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    Weird-o-pedia: The Ultimate Book of Surprising Strange and Incredibly Bizarre Facts About (Supposedly) Ordinary Things
    Weird-o-pedia: The Ultimate Book of Surprising Strange and Incredibly Bizarre Facts About (Supposedly) Ordinary Things
    Weird-o-pedia: The Ultimate Book of Surprising Strange and Incredibly Bizarre Facts About (Supposedly) Ordinary Things
    Ebook220 pages2 hours

    Weird-o-pedia: The Ultimate Book of Surprising Strange and Incredibly Bizarre Facts About (Supposedly) Ordinary Things

    By Alex Palmer

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    Check out the weird and wonderful facts in this massive encyclopedia of alphabetized oddities:

  • HUMANS ARE THE ONLY ANIMALS THAT ENJOY SPICY FOOD (there’s a reason no one sells Tabasco-flavored cat food).

  • NAPPING CAN SAVE YOU FROM A HEART ATTACK (assuming you are not operating heavy machinery at the time).

  • PSYCHOLOGISTS CAN ASSESS YOUR PERSONALITY FROM HOW YOU DIP FRIES IN KETCHUP (nice fries, sociopath).

  • SURFING THE INTERNET ACTUALLY MAKES YOU SMARTER (but not as smart as reading this book will).


    • Now the next time someone tells you smugly that Pluto isn’t a planet, you can counter with any one of these hundreds of weird facts and remain king or queen of the cocktail (or kegger) chatter.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSkyhorse
    Release dateMay 11, 2012
    ISBN9781620873328
    Weird-o-pedia: The Ultimate Book of Surprising Strange and Incredibly Bizarre Facts About (Supposedly) Ordinary Things
    Author

    Alex Palmer

    Alex Palmer is a Canberra based novelist who took up writing full time when she was made redundant from the Australian Public Service. Her first crime novel Blood Redemption won the Ned Kelly for Best First Crime Novel and the Sisters-in-Crime Davitt Award for best crime novel by a woman.

    Read more from Alex Palmer

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      Book preview

      Weird-o-pedia - Alex Palmer

      Cover Page of Weird-o-PediaHalf Title of Weird-o-PediaTitle Page of Weird-o-Pedia

      Copyright © 2012 by Alex Palmer

      All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

      Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.

      Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

      Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Cover design by Jane Sheppard

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available on file.

      ISBN: 978-1-5107-2224-8

      eBook ISBN: 978-1-5107-2225-5

      Printed in China

      contents

      Introduction

      CHAPTER 1

      FOOD & DRINK

      (Apple Pie Whisky)

      CHAPTER 2

      LOVE & SEX

      (Arousal Valentine’s Day)

      CHAPTER 3

      FRIENDS & FAMILY

      (Babies Twins)

      CHAPTER 4

      MIND

      (Addiction Willpower)

      CHAPTER 5

      BODY

      (Belly Buttons Wrists)

      CHAPTER 6

      WORK

      (Bosses Work Schedule)

      CHAPTER 7

      PLAY

      (Baseball Writing)

      CHAPTER 8

      AROUND THE HOUSE

      (Bathroom Vacuuming)

      CHAPTER 9

      OUT & ABOUT

      (Air Travel Walking)

      CHAPTER 10

      INSECTS

      (Ants Worms)

      CHAPTER 11

      ANIMALS

      (Alligators Whales)

      CHAPTER 12

      NATURE

      (Air Weeds)

      Sources

      INTRODUCTION

      Wherever you happen to be right now, as you read this sentence, stop for a moment and look around.

      You may be lying in a park enjoying a nice sunny day, or on a crowded bus trying to block out a person next to you talking on his cell phone. You may be standing by a shelf in a bookstore, deciding whether the book in your hand is worth taking all the way to the cashier and purchasing. But whatever you are doing, look around.

      See something weird?

      Of course you do.

      It might not be weird like a two-headed Gila monster shuffling by in a tiny top hat, or a woman dressed as a giant raspberry doing backflips. It might just be a coffee mug, or an easy chair, or a dandelion. It could be something you’ve seen every day for years, and never thought of as anything but unremarkable.

      But it’s weird.

      We are surrounded by the bizarre, and the most mundane things in our lives are packed with surprises. This book tries to peel the normal away from so many everyday things, from the food we eat to the stuff we keep in our medicine cabinets, to reveal the strangeness underneath.

      That dust in your living room is actually making the air cleaner (see Dust, Chapter 8). The beer you had with dinner is a great way to help your body recover from a run (see Running, Chapter 7). The cell phone that guy on the bus is using contains about 18 times more dangerous germs than the flush handle in a public restroom (see Mobile Phones, Chapter 9).

      Below are hundreds of odd tidbits about the world around us, and the strange goings on happening inside our own minds and bodies. These facts may crack you up, get you thinking, or keep you up at night worrying about brain-eating amoebae (see Swimming, Chapter 7) or that in a matter of years bananas may cease to exist (see Bananas, Chapter 1).

      If you have any doubt about the accuracy of these curiosities, or want to read more, flip to the Sources section at the back of the book. You will find that as strange as they may sound, or as much as you would like to believe they could not possibly be true, these facts are as genuine as the book in your hand.

      Or the shoes on your feet.

      Or the zombie orb spider in your backyard, mindlessly following orders from the parasitic wasp babies growing inside of it (see Wasps, Chapter 10).

      CHAPTER 1

      FOOD & DRINK

      Weird facts about what you put in your body

      APPLE PIE

      Apple pie is not actually American. English apple pie recipes go back to the time of Chaucer, though these apple pies were baked in straight-sided, free-standing crusts, usually without sugar—quite a bit different from the pies that Americans celebrate today.

