Uncle John's Weird Weird World: Who, What, Where, When, and Wow!

By Bathroom Readers' Institute

Beauty pageants, bad musicals, bizarre diseases, and more: it’s all covered in this collection of fascinating trivia and full-color pictures!
 
It’s finally here: the book that Uncle John’s fans have been asking for: a full-color, illustrated edition featuring the most entertaining articles from the world’s bestselling bathroom trivia series! Hundreds of eye-popping photographs add a new dimension to Uncle John’s unique blend of trivia, humor, origins, history, science, and oddities. All the reader favorites are included—including dumb crooks, weird news, flubbed headlines, strange lawsuits, quirky quotations—and more. Now they pop off the pages like never before! So stimulate your visual cortexes as you read about . . .
 
•Weird Beauty Pageants
•40 Odd Uses for WD-40
•“Bagpiper’s Fungus” and other bizarre diseases
•The Wild World of Weird Sports
•The “putrified forest” at Tennessee’s Body Farm
•The origins of Monopoly, the lava lamp, computer viruses, and B movies
•World records that are so risky, Guinness won’t even report them
•The all-time dumbest business decisions
•Harrowing stories from history, including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the Pilgrims’ uncomfortable ride on the Mayflower
•The Toxic Travel Guide
•How to cook with roadkill, get your TV show on the air, and more
•Whatever happened to Nikola Tesla’s death ray?
•Real-life superheroes . . . and much, much more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781626861800

Bathroom Readers' Institute

The Bathroom Readers' Institute is a tight-knit group of loyal and skilled writers, researchers, and editors who have been working as a team for years. The BRI understands the habits of a very special market—Throne Sitters—and devotes itself to providing amazing facts and conversation pieces.

Book preview

Introduction

You are about to enter Uncle John’s Weird, Weird World!

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, we’ve been amassing incredible information and sharing it with our loyal fans for nearly 30 years. Our mission: To search the ethosphere for surprising facts, obscure information, forgotten history, little-known origins, odd news, head-scratching science, crazy quotes, wordplay, and whatever else we can find that we think you’ll enjoy (in whatever room you choose to enjoy it). Our credo: "A Bathroom Reader is like life. Turn to any page—you never know what you’re gonna get."

So who is this Uncle John character? I’m just a regular guy who happens to have an obsession for trivia and a brain like a sponge. I love to share my knowledge with others whenever I can, which also makes me very lucky…because I get to share it with you.

Accompanying me on this crazy journey is my ragtag band of fellow knowledge hounds, collectively known as the Bathroom Readers’ Institute. We spend our days scouring books, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, and even bathroom walls to find good reading material. Then we boil it down into easily digestible chunks of information, and serve it to you on these pages.

So far, we’ve churned out more than 100 editions and sold nearly 20 million books. An impressive feat to be sure, but what we’ve accomplished in Weird, Weird World surprised even us.

This time, we decided to add something new to the mix: pictures! Scores of our faithful fans have been asking us to do this for years. And now that we finally have, I can’t believe it took us so long! We’re really pleased with the results, and hope that you will be, too. We’re already hard at work on our next big illustrated edition.

Hopefully, what you’ll find in this book will make you smile, make you gasp, make you smarter, and make you as addicted to obscure information as we are. Because one thing we can promise is that we’ll keep making these books as long as you keep loving them.

As we say at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute…

Go with the Flow!

—Uncle John and the BRI staff

Our Hero

You’re My Inspiration

It’s always interesting to find out where the architects of pop culture get their ideas. These may surprise you.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

In the 1920s, England’s two biggest chocolate makers, Cadbury and Rowntree, tried to steal trade secrets by sending spies into each others’ factories, posed as employees. Result: Both companies became highly protective of their chocolate-making process. When Roald Dahl was 13, he worked as a taste-tester at Cadbury. The secretive policies and the giant, elaborate machines inspired the future author to write his book about chocolatier Willy Wonka.

