Mental Floss Presents Instant Knowledge Read online

  USEFUL FOR: questioning your pastor, Sunday school debate, taunting your younger sibling into believing they’ll be similarly forgotten

  KEYWORDS: sibling rivalry, Virgin Mary, or Son of God

  THE FACT: The New Testament mentions brothers (adelphoi in Greek) of Jesus and even names them. Yet somehow history still depicts him as an only child.

  Most historians would go so far as to say the adelphoi James, Simon, Judas (different from apostles James, Simon, and Judas), and Joseph were Jesus’ cousins. And it’s true, according to Catholic theology: Jesus’ mother, Mary, never had sexual intercourse and never bore a child other than the Messiah, so the adelphoi couldn’t have been his brothers. Other lines of thought, though, tell it a little differently, claiming that the Gospel writers used adelphoi literally and that Mary was a virgin only until after the birth of J.C. We don’t want to take sides, but if these four guys really were Jesus’ brothers, they got the seriously short end of the sibling stick. Imagine! Not only is your brother God Almighty, he’s also the most famous man in history. Meanwhile, scholars are sitting around arguing about whether you ever even existed.

  JEWS

  (in Ethiopia?)

  USEFUL FOR: breaking stereotypes, impressing religion majors, and making it sound like you’re well versed on African history

  KEYWORDS: kosher, matzo, or Ethiopia

  THE FACT: Most of the people of the central highlands of Ethiopia, numbering more than 25 million, speak Semitic languages that are more closely related to Hebrew than they are to the other languages of sub-Saharan (“south of the Sahara”) Africa.

  Sounds strange, but it’s definitely true. The central Ethiopians, moreover, began practicing Christianity roughly 1,700 years ago, much earlier than did the people of northern Europe. Until recently, Ethiopia also had a thriving Jewish community, that of the Falashas. The Falashas had long been isolated from other Jewish groups, and as a result they held only a small portion of the Jewish Holy Scriptures. A debate ensued over whether they should therefore be considered true Jews. Once the issue was decided in the affirmative, virtually the entire community migrated to Israel.

  KIM JONG IL

  USEFUL FOR: chatting up immigrants, impressing history teachers, and determining the number one place you’ll never want to take your family on vacation

  KEYWORDS: North Korea, dictators, and King Kong (who’s bigger than Kim Jong, but hardly badder)

  THE FACT: If you really want to escape globalization, you might try sneaking into North Korea. Of course, you’ll probably be arrested…

  …and executed, and you may even be captured and eaten by villagers. (Between one and three million North Koreans have starved to death over the past decade, and incidents of cannibalism have been regularly reported.) But if you do survive the ordeal, you can bear witness to the most extravagant personality cult in history, one that makes the efforts of Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein look rather modest in comparison. Kim Il Sung, the country’s founding dictator, is still its official president—even though he died in1994. (Why be president for life when you can have the position for all eternity?) His son, Kim Jong Il, now the country’s “dear leader,” is evidently doing his best to follow in his father footsteps.

  KITTY-CAT

  (and her high jump)

  USEFUL FOR: not freaking out whenever Scratchy tries to dive off the mantel

  KEYWORDS: cat, suicidal, or high dive

  THE FACT: Furry felines have a knack for jumping from high places and only getting the wind knocked out them (helps with the hairballs).

  It helps that kitties are lightweights, and can twist around and land on all fours. Their superbalance has something to do with their inner ears, and luck (unless they’re black cats, of course). And here’s the weirdest part: Kitties actually have a better chance of surviving a fall from a higher place than a low one. When they jump off tall buildings (instead of short treehouses) they achieve what’s called a terminal velocity—the point at which they stop accelerating. Once they hit the “TV” zone, they can relax a bit, enjoy the ride, and spread their paws to make a parachute. Then again, they may just have nine lives…

  KLACKERS

  USEFUL FOR: scaring kids, scaring moms, and delighting anyone looking for some eye patch nostalgia

  KEYWORDS: bullies, nerds, or “that toy is not a weapon”

  THE FACT: Klackers were basically the definition of a mother’s warning: all fun and games until kids lost some eyes.

