Free Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information by Bathroom Readers' Hysterical Society

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    It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year’s supply of footballs.
    John Heisman (of trophy fame) coined the word hike and split football games into four quarters.
    Top ticket price to the first Super Bowl, in 1967: $12. Top price in 2005: $500.
    Most successful high school football team in history: De La Salle Spartans of Concord, California. After more than 10 years and 151 wins, they lost to Washington’s Bellevue Wolverines in September 2004.
    NFL great Vince Lombardi coined the phrase “game plan.”
    Football has more rules than any other American sport.
    In 1888 Yale football coach Walter Camp fell ill. His wife coached for the entire season.
    Deion Sanders is the only man to play in the World Series and the Super Bowl.
    There is a 100 percent injury rate among professional football players.
    In the NFL, the host team must have 26 footballs inflated and ready.
    The L.A. Rams were the first football team to have emblems on their helmets.
    Nine of the 15 highest-rated television shows in history have been NFL championship games.
    So few Heisman Trophy winners have made it into the Pro Football Hall of Fame—only 10 (including O. J. Simpson)—that the prize has been called “the kiss of death” for college players.

Europe
     
    Norway consumes more Mexican food than any other European nation.
    France gets 75 percent of its energy from nuclear power plants.
    Belgium is about the same size as New Jersey.
    Country with the lowest divorce rate on earth: Vatican City. Lowest birthrate in the world: Vatican City.
    In 1952 as many as 12,000 people may have died from the four-day Great Coal-burning smog in London.
    The city of Edinburgh, Scotland, is built on top of an extinct volcano.
    Downtown London has sunk almost an inch since 1995. In Greenland there’s a place called Thank God Harbor.
    During the summer months in Reykjavik, Iceland, the sun is visible 24 hours a day.
    The Battle of Waterloo wasn’t fought in Waterloo. It was fought in Pancenoit, four miles away.
    In Finland, saunas outnumber cars.
    The Netherlands is the country with the tallest overall average adult height at 72.6 inches, followed by Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Germany. The average adult height in the United States is 70.8 inches.
    The top five non-English languages spoken at home by kids are, in rank order, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Chinese.
    There are more than 5,000 islands in the British Isles.
    When Italy was founded in 1861, only 3 percent of Italians spoke Italian fluently.
    Greenland, which is mostly snow and ice, was named by Erik the Red; he wanted to encourage immigration.

Everyday Origins
     
    REFRIGERATOR MAGNETS
    Mass-produced magnets designed for refrigerators didn’t appear until 1964. They were invented by John Arnasto (son of the guy who invented Eskimo Pies) and his wife, Arlene, who sold a line of decorative wall hooks. Arlene thought it would be cute to have a hook for refrigerator doors, so John made one with a magnet backing. The first one had a small bell and was shaped like a tea kettle; it sold well, so the Arnastos added dozens of other versions to their line. Believe it or not, some of the rare originals are now worth more than $100.
    GOLD RECORDS
    In 1941 RCA Victor released Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo” after he performed it in the movie Sun Valley Serenade . It was a huge hit: 1.2 million records were sold in less than three months. So RCA came up with a great publicity gimmick to promote it: They sprayed one of the “master records” with gold paint, and on February 10, 1942, presented it to Miller during a radio broadcast in honor of his selling a million copies. Eventually the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) copied the idea and started honoring million-selling records with an official Gold Record Award.
    KITTY LITTER
    In January 1948, in Cassopolis, Michigan, a woman named Kay Draper ran into trouble: The sandpile she used to fill her