The Marlboro Man

Using a cowboy to pitch the cigarette brand was inspired when ad execs saw a 1949 Life magazine photo—a close-up of a weather-worn Texas rancher named Clarence Hailey Long, who wore a cowboy hat and had a cigarette in his mouth.

Napoleon Dynamite

Elvis Costello used it as a pseudonym on his 1986 album Blood and Chocolate. Scriptwriter Jeremy Coon met a street person in New York who said his name was Napoleon Dynamite. Coon liked the name, and unaware of the Costello connection, used it for the lead character in his movie.

The Odd Couple

In 1962 TV writer Danny Simon got divorced and moved in with another divorced man. Simon was a neat freak, while his friend was a slob. Simon’s brother, playwright Neil Simon, turned the situation into The Odd Couple. (Neil says Danny inspired at least nine other characters in his plays.)

Charlie the Tuna

The Leo Burnett Agency created Charlie for StarKist Tuna in 1961. Ad writer Tom Rogers based him on a beatnik friend of his (that’s why he wears a beret) who wanted to be respected for his good taste.

The highly respected Rodney Dangerfield

I Don’t Get No Respect

After seeing The Godfather in 1972, comedian Rodney Dangerfield noticed that all the characters did the bidding of Don Corleone out of respect. Dangerfield just flipped the concept.

Three people die annually from using their tongue to check if a battery works.

Missed It by One Letter

It’s a good thing that we at the BRI never make any typos, or it would be really embarrassing to call out these folks for getting one little letter rong.

• Michigan election officials missed it by one letter in 2006 when they printed 180,000 mail-in ballots that used the word pubic where public should have been. By the time the error was caught (by an election clerk after a professional proofreader missed it), 10,000 ballots had already been mailed out. The remaining 170,000 ballots were reprinted at taxpayers’ expense. Total cost: $40,000. A similar—and possibly worse—error occurred on a billboard in Southbend, Indiana.

• Pedro Urzua Lizana missed it by one letter when he chiseled a new design for Chile’s 50-peso coin in 2008. In his rush to finish on time, he accidentally left off the bottom stroke of the L in CHILE. Result: 1.5 million coins—all in circulation—are inscribed with REPUBLIC DE CHIIE. Lizana was fired.

• David Beckham missed it by one letter when he gave the Hindi translation of his wife’s name to a tattoo artist. It was supposed to be Victoria, but instead it said Vihctoria, which is what ended up (in huge letters) on the soccer star’s left forearm.

• Eric Schmidt missed it by one letter on his business card when he called himself Chariman of the Executive Committee. (If you missed it, read that first word again.) If only there were some Internet search engine that he could have used to find a good spell-checking program. (Schmidt was the CEO of Google.)

• The Georgia Department of Labor missed it by one letter when a clerk sent a business license application to a carpet-cleaning company called Rug Suckers. But the package wasn’t addressed to Rug Suckers—it was…something very naughty. The company’s owner, Pepper Powell, called the Labor Department to complain, only to be told by the clerk, I understood you to say that the company’s name was Rug *uckers. I asked you twice and you replied, ‘Yes, it was.’ Powell told the clerk that he would never dream of giving his company such a foul name. What would be the point? Georgia Labor officials agreed. They issued an apology and reprimanded the worker.

• Stratford Hall , a personalized holiday card company, missed it by one letter on the cover of its 2007 catalog: Reliability: always upholding the highest standards for every detal.

• The Victoria, B.C., Parks and Rec Department missed it by one letter when it unveiled a statue of Emily Carr (1871–1945), an influential post-impressionist landscape painter and a hometown hero. Apparently nobody proofread the plaque that accompanies the $400,000 statue, which is cast with this inscription: Dedicated to honour Victoria’s best know citizen.

• KTXL-FOX40 Sacramento missed it by one letter in 2011 when it ran a graphic during a breaking news story that read Obama Bin Laden Dead.

