Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids Read Online Free Page B

Byron
    â€œWhat a crude, immoral, vulgar, and senseless work Hamlet is.”
    â€”Leo Tolstoy
    â€œEnormous dunghill.”
    â€”Voltaire

Put a Sock in It
    A company called Aetrex makes GPS-enabled shoes for tracking Alzheimer’s patients. The shoes send a signal when the wearer roams out of a preset range.
    According to a Chinese wedding custom, tossing one of the bride’s red shoes from the roof ensures happiness.
    For much of 2008, actress Natalie Portman had her own line of eco-friendly “vegan” shoes (not made of leather or animal glues). The economic downturn that year, however, drove the company that made them out of business.
    George Washington’s shoes were size 13.
    In the shoe world, a clog is any shoe with a wooden sole. A klompen is a shoe that’s carved entirely of wood.
    The first zippers were put on shoes.
    Foot-binding in China deliberately deformed women’s feet from childhood, bending the toes under the soles, so they’d fit into tiny slippers.
    In a pinch, you can shine your shoes with banana peels or vegetable shortening.
    Until 1884, a shoe could be worn on either foot. The first store to sell boots matched into a left and right pair was Phil Gilbert’s Shoe Parlor in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

GR8 PL8s
    As early as 1884, license plates were used on horse-drawn carriages.
    The mayor of Boston’s official car had the same license plate number from 1914 to 1993: 576.
    Early license plates were made of porcelain, leather, or cardboard.
    In 1893, France became the first country to require license plates on cars.
    New York was the first state to require license plates, in 1901.
    19 states don’t require front license plates, just back ones.
    New Hampshire’s license plate slogan is “Live Free or Die”…and they’re stamped out by inmates at the state prison.
    Virginia has the highest percentage of vanity plates at 16.1 percent, followed by New Hampshire (14 percent), Illinois (13.4 percent) and Nevada (8.2 percent). Texas has the fewest (just 5 percent).
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    UM…YUM?
    The most popular pie dish in ancient Rome was placenta. But it’s not as gross as it sounds—the human organ was actually named because it resembled this dessert, a sort of cheesecake pie.

Outbreak!
    Influenza means “influence” in Italian. The illness was so named because doctors in 1743 believed its spread was under the influence of certain “evil” stars and constellations.
    Almost all flu viruses first infect chickens, then pigs, and then spread to humans, mutating along the way. But the “chicken flu” of 1997 made medical news because it jumped directly from birds to humans, bypassing pigs.
    People typically begin spreading the flu a day before they show any symptoms.
    In 2003 a British fan claimed that Paul McCartney had given him the flu and tried to sell his germs on eBay. The bidding reached just $1.83 before eBay took down the offer.
    Despite what you’ve heard, people with the flu often do sneeze and have runny noses. In many cases, even doctors have difficulty distinguishing the flu from a cold.
    The “Spanish” flu didn’t come from Spain. It began in Kansas in 1918, and America’s soldiers spread it worldwide during World War I. But the disease got its name because Spain, as a neutral country during the war, had a fairly unrestricted press that was free to report about the pandemic, which gave the world the impression that the disease was more deadly in Spain.
    Flu viruses can live up to 48 hours on hard metal or plastic surfaces. They can live 8 to 12 hours on dry porous surfaces like paper money, and only about 15 minutes on skin.
    The “stomach flu” or “24-hour flu” is not at all related to influenza.
    In general, older people were more protected against the 2009 swine flu outbreak than younger people, because many who had a flu illness before 1957 were