Free Uncle John’s Did You Know? by Bathroom Readers’ Institute

year 0.
    • Luckily, there can never be more than three Friday the 13ths in one year.

    • What’s the only month that’s also a verb? March!
    • September 23, 2006, marked the beginning of the year 5767 in the Jewish calendar.
    • The Chinese solar calendar is divided into 24 segments of 15 days each. The third month, beginning in early March, is known as the month of the Excited Insects. July is divided into two months known as Slight Heat and Great Heat.
    • A year is the amount of time it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun. So, if you’re 10 years old, you’ve traveled around the Sun 10 times! (It’s not exactly a year: A year is 365 days—a revolution around the Sun takes 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds.)
    • Brazilians consider August an unlucky month.
    • “Kalpa” is a Hindu measurement of time. It’s also the world’s longest measurement of time—432 billion years.

ANIMALS BY
THE NUMBERS
    • The oldest cat on record lived to be 34. But one goldfish outlived it, logging in a record life span of 41 years.
    • To figure out a dog’s age in human years, count the first dog year as 15 years, the second as 10 years, and all the following years as 3 years. So a 6-year-old dog would be: 15+10+3+3+3+3 = 37 human years old.
    • An aardvark’s tongue is about 17 inches long.
    • There are 103 different species of crow.
    • An oyster can survive out of water for as long as four months.
    • Natural llama hair comes in 22 different colors.
    • What a hog: A pig’s stomach can hold 32 pints—that’s four gallons—of food and drink.
    • Ospreys (a.k.a. seahawks) have been clocked at 80 miles per hour.
    • Ants can survive underwater for as long as 14 days.
    • On a good day, a hummingbird may visit 2,000 flowers before he get his fill of nectar.
    • The chickens of the world lay two billion eggs a day, which, by the way, would make an omelet as big as the island of Cyprus—3,500 square miles.

THE WARRIORS
    • The word conquistador is Spanish for “conqueror.”
    • The Vikings’ favorite weapons? Catapults and battering rams.
    • We get the word “vandalism” from the Vandals, a European tribe that completely destroyed Rome in the 5th century A.D.
    • 1,200 Japanese kamikaze pilots died sinking 34 American ships during World War II.
    • Future president Theodore Roosevelt led a group of soldiers called the Rough Riders (they were mostly cowboys, miners, and law-enforcement officials) in the Spanish-American War.
    • The Samurai of Japan wore two swords—one long, one short—and gave them names, believing their swords were the “soul” of their warriorship.
    • The Swiss Guard were mercenaries (paid soldiers) who fought in various European armies. Now their only job is to guard the Pope in Vatican City.
    • The Spartan boys of ancient Greece were sent to military school at age 6 or 7 and stayed there until they were 20.
    • Members of the elite warrior class of the ancient Aztec army were known as “eagle warriors.”
    • Ninja is a Japanese word that means “to do quietly.”

HOCKEY
TEAM NAMES
    Name games that inspired the teams .
    • Anaheim Mighty Ducks: In 1993, the NHL put a brand-new team in Anaheim, California. It was owned by Disney, which named the team after its 1992 hockey movie, The Mighty Ducks .

    • Boston Bruins: The guidelines for a 1920s contest to name the team requested that the name “relate to an untamed animal whose name was synonymous with size, strength, agility, ferocity and cunning; and in the color brown category.” Bruin, another name for a brown bear, fit the order.
    • Calgary Flames: Before they moved to Calgary, the Flames were based in Atlanta, Georgia. They chose their name as a reference to the burning of Atlanta during the Civil War.
    • Detroit Red Wings: When James Norris bought the team in 1932, he changed their name from the Falcons to honor a team he once played for—the Montreal Winged Wheelers.
    • New Jersey