explosives

BTU: (British Thermal Unit)-Technically the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water to one degree Fahrenheit. This term is used to indicate the capacity of heating and cooling systems.

CAD: Computer-Aided Design

CAT (scan): Computerized Axial Tomography

CIA: Central Intelligence Agency

COD: Cash on Delivery

DEA: Drug Enforcement Agency

DNA: Deoxyribonucleic Acid (gene codes)

EPA: Environmental Protection Agency

FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation

FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency

FDA: Federal Drug Agency

FOB: Free on Board (freight term)

GOP: Grand Old Party (Republican Party)

HVAC: Heating, Venting, Air Conditioning

IRA: Individual Retirement Account

KGB: Komiter Gosudarstvennoi Bezpasnosti (Committee of State Security) Russia

LASER: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

MASH: Mobile Army Surgical Hospital

NAFTA: North America Free Trade Agreement

NAACP: The National Association for the Advancement of Color People

NASA: National Aeronautical and Space Administration

NEMA: National Electrical Manufacturers Association

NIST: National Institute of Standards and Technology

OEM: Original Equipment Manufacture

OSHA: Occupational Safety and Health Administration

PTA: Parent and Teachers Association

SEER: (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio). This compares the amount of cooling produced to the amount of electricity. The higher the number, the more efficient the equipment. Ten (10) SEER is the bottom of the scale.

SPCA: Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

USA: United States Army

USAF: United States Air Force

USDA: United States Department of Agriculture

US DOT: United States Department of Transportation

USMC: United States Marine Corps

USN: United States Navy

USO: United Service Organizations (military)

USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

American Can Sizes

British Liquid Measure

Weight

Animal Names

"Dogs come when they’re called; cats will take a message and get back to you later.

A group of small animals is normally called a litter.

A group of large animals is normally called an herd.

A group of adult cats is called a clutter or clowder of cats.

A group of adult bears is called a sloth.

A group of adult cattle is called a drove or herd.

A group of adult lions is called a pride.

A group of adult chickens is called a clutch or brood.

A group of adult dogs is called a pack.

A group of adult ducks is called a brace or herd.

A group of ferrets is called a business.

A group of adult foxes is called a skulk.

A group of adult goats is called a tribe or trip

A group of gnats is called an horde or cloud.

A group of leopards is called a leap of leopards.

A group of mosquitoes is called a scapula.

A group of adult monkeys is called a band or troop.

A group of adult sheep is called a flock, drove, or trip.

A group of adult swans is called a bevy.

A group of adult turkeys is called a group or flock.

A group of adult pigs is called a litter or swine.

A group of adult toads is called a knot of toads.

A group of adult whales is called a gam or pod.

A group of adult wolves is called a pack.

A group of adult elephants is called a herd.

The names cougar, mountain lion, puma, panther all refers to the same animal.

When a man’s best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

—Edward Abbey

Animal Trivia

"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.

—W. C. Fields

To: Jennifer

The SPCA stands for Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

A bat’s eyesight is very limited, so they use echolocation to fly and locate their prey, the sound can reach ninety decibels. Also, insects like the cicadas can produce sounds up to eighty-five decibels.

California leads all the United States in the number of turkeys raised.

There is more than thirty breeds of domestic cats in the world. An adult domestic cat has thirty teeth: four canines, twelve incisors, ten premolars and four molars.

Male seahorses carry the seahorse babies. The females make a deposit in the male abdomens and off they go.

Spiders have eight legs, four pairs. The main features that distinguishes them from insects that only have three pairs of legs.

A female peacock is called a peahen.

Fishing cats of northern India are excellent swimmers. Their main prey are fish and aquatic frogs, and snakes. They can scoop prey with its claws, or dive in the water and catch them. They are known to us as tigers.

It takes the average snail 115 days to travel a mile.

The world’s largest feline is the Siberian tiger. Researchers estimate that only a mere two hundred of these beautiful cats are living in the wild today. This tiger loves water, and they are able to swim for several miles; they can actually attack their prey from the water.

Vampire bats consume approximately five teaspoons of animal blood each day.

The common household cockroaches have remained virtually unchanged for about three hundred million years, they breathe through pores located on the sides of their bodies. Cockroaches are omnivores—that means they eat meat and vegetables. They can hold their breath for more than half an hour at a time and they can live nine days without their heads before they starves to death.

The first animal in space was a Russian dog named Laika (or Barker in English) put in orbit by a satellite named the Sputnik II, on November 3, 1957. She lived onboard a couple of days till the oxygen ran out. The satellite dropped out of orbit on April 14, 1985 and burned up entering the Earth’s atmosphere. She was honored on several Eastern bloc postage stamps.