• The Torrance Press , a newspaper in Southern California, missed it by one letter on a two-page advertisement: Sleeping on a Sealy Is Like Sleeping on a Clod. Sealy terminated their contract. (That was the ad department’s second chance with its potentially lucrative new client. A day earlier, the Torrance Press ran an ad that read, Sleeping on a Sealy Is Like Slipping on a Cloud.)

• E.S. Gaffney missed it by one letter while working at the U.S. Department of Energy. She submitted a proposal to an official whose last name is Prono, but Microsoft Word’s auto-correct feature changed it to Porno. Gaffney’s proposal was rejected.

A bowel full of brownies

• The Moscow–Pullman Daily News in Idaho missed it by one letter when it printed a recipe for a Bowel Full of Brownies. (Does that make it a typoo?)

If you’re average, you’ll produce about 10,000 gallons of saliva in your lifetime.

Misnomers

• The rare red coral of the Mediterranean is actually blue .

• The gray whale is actually black .

• Whale bone is actually made of baleen , a material from the whales’ upper jaws.

• The Atlantic salmon is actually a member of the trout family.

• A steel -jacketed bullet is actually made of brass .

• Heart burn is actually pyrosis, caused by the presence of gastric secretions, called reflux, in the lower esophagus .

• The Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea are both actually lakes .

• The horseshoe crab is more closely related to spiders and scorpions than crabs.

• The Douglas fir is actually a pine tree.

• Rip tides are actually currents .

Lava Lampology

It oozes, it undulates, it never stops…and it never goes away. Most people thought Lava Lamps had died and joined Nehru jackets in pop culture heaven. But no—they’re still around. Here’s a quick course on the history and science of lava lamps.

The essence of the lava lamp: a motion for every emotion

Egg-straordinary History

Shortly after leaving the Royal Air Force at the end of World War II, an Englishman named Edward Craven-Walker walked into a pub in Hampshire, England, and noticed an odd item sitting on the counter behind the bar. It was a glass cocktail shaker that contained some kind of mucous-like blob floating in liquid. The bartender told him it was an egg-timer.

Actually, the blob was a clump of solid wax in a clear liquid. You put the cocktail shaker in the boiling water with your egg, the bartender explained, and as the boiling water cooked the egg, it also melted the wax, turning it into an amorphous blob of goo. When the wax floated to the top of the jar, your egg was done.

Light Duty

Craven-Walker saw a money-making opportunity floating in front of him—he could turn the egg timer into a lamp and sell it to the public. He tracked down its inventor, a man known today only by his last name, Dunnet, only to find he had died—without patenting his invention. So Craven-Walker was able to patent it himself.

Craven-Walker spent the next 15 years perfecting the lamp so it could be mass-produced. In the meantime, he supported himself by making art-house films about his other passion: nudity. (In those days, pornography was illegal in many places, and the only way around the law was by making documentaries about nudism. Whether he was a genuine nudist or just a pornographer in disguise is open to interpretation.)

Coming to America

In 1964 Craven-Walker finished work on his lamp—a cylindrical vase he called the Astrolight—and introduced it at a novelty convention in Hamburg, West Germany, in 1965. Two Americans, Adolph Wert-heimer and Hy Spector, saw it and bought the American rights. They renamed it the Lava Lite and introduced it in the U.S., just in time for the psychedelic ’60s. Lava Lite sales peaked in the late sixties, Jane and Michael Stern write in The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, when the slow-swirling colored wax happened to coincide perfectly with the undulating aesthetics of psychedelia….They were advertised as head trips that offered ‘a motion for every emotion.’

