Free Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! by Bathroom Readers’ Institute

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    The sun converts more than 4 million tons of matter into energy every second.
    Only 5 percent of the stars in our galaxy are bigger than our sun.
    Earthquakes travel at speeds of up to 4.8 miles per second.
    The Milky Way galaxy moves through space at 170 miles per second.
    Gallons of beer in a standard U.S. barrel: three.

Tips & Advice
    Housing prices are usually lowest in winter and highest in summer.
    Buy a new car at month’s end; that’s when dealers focus on volume of sales instead of commissions.
    The best time to teach a dog new tricks is shortly after its first birthday.
    Buy shoes in the afternoon, after you’ve walked around for a while. Feet tend to swell after you’ve walked, and you’ll get a better fit.
    Most fish are delivered to stores on Mondays and Thursdays, so the freshest are usually available on Tuesdays and Fridays.
    Best time to visit the emergency room: between 8:00 a.m. and noon on Wednesdays, Thursdays, or Fridays. Mondays and Tuesdays are the most crowded.
    If you want to achieve the best workout, hit the gym in the morning. Your metabolism slows during sleep, so morning exercise jump-starts it.
    Placing a bet? If it is on an underdog, wait until game time. But if you’re betting on a favorite, do it as soon as possible. Most amateurs bet on favorites close to game time, so bookies change the point spread to attract bets on the underdog.
    Best time to have your photo taken: midday. In the morning, your face is puffy from sleeping, and by late afternoon, your face and eyes start to show fatigue.
    Taking a trip and hoping to depart on time? Book the second flight of the day. Statistics show that an airline’s first departure is often delayed because so many other carriers are trying to send flights out at the same time.

Have a Ball
    A regulation baseball has 108 stitches.
    In the 17th and 18th centuries, it took four years of apprenticeship to become a featherie golf ball maker.
    A good pitcher can make a baseball curve as much as 17½ inches from a straight path.
    There are 122 bumps per square inch on a Spalding basketball.
    Glitter (disco) balls were first used in nightclubs in the 1920s.
    When pitched, the average major league baseball rotates 15 times before it’s hit by the batter.
    In 1935, the L.A. Young Golf Company introduced a ball with a honey-filled center.
    The rubber used to make SuperBalls is called Zectron.
    Average life span of an NBA basketball: 10,000 bounces.
    Early tennis balls were leather pouches stuffed with wool or animal hair.
    American inventor Charles Goodyear manufactured the first rubber soccer ball in 1855. Before that, soccer balls were usually made from pigs’ bladders.
    Golf balls begin to lose their resilience after about a year.
    In 2008, representatives from the Carnival Cruise Line (which created the ball) bounced a 36-foot-wide beach ball—the world’s largest— down Elm Street in Dallas, Texas. On its first day out, the ball hit a car antenna and popped, but it was later repaired.
    Billiard balls used to be made of ivory. One tusk usually yielded about four balls.

BIG News
    Studies show: There are 7,500,000,000,000,000,000 grains of sand on the world’s beaches.
    Song on Billboard ’s Top 40 with the longest title: “Jeremiah Peabody’s Poly Unsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills,” by Ray Stevens.
    A googol is the mathematical term for 1 followed by 100 zeros.
    The full title of Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn album is 90 words long—the longest album title ever.
    It took Michelangelo four years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
    As of 2008, the largest known prime number is 12,978,189 digits long.
    Diameter of Mars: 22,290,026 feet.
    Floccinaucinihilipilification is a long word meaning “the action of estimating something as worthless.”
    But James Joyce’s “Klikkaklakkaklaskaklopatzklatschabattacreppycrottygraddaghsemmihsammihnouithappluddyappladdypkonpkot” from