      The first cookbook written and published in America, Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery, or the art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables, and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards, and preserves, and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plum to plain cake: Adapted to this country, and all grades of life, from 1796, includes four recipes for apple pastries. That’s the same number given to all the other fruit pastries combined.

      Pie Town, New Mexico, is actually named in honor of the apple pies produced by a general store built there in the 1920s. When the authorities urged the Pie Towners to use a more conventional name, they refused, and some ninety years later, they are still proudly holding annual pie festivals each September.

      In 1934, Ritz introduced a recipe for Mock Apple Pie, a combination of sugar, lemon, cinnamon, and of course, Ritz crackers, that imitates the taste and texture of a real apple pie.

      As unappetizing as that sounds, it was popular during the years of deprivation during the Depression and World War II, and other mock dishes also took off. Mock maple syrup (brown sugar and water) and mock terrapin (chicken with eggs) were a few mock favorites.

      APPLES

      Each American eats an average of twenty pounds of apples a year. Germans eat an average of seventy-one pounds.

      There are over one thousand apple varieties marketed in the United States. If you’re feeling adventurous, put down that Granny Smith and try:

      *King Luscious

      *Ben Davis

      *Northern Spy

      *Westfield Seek-No-Further

      *Summer Rambo (no relation to Sylvester Stallone)

      *Maiden Blush

      *New York 429

      *Wealthy

      *Hubbardston Nonesuch

      When it comes to pesticide residue, apples are the most dangerous fruit. A survey by the anti-pesticide advocacy group Environmental Working Group found that apples, celery, and strawberries had the highest levels of pesticide residue when they got to the produce aisle.

      On a positive note, the group also offered a list of least-contaminated produce. Onion, sweet corn, and pineapple topped the list.

      BANANAS

      Bananas can’t reproduce. The beloved species of yellow fruit that holds a prominent place in supermarkets and fruit bowls everywhere, the Cavendish banana, is actually a seedless, impotent hybrid of two less appetizing plant species. Bananas have only been able to reproduce with the help of farmers, who remove and transplant part of the plant’s stem.

      This means we may soon be facing a banana apocalypse. Since the global cultivation of bananas has made them genetically identical to one another, bananas face increasing threats from pests and disease, which constantly evolve while bananas remain reliably, and maladaptively, the same. Researchers believe that within decades the Cavendish may no longer be viable for mass cultivation. So, enjoy that banana while it lasts.

      Banana peels make great water filters. An environmental chemist in Brazil found that banana peels contain nitrogen, sulfur, and carboxylic acids that bond to the heavy metals polluting water around industrial plants. Tossing a bunch of dried peels into Brazil’s copper- and lead-polluted Paraná River worked better than all the other filtering materials tested.

      BEER

      Brown bottles are better for beer than green or clear ones. Particularly for stouts, bocks, and other dark beers, the brown bottles protect the beer from the sun and other light exposure that can cause them to become light-struck (i.e., skunky). Since lighter beers absorb less sun than darker ones, it’s usually not a problem to keep them in clear bottles—but for the best beer protection, go brown.

      Cenosillicaphobia is the fear of an empty glass.

      Your body can break down about 0.5 ounces of alcohol per hour—about the amount found in can of beer. Five percent is processed through the kidney as urine, another five percent is exhaled through the lungs, and the rest is broken down into acetic acid through the liver.

      CHOCOLATE

      Chocolate is better than kissing. In a test done by Mind Lab, eating chocolate caused the twenty-something volunteers’ hearts to pound and brains to be stimulated longer and more intensely than when they kissed.

      The word chocolate comes from the Aztec word xocolatl, which means, bitter water.

      Chocolate is something of a miracle food, when enjoyed in small doses. Studies have found that regularly eating small portions of dark chocolate can lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, depression, and the risk of heart disease, cancer, and strokes.

      Richard Cadbury invented the first heart-shaped box of chocolates in 1861.

      COFFEE

      Outside of those pesky palpitations, coffee may actually help your heart. A study of more than 37,000 people found that those who drank two to four cups of coffee a day had a 20 percent lower risk of heart disease than those who did not. Though tea drinkers may have an even greater advantage: those who drank three to six cups of tea were 45 percent less likely to suffer coronary problems. So, drink up!

      Legend has it that coffee was first discovered by an Ethiopian goatherd named Kaldi. Wondering why his goats were so jumpy after eating the red cherries on a nearby bush, he tried it himself, and the rest is history.

      England’s King Charles II banned coffee houses in 1675, worried that they had become meeting places for citizens to plot against him. The proclamation was rescinded the following year.

      Americans originally bought their coffee beans green and did their own roasting and grinding. Folgers Coffee changed all that when it began offering coffee ready to brew.

      Coffee is the second-most-traded commodity in the world. Crude oil is the first.

      George Washington invented instant coffee. Not that George Washington—a Belgian man with the same name developed the hit product in 1909.

      COOKIES

      Fortune cookies were either invented in San Francisco or Los Angeles, depending on whom you ask. But they were certainly not invented in China, and restaurants there still do not serve them.

      Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster was originally named Sid.

      The current best-selling type of Girl Scout Cookie is Thin Mints, with 25 percent of total sales. After Thin Mints come Samoas (19 percent), Tagalongs (13 percent), Do-Si-Dos (11 percent), and Trefoils (9 percent).

      CUPCAKES

      Before muffin tins, cupcakes were

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