Austin Powers, international man of mystery and lover of the lava lamp (Mike Myers | New Line Cinema | Warner Bros)

Floating Up…and Down…and Up…

At their peak, more than seven million Lava Lites (the English version was called a Lava Lamp) were sold around the world each year, but by the early 1970s, the fad had run its course and sales fell dramatically. By 1976 sales were down to 200 lamps a week, a fraction of what they had been a few years before. By the late 1980s, however, sales began to rebound. As style makers began to ransack the sixties for inspiration, Lava Lites came back, Jane and Michael Stern write. Formerly dollar-apiece fleamarket pickings, original Lava Lites—particularly those with paisley, pop art, or homemade trippy motifs on their bases—became real collectibles in the late eighties, selling in chic boutiques for more than a brand new one. Not that brand-new ones were hurting for business—by 1998 manufacturers in England and the U.S. were selling more than 2 million a year.

Lava Light Science

Only the companies that make lava lights know precisely what chemicals are in the lamp, and in what combination—the recipe is a trade secret. But the principles at work are pretty easy to understand:

• When the lamp is turned off and at room temperature, the waxy lava substance is slightly heavier than the liquid it’s in. That’s why the wax is slumped in a heap at the bottom.

• When you switch on the bulb and it begins to heat the fluid, the wax melts and expands to the point where it is slightly lighter than the fluid. That’s what causes the lava to rise.

• As the wax rises, it moves farther away from the bulb, and cools just enough to make it heavier than the fluid again. This causes the lava to fall back toward the bulb, where it starts to heat up again, and the process repeats itself.

• The lava also contains chemicals called surfactants that make it easier for the wax to break into blobs and squish back together."

• It is this precise chemical balancing act that makes manufacturing the lamps such a challenge. Every batch has to be individually matched and tested, says company chemist John Mundy. Then we have to balance it so the wax won’t stick. Otherwise, it just runs up the side or disperses into tiny bubbles.

Lava, up close and personal

Troubleshooting

What if you have a vintage lava lamp, but can’t get it to work right? No problem. The Internet is full of lava light lovers. Here are sample queries we found on the website www.OozingGoo.com:

Q: I have an older style lamp that I bought in the late ’70s. It was in storage, but I came across it last year, and I’ve been using it from time to time. It was working fine, until it was knocked over (darned cats). Nothing broke, but now, the liquid has gone cloudy. Is there anything I can do? I don’t want to get rid of it, but it’s not as enjoyable any more.

A: Sorry. I’m afraid you can’t fix it, but you can buy a replacement bottle in a range of colors. (Order through the website.)

Q: My son went to college, and his lava lamp was turned off for a year. Now it won’t work. The red lava is lying at the base like a can of worms, and there seems to be some metallic substance/rings in the lava. There is also one-half inch of fluid missing from the lamp. Can this lamp be fixed?

A: STOP! DON’T MESS WITH IT! You may not even have a problem. The liquid is supposed to be about one-half inch down— it gives room for expansion due to heat. Are you sure you have the right bulb? 40 watt frosted appliance. Leave the lamp on for long periods—4 hours each day for a week—sometimes they come back. Good luck!

Finland is rated the cleanest country in the world.

Flush Before You Fly

China Southern Airlines was losing money, so they found a new way to save fuel—but it depended entirely on their customers’ cooperation. At the airport, customers are asked to go to the bathroom before they board the plane. Why? Because every time an airplane toilet flushes, it uses up to a liter of fuel. The energy used in one flush is enough for an economical car to run at least 10 kilometers, says pilot Liu Zhiyuan, who always does his business on the ground before doing it in the air.

Splish Splash I Was Taking a Bath

A Russian couple were relaxing in the living room of their apartment after dinner one evening. At the same time, in the apartment directly above, a woman was relaxing in her bathtub, soaking in the warm water, her head back, eyes closed, thoughts meandering, starting to doze offffff…creeeak…CRACK! (crumble crumble) CRASH! EEEEE-Ahhhhggh! THUD! After the tub and ceiling plaster landed on the floor below, the woman looked up out of the tub to see the couple staring at her in bewilderment. She later told reporters, They seemed as shocked as I was when they saw me lying there. Naked. In the bath. In the middle of their living room.

