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

machine about $100 before hitting the jackpot.
    • Only 10% of parents who visit Las Vegas bring their kids.
    • The Spanish named Las Vegas , which means “the meadows,” in the 1800s. The area was an oasis for travelers along the pack-mule trail from New Mexico to California.
    • When most people think of Las Vegas, they usually think of “The Strip,” the stretch of glitzy hotels and casinos that was first built in the 1950s. But technically, most of the Strip isn’t in Las Vegas—it’s located in Paradise, Nevada.
    • Las Vegas’s biggest wedding chapel is called (what else?) Viva Las Vegas. It seats 100 guests.
    • Gangster Bugsy Siegel opened the first hotel in Vegas—the Flamingo—in 1946.
    • Over 40,000 people moved to Las Vegas in 2005, bumping up the population to 545,000.

STORMY
WEATHER
    • There were 27 named tropical storms during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, the most active one since record keeping began 150 years ago.
    • Sorry, Zorba. Hurricanes are given names starting with letters A through W (no Q, U, X, Y, or Z).
    • A hurricane weighs about the same as 40 million elephants—more than all the elephants on Earth. Maybe even more than all the elephants ever on Earth.
    • There are an estimated 16 million thunderstorms globally each year.
    • Kampala, Uganda, may hold the world record for thunderstorms: It averages 242 thundery days each year. (Central Florida is pretty stormy too: It has approximately 100 thunderstorm days annually.)
    • Thunder is caused by lightning: Air surrounding the lightning heats rapidly, then expands and contracts at supersonic speeds, creating a series of claps and rumbles.
    • The coastal deserts of Chile and Antarctica have almost no thunderstorms.
    • When is a tropical storm not a tropical storm? When it has wind speeds of more than 74 miles per hour. Then it’s a hurricane.

ELEPHANT-ITIS
    They’re big, they’re lovable, and you’d better stay out of their way when they’re in a hurry!
    • An elephant eats 250 pounds of plants and drinks 50 gallons of water a day.
    • An elephant’s heart weighs about 48 pounds, a little more than the average six-year-old person’s entire body. An entire elephant weighs about the same as 70 grown men.
    • The noise that elephants make while digesting food can be heard up to 200 yards away. But they can actually stop the sounds of digestion when they sense danger.
    • Is your living room bigger than an elephant? Male elephants are usually about 20 feet long. But don’t try to bring one inside: They weigh about 16,500 pounds.
    • Elephants have only four teeth for chewing. As their teeth wear down, they’re replaced up to six times. Old elephants who’ve used up all their teeth sometimes starve to death because they can’t chew anymore.
    • Those ivory tusks are used for defense, digging for water, and lifting things.
    • Elephants communicate over vast distances, warning other elephants of danger, telling them where to find water, and signaling that the mating season has begun.

LOTS OF
ENERGY
    • As long as they’re plugged in, appliances like microwave ovens and TV sets use energy even when they’re not turned on.
    • Turn your computer off when you’re not using it; The energy required to keep it in standby mode costs $65 a year.
    • Every 60 seconds of every day, the United States spends almost $ 1 million on energy.
    • Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to run your TV for three hours. Recycling one glass bottle could provide enough energy to light a 100-watt lightbulb for four hours.
    • Only 4% of the energy put out by an incandescent lightbulb is light—the rest is wasted producing heat.
    • Over its lifetime, the average microwave oven uses more energy running its digital clock than it does heating food.
    • Talk about efficient: The Hubble Space Telescope completes one orbit around the Earth in just 97 minutes. To do it, the Hubble uses about the same