Free The Extraordinary Book of Useless Information by Don Voorhees Page B

sunburned his eyes in 2012, after spending several hours on the water in Portugal without sunglasses. He was blind for thirty-six hours.
    SOAP DOPE
    It costs about $50 million a year to produce a daytime soap opera, about 30 percent more than it costs to produce a television talk show.
    In 1999, there were eleven American soap operas on television. In 2011, there were only four.
    MUSICAL MOMENTS
    The only three songs to hit number one on the
Billboard
Hot 100 chart after the death of the recording artist were “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding, “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce, and “Me and Bobby McGee” by Janice Joplin.
    According to
Billboard
, Adele’s
21
was the bestselling album of 2011 and 2012, selling 5.82 million copies and 4.41 million copies, respectively.
    The bikini didn’t really catch on until the number one hit song “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” was released in 1960, by sixteen-year-old Brian Hyland.
    South Korean rap star Psy’s music video “Gangnam Style” is the most-watched item posted to YouTube, with more than 1.5 billion views.
    A poll by UltimateClassicRock.com found that the top country rock song of all time is “Can’t You See” by the Marshall Tucker Band. The rest of the top ten in order are “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Green Grass and High Tides” by the Outlaws, “Highway Song” by Blackfoot, “Long Haired Country Boy” by the Charlie Daniels Band, “Flirtin’ with Disaster” by Molly Hatchet, “La Grange” by ZZ Top, “Ramblin’ Man” by the Allman Brothers, “30 Days in the Hole” by Humble Pie, and “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain.
    The top-earning musicians for 2012 were Dr. Dre at $110 million, Roger Waters at $88 million, Elton John at $80 million, U2 at $78 million, Take That at $69 million, Bon Jovi at $60 million, Britney Spears at $58 million, Paul McCartney at $57 million, Taylor Swift at $57 million, Justin Bieber at $55 million, and Toby Keith at $55 million.
    Trumpeter Louis Armstrong used to get hard calluses on his lips, which he would remove himself every four or five years with a razor blade.
    Johann Sebastian Bach wrote some 1,100 pieces of music.
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart started playing the harpsichord at the age of three and composing music at the age of five.
    Mozart began a three-and-a-half-year musical tour of Europe with his family when he was only six.
    Mozart went on to compose enough music to fill two hundred compact discs.
    BOOK CLUB
    Toni Morrison is the pen name of Chloe Anthony Wofford.
    George Orwell was the nom de plume of Eric Arthur Blair.
    Anne Rice was named after her father—Howard Allen O’Brien. She hated the name Howard and told the nuns on her first day of kindergarten that her name was Anne. Her last name comes from her husband Stan Rice.
    Voltaire was born François-Marie Arouet.
    Mystery writer Agatha Christie was the first known woman in Britain to take up surfing, in the 1920s.
    Emily Dickinson was a recluse who didn’t leave her house for more than twenty years and spoke to visitors through a closed door.
    PAINTIN’ PLACE
    When Grant Wood was fourteen, he won third place in a national crayon drawing contest sponsored by Crayola. He credits this with sparking his interest in becoming an artist.
    Michelangelo had his nose broken by a contemporary artist named Torrigiano, and was disfigured for life.
    The Louvre was built in the late 1100s as a fortress.
    Paul Gaugin worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal construction project. He was fired after two weeks.
    In 2012, guitarist Eric Clapton sold the painting
Abstraktes Bild (809-4)
by German artist Gerhard Richter, for $34,190,756, a new record price for the work of a living painter. That’s more then ten times what Clapton paid for it in 2001. The previous record was for the