Snap, Crackle…Flop

Wheaties and Rice Krispies have taken up permanent residency in America’s breakfast bowls—these forgotten cereals, not so much.

Fruit Brute: General Mills debuted a line of five monster cereals in the 1970s: Franken Berry, Yummy Mummy, Count Chocula, Boo Berry, and Fruit Brute. The biggest flop of the bunch: Fruit Brute. But it has a cool factor—filmmaker Quentin Tarantino collects old cereals, and his personal box of Fruit Brute has appeared in his movies Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

Graham Crackos: Kellogg’s released this graham-cracker-flavored cereal in the late 1970s, a few years before the crack-cocaine epidemic that hit American cities. In light of this, old commercials for Crackos become unsettling. In one, a character named George arrives at a suburban house to deliver a box of Crackos to a family. In the background, a cheery balladeer sings, Something new is comin’ to town, George the Milkman is bringin’ it ’round. After the mother takes a bite, she asks George if the cereal will help slow her kids down. Long enough for them to eat, he replies.

Mr. T Cereal: Based on the fool-pitying strong-man’s animated self in Mister T, his early-1980s cartoon show, it was made up of crispy corn chunks shaped like the letter T. Essentially, Mr. T Cereal was a clone of Alpha-Bits, but with just one letter.

Ice Cream Jones

Ice Cream Cones: Available in two flavors, chocolate-chip or vanilla, this cereal consisted of crunchy puffs and sugary cones. The brand—which featured a smiling cartoon character named Ice Cream Jones who delivered the cereal to kids on a bicycle—disappeared within a year of its 1987 debut, possibly because parents didn’t fall for the claim that the ice cream-flavored cereal contained four wholesome grains and eight essential vitamins!

Prince of Thieves: This cash-in on the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves had a couple of problems: 1) Manufacturer Ralston-Purina couldn’t get the rights to Thieves star Kevin Costner’s likeness, so they had to put a generic Robin Hood image on the box, and 2) the cereal was supposed to look like little arrows…but came out resembling a certain part of the male anatomy.

It costs the U.S. Treasury 1.73¢ to make and distribute a penny.

Strange Animal Lawsuits

In the Middle Ages, it was not unusual for animals to be put on trial as if they could understand human laws. These lawsuits were serious affairs.

Weevil

The Plaintiffs: Vineyard growers in St.-Julien, France

The Defendants: Weevils

The Lawsuit: In 1545 angry growers testified to a judge that the weevils were eating and destroying their crops. According to reports: Legal indictments were drawn, and the insects were actually defended in court.

The Verdict: Since the weevils were obviously eating the crops, they were found guilty. In 1546 a proclamation was issued by the judge demanding that the weevils desist…and amazingly, they did. The farmers weren’t bothered by weevils again until 1587. Once more, the insects were put on trial; however, the outcome is unknown.

A French tapestry from the early 1500s shows noblemen and women treading and pressing grapes to make wine.

The Plaintiffs: The people of Mayenne, France

The Defendants: Mosquitoes

The Lawsuit: In the 1200s, a swarm of mosquitoes were indicted as a public nuisance by the people of the town. When the bugs failed to answer the summons, the court appointed a lawyer to act on their behalf.

The Verdict: The lawyer did such a good job pleading their case that the court took pity. The judge banished them, but gave them a patch of real estate outside town where they would be allowed to swarm in peace forever.

The Plaintiffs: Barley growers in Autun, France

The Defendants: Rats

The Lawsuit: In 1510 the rodents were charged with burglary, having eaten and destroyed the barley crop. A young lawyer named Bartholomew de Chassenee was appointed to defend them. When the rats failed to appear in court, Chassenee successfully argued that since the case involved all the rats of the diocese (the area under jurisdiction of one bishop), all of them should be summoned. When the rats failed to appear again, Chassenee argued that it was because they were scared by evilly disposed cats which were in constant watch along the highways. Since, by law, the rats were entitled to protection to and from court, the plaintiffs should be required to post a bond that would be forfeited if the cats attacked the rats on their way to court.