An adult male komodo dragon can weigh over 250 pounds.

The Arctic Tern flies south every year, and it covers almost the distance from the North to the South Pole, eleven thousand miles in all, they fly further than any of the other birds.

Diadromous means that a fish can exist in both saltwater and fresh water.

A Feeding Solution for Humming Birds

Use four parts water to one part white granulated sugar. Boil the water first, remove it from heat, and then add the sugar, stirring until it is totally dissolved. Allow the solution to cool before adding it to the feeder. Keep all unused solution in the refrigerator. Hummingbird feeders should be red to attract the most birds. The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards.

Positioning Your Bird Feeder

If you have flowering plants that hummingbirds regularly visit, position your feeder near those plants. Place it at a good height to view the birds, and also to maintain the feeder. The sweet, syrupy solution can be sure to attract ants, wasps, and bees. Petroleum jelly applied on and around the openings will make it difficult for the unwanted invaders to partake of the solution.

The Galapagos Islands is home to the marine iguana. These large lizards are the only lizards that swim in the sea, feeding on algae and seaweed. The giant tortoises living there can live to be more than two hundred years old.

The roadrunner is the state bird of New Mexico and can run up to twenty miles per hour. It is also known as the chaparral bird.

Birds have two stomachs.

The swordfish and sailfish are the fastest swimming fish, at speeds up to sixty miles per hour.

Amphibians have three-chambered hearts compared to humans that have four.

Earthworms have five pairs of hearts.

The average 1½ pound lobster is about eight years old, they can live to about fifty years old and weigh up to thirty-five pounds.

A caterpillar has four thousand muscles, more than five times as many as humans.

The only vertebrates (animals with a spinal cord) that are known to be able to regrow an entire lost limb as an adult are the newts and salamanders (lizards).

The average cow belches about thirty-five cubic feet of gas a day.

Camels can go up to two weeks without water, but when they do drink, they can drink more than twenty gallons of water at one time. Camel humps are made up of fat, it’s not used to store water.

A pig has four toes on each leg, two of which touch the ground.

Dingoes are wild dogs native to Australia; they were there before the British, when they first arrived some two hundred years ago. Mating with domesticated dogs over the years, a large percentage of these dingoes have been domesticated. Like the wolves in North America, Australia still have wild dingoes.

The roar of a tiger can be heard over a mile away.

Monarch butterflies fly south in the winter, one of the most prominent roosting spots is in the Oyamel forests high in the mountains of Mexico. The monarchs travel up to three thousand miles to reach these mountains by November. By the end of December approximately one hundred million butterflies will have gathered in these mountains.

A newborn baby giraffe is approximately six feet tall. The hearts of adult giraffes can weigh more than twenty pounds. The gestation period of a giraffe ranges from 420 to 468 days.

The peregrine falcon is the world’s fastest animal.

The animal that has the best hearing of all land animals is the barn owl. Even though its ears are not directly visible, it can pick up the faint sounds of a mouse walking across a log from hundreds of feet away.

The albatross is the only animal that can safely drink seawater.

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor, exchange information ceaselessly.

The last known passenger pigeon died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

Scientists have identified more than thirty thousand species of spiders. All spiders have fangs and produce silk. Spiders have been found living near the top of Mount Everest, in the desert, and even on the continent of Antarctica.

The common garden snail can travel at a rate of .03 miles per hour.

Sericulture, or the process of producing raw silk by raising silkworms, has been around since at least 2500 BC.

Ostriches have only two toes on each foot. One ostrich egg weighs three pounds on average which is equal to approximately two dozen chicken eggs. The ostrich’s eye is larger than their brain. Ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand when they’re frightened.

No two zebras have the exact same stripe pattern.

The giant squid is the largest creature without a backbone; it weighs up to 2.5 tons and grows up to fifty-five feet long. They also have the largest eyes, each a foot or more in diameter.

Giant octopi have the largest brain of all invertebrates and can actually leave the water for a small amount of time and hunt for food on land.

The last dodo bird was spotted in 1681. This large, flightless, and a-little-larger-than-turkey-sized bird (with yellow feet) was given the name dodo, Once lived on Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean.

Sponges are animals, and they can be found living in waters as deep as twenty-nine thousand feet, and there are almost three thousand varieties in the world.

Pigs can run a 7.5 minute mile.

Guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) did not originate in Guinea, and they are not even pigs. They are rodents, the same family as mice and hamsters.

Hares are called rabbits, but rabbits are not hares. Hares are bigger than rabbits and have longer rear legs. They also have larger ears, and they don’t live in the ground like rabbits do, they make a nest in the grass and bushes.