The Verdict: Unknown, but the publicity gave Chassenee the reputation as one of France’s greatest lawyers.

The Plaintiff: The city of Basel, Switzerland

The Defendant: A rooster

The Lawsuit: In 1474 the rooster was accused of being (or helping) a sorcerer. The reason, according to the prosecutor: It had laid eggs…and as everyone knows, an egg laid by a rooster is prized by sorcerers. On top of that, it was shown that Satan employed witches to hatch such eggs, from which proceeded winged serpents most dangerous to mankind. The rooster’s lawyer admitted it had laid an egg, but contended that no injury to man or beast had resulted. And besides, laying an egg is an involuntary act, he said, so the law shouldn’t punish it.

The Verdict: The judge refused to allow the lawyer’s argument and declared the rooster guilty of sorcery. Both the unfortunate fowl and the egg it had allegedly laid were burned at the stake.

The Plaintiffs: The Grand Vicar of Valence, France

The Defendants: Caterpillars inhabiting his diocese

The Lawsuit: In 1584 the Grand Vicar excommunicated the insects for causing destruction to crops, and ordered them to appear before him. When they didn’t appear, a lawyer was appointed to defend them.

The Verdict: The lawyer argued his case, but lost. The caterpillars were banished from the diocese. When the caterpillars failed to leave, the trial continued until the short-lived caterpillars died off. The Vicar was then credited with having miraculously exterminated them.

Bizarre Beasties

Short-Order Cook

Kanzi is a 31-year-old bonobo (a pygmy chimpanzee) who lives at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa. Under the tutelage of Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, the primate can understand 3,000 words and say 500 words by pointing at symbols. But Kanzi’s most amazing ability is that he cooks his own food. It started when he was young. Said Savage-Rumbaugh, "Kanzi used to watch the film Quest for Fire… about early man struggling to control fire. He watched it spellbound over and over." Then she taught the bonobo how to light a match. Now (with human supervision) Kanzi can pan-fry his own hamburgers and roast marshmallows on a stick.

Beauties on the Quack Walk

The Duck Fashion Show is exactly what it sounds like: Ducks wear fancy outfits, including little hats, and waddle up and down a catwalk to the delight of onlookers. Duck handler Brian Harrington has been dressing up his Pied Piper Ducks since the 1980s. He takes them to agricultural fairs throughout Australia, where the not-so-ugly ducklings show off the latest quack fashions—including evening wear, bridal wear, and off to the races. They’re always a big hit.

Kids as young as seven can join the Society of American Magicians.

Earth’s Greatest Hits

Every so often a hunk of rock hurtles out of the sky and slams into our planet, creating a gigantic hole and wreaking havoc. Here are some of the more impressive cosmic splats.

Barringer meteor crater

Chicxulub, Yucatán

About 65 million years ago, a giant meteor six miles wide splashed down in the Caribbean region of Mexico. It probably split in two shortly before impact. The result: two craters that are a combined 102 miles in diameter. The meteors fell in a sulfur-rich area of the Yucatán Peninsula, kicking up billions of tons of poisonous dust. The sky all over the world was dark for six months, making global temperatures drop below freezing. That climate change, according to most scientists, caused the extinction of half the Earth’s existing species…including the dinosaurs.

Grand Tetons, Wyoming

In 1972 a 1,000-ton meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere high above the Grand Tetons at a very shallow angle and then skipped back out into space like a stone skipping off the surface of a lake (but not before being recorded by Air Force and tourist photographers). If it had gone all the way through the atmosphere, it would have hit Canada and the impact would have rocked the area with a blast the size of the Hiroshima A-bomb.

Tunguska, Siberia

On June 30, 1908, Russian settlers north of Lake Baikal saw a giant fireball streak across the sky. Moments later a blinding flash lit up the sky, followed by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet 40 miles away. The blast was estimated to be more than 10 megatons, toppling 60 million trees over an area of 830 square miles. What was startling about the Tunguska blast was that there was no crater, which led to speculation about the blast: A black hole passing through the Earth? The annihilation of a chunk of antimatter falling from space? An exploding alien spaceship? Research ultimately revealed that the devastation was caused by a meteor about 450 feet in diameter that exploded four to six miles above the ground. If it had landed on a city, no one would have survived.

Barringer Meteor Crater, Arizona

Located in the middle of the desert, this crater is important because it was the first one on Earth positively identified as the result of a falling meteor. The meteorite that made the crater was about 150 feet in diameter, weighed about 300,000 tons, and was traveling at a speed of 40,000 mph when it landed. The crater is three quarters of a mile wide and was named for D. M. Barringer, the mining engineer who correctly identified it. He also believed that the actual meteorite was still lodged below the Earth’s surface and could be mined for its iron content. (He died before studies revealed that it had vaporized on impact.) Scientists say a meteor of this size can be expected to hit the Earth every 50,000 years. Since this one fell to Earth about 49,000 years ago, we could be due for another one soon.

Look out below! A meteor hurtling through the upper atmosphere.

Meteor Facts

• So far 150 impact craters have been identified on the Earth’s surface.

• Oldest crater on Earth: Vredefort Crater in South Africa. It’s two billion years old.

• Meteors the size of a basketball hit Earth once a month.

• More than 25,000 meteors bigger than 3.5 ounces hit every year.

• Meteors as large as the one that hit Tunguska impact the Earth every 100 years or so. Bigger explosions, the size of the largest H-bombs, take place about once every 1,000 years.

• Terminology: In space it’s a meteor; on the ground, it’s a meteorite.

• A large meteorite is always cold to the touch. The outer layers are burned off from its trip through the atmosphere; the inner layers retain the cold of deep space.

• In 1994 the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into the atmosphere of Jupiter, generating an explosion the equivalent of 300 trillion tons of TNT. The comet was estimated to be three miles in diameter; the hole it made was larger than Earth. If it had hit our planet instead of Jupiter…well, you do the math.

The iVoodoo application lets you use your iPhone as a voodoo doll.

But That’s Not What He Said!

Because quoting what other people say is often like playing a game of telephone, what ends up in our collective memory often isn’t exactly what the speaker said.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx

He supposedly said: Religion is the opiate of the masses.

But actually: Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people, is what Marx really said. The misquote implies that Marx believed religion drugs people. The full quote suggests that Marx had a better understanding of why many people flock to religion.

The Tarzan family calling Cheeta to come for dinner

Tarzan

He supposedly said: Me Tarzan, you Jane.

But actually: This line was never uttered in any Tarzan film, nor in the original Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. The quote stems from an interview in which Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller made up the line as a comment on the films’ simplistic dialogue.

John Kerry

He supposedly said: Who among us doesn’t like NASCAR?

But actually: This quote was well circulated during the 2004 presidential election, often characterizing Senator Kerry as awkward, out of touch, and pandering to blue-collar voters. Turns out that when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd mocked Kerry for the quote in a March 2004 column, it was the first time the quote had ever appeared. Dowd had just made it up.

Sgt. Joe Friday (Jack Webb)

He supposedly said: Just the facts, ma’am.

But actually: On the TV show Dragnet, the no-nonsense cop said, All we want are the facts, ma’am. Satirist Stan Freberg spoofed the show on the 1953 hit record St. George and the Dragonet, in which he says, I just want to get the facts, ma’am. It was Freberg’s line, not Webb’s, that became synonymous with the show.

William Congreve

He supposedly said: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

But actually: Close, but not quite. In his 1697 poem The Mourning Bride, Congreve wrote: Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned/ Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

Adm. David Farragut

He supposedly said: Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

But actually: According to The Yale Book of Quotations, the Civil War admiral never uttered this famous rallying cry at the Battle of Mobile Bay in