The normal body temperature for a horse is 100.5 °F

A domestic cat has eighteen claws: five on each of its front paws and four on each of its back paws.

Arthropod family means jointed footor jointed leg. Crabs, lobsters, barnacles, spiders, and centipedes are all arthropods; all insects are arthropods. They all have segmented bodies and a hard exoskeleton. This exoskeleton is made up of a polysaccharide called chitin. Arthropods must molt (lose their shell) periodically in order to grow larger.

"Male and female reindeers have antlers. In all other species of deer, only the male have antlers.

Baby chicks do breathe inside the egg. An eggshell may look solid, but it actually has nearly eight thousand pores that are large enough for oxygen to flow in and carbon dioxide to flow out. Chickens that are raised for processing are usually butchered after seven or eight weeks of life. If kept away from the frying pan, they would live for about eight years.

Ordinary chickens have at least twenty-five different calls and they use them in some language-like ways, and they can communicate directly with each other

Dogs were the first animals to be domesticated about one hundred thousand years ago in Africa. Pigs were domesticated about nine thousand years ago.

It is not true that dogs are completely color blind. While dogs do not have the same color vision as humans, they are able to tell yellow from blue.

The main food of mosquitoes is nectar from flowers, not your blood. Only female mosquitoes bite us, they need it for protein to help them to lay their eggs. Most mosquitoes live no more than two weeks once they reach adulthood. A mosquito beat its wings up to six hundred times per second

Custer State Park has one of the world’s largest herds of buffalo. The South Dakota Park’s 1,500 buffaloes weigh as much as two thousand pounds each.

The real Tasmanian Devil is a marsupial that measures about three feet across at adulthood, is stoutly built, and has pointy ears, which flush reddish purple when the animal is provoked, and has very sharp teeth. The only place they can be found is on the island of Tasmania (south of Australia).

The only time an albatross comes ashore is to breed, they sleep floating on the ocean surface.

Songbirds can sing with two voices at once; through evolution the syrinx has moved into the bronchi and split in two. That’s why songbirds can make such rich sounds. With two syrinxes, they can sing in harmony with themselves. Some songbirds rehearse melodies in their sleep.

The biggest turkey known to man weighed in at eighty-six pounds. It was raised in the United Kingdom. Most domesticated turkeys weigh between fourteen to forty-five pounds. The wild turkey is one of the world’s fastest birds; they can fly short distances at speeds up to fifty-five miles per hour and can run nearly thirty miles per hour. Domesticated turkeys cannot fly. The loose red skin that hangs below their beaks is called the wattle. The snood is the red skin that starts at the base of the turkey’s beak and hangs over the top.

Mammals

A marsupial is a mammal in which an underdeveloped baby completes its development in their mother’s pouch, located on their mommy’s tummy. Animals like the kangaroos and opossums are marsupials.

Koalas are not bears! Koalas are more closely related to kangaroos they’re also marsupials.

‘Koala is the Aborigine word for no drink. Koalas earned their name because they spend most, if not all, of their time in the trees and are never seen drinking (scientists believe that koalas get all their water needs met by consuming eucalyptus leaves).

Placental animals reach development inside their mothers. Mammals like humans, dogs, and monkeys are placental animals.

Alligators can only be found in the southeastern United States and in some parts of China. Crocodiles can be found all over the world.

The songs of humpback whales have been measured at 170 decibels underwater, which is equivalent to 144 decibels in the air, louder than a jet engine, which blasts 140 decibels at full throttle. The loudest are the blue whales, whose ear-splitting melodies can reach 188 decibels underwater or 162 decibels in the air.

Polar bears’ sense of smell is one hundred times greater than humans.

Hippopotamus means river horse." Hippos are dangerous to humans. In fact, they kill more people in Africa each year than any other animal.

Bears do not get stung when they rip open a bee hive to indulge stealing honey, because the bees’ stingers cannot penetrate the bear’s thick fur.

An adult elephant’s heart beats about twenty-five to thirty times a minute, a very small bird heart beats about one thousand times a minute, and a field mouse heart that beats five hundred times a minute! This is compared to an adult human heart that beats about seventy-six beats a minute. A female African elephant can be pregnant for twenty-two to twenty-four months. The average full-grown elephant’s trunk is eight feet long and weighs about three hundred pounds. It contains more than one hundred thousand muscles and no bones.

Recently Discovered Animals

A new species of a wild pig was discovered in Brazil’s Amazon named Pecan Maximus in 2007.

Canthaxantin, a Vitamin A—like chemical found in the soda lakes where flamingo feed makes them look pink. Away from the