  In the late 1960s, a toy called Klackers hit the market. The pendulum-like device was made up of two large balls or marbles attached to a string hanging from a ring or handle. The goal was to get the hanging balls to tap together by pulling up with your hand. And if you got really good at it, you could get them clacking against each other extremely fast, both above and below your hand. Klackers became wildly popular, but in 1971, the toy was yanked from store shelves after a rash of Klacker-related injuries. Apparently, kids who were not so good at the game were getting bruises and black eyes from errant balls. Other kids reported similar injuries, not from playing with Klackers, but having them used against them by bullies. Most injuries, however, occurred when the clacking balls (which, brilliantly enough, were sometimes made of glass) shattered and sent Klacker shrapnel into the eyes of hundreds of children.

  KLUTZINESS

  (and the inventions it spurs)

  USEFUL FOR: chatting up inventors, making small talk in the ER, and anytime you want to make your clumsy spouse feel better

  KEYWORDS: Band-Aids, inventors, or klutz

  THE FACT: It’s like they say—behind every great man is a woman who burns herself a lot.

  It all started in 1920, when Johnson & Johnson employee Earle Dickson wed his sweetheart, Josephine, and discovered that she wasn’t exactly Little Mary Homemaker. Turns out she had a rather unnerving habit of kitchen klutziness. Every day, Dickson would come home to find another cut or burn that needed dressing. He was sympathetic at first, but as time passed, the score increased to Kitchen: 500, Josephine: 0, and he grew more frustrated. Finally, Dickson came up with a way for his wife to fix her wounds without having to wait for him by taking a roll of surgical tape and spacing out squares of gauze down the length of it. To keep the tape from sticking to itself, he added a layer of removable crinoline. Forever after, when Josephine injured herself, she simply peel a length from the roll and patched it up, and thus, Band-Aids were born. No word on the final outcome of Josephine versus the Kitchen, but we’re hoping no news is good news.

  KOALAS

  (with VD!)

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, trips to the zoo, and lecturing your kids about bear safety

  KEYWORDS: protection, condoms, or cuddly

  THE FACT: While koalas are pretty well known for sleeping, they should also be well known for sleeping around!

  While few animals are as cute as the cuddly koala, they wouldn’t be much fun as pets. Koalas sleep up to 16 hours a day and aren’t all that peppy when they’re awake. Maybe that’s because stressed-out koalas are particularly prone to chlamydia. Yes, that chlamydia. The widespread STD among Koalas makes them prone to conjunctivitis (“pink eye”), urinary tract infections (no quick runs to the grocery store for some cranberry juice for these guys!), and incontinence. Which, by the way, is not only a reason not to have one as a pet, but also a reason to forgo the requisite “koala-holding picture” on your trip to Australia.

  instant personalities

  Though the White House had needed extensive repairs ever since British troops had set it on fire in 1814, reconstruction didn’t begin until the late 1940s with PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN, when he witnessed a piano fall through the floor.

  What’s worse than forgetting to turn off your ringer at a somber event? Forgetting to turn off your pet. At ANDREW JACKSON’s funeral in 1845, his parrot had to be removed for swearing so much.

  Talk about bizarre morning rituals: PRESIDENT CALVIN COOLIDGE liked having his head rubbed with pet
roleum jelly while he feasted on breakfast in bed.

  KUDZU

  (Japan’s worst export)

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail party banter, chatting up botanists, and sparking road-trip conversation across the southland

  KEYWORDS: invincible, unwanted, or kudzu

  THE FACT: In 1876, the fast-growing vine kudzu made its way from Japan to the United States and quickly became all the rage. Little did people know how quickly the plant was going to wear out its welcome.

  In the South, its heavy coverage provided shade from the heat, the livestock seemed to like the taste, and it even improved the quality of the soil. Kudzu seemed to have so many advantages, in fact, that in the 1930s the U.S. government helped farmers plant the vine all across the Southern states. Big mistake. Less than 20 years later, the kudzu had spread out of control, covering crop fields and trees, often killing the vegetation in its path. Today utility companies in the South spend millions of dollars trying to keep their poles and towers kudzu-free with no help from theU.S. government other than a list of vine-ridding tips on its Web site. Gee, thanks, Uncle Sam!

  LANGUAGE ARTS

  (in Papua New Guinea)

  USEFUL FOR: armchair travelers, people planning trips, and chatting up linguists and missionaries

  KEYWORDS: pidgin, PNG, or if you don’t speak the language…

  THE FACT: If you’re going to Papua New Guinea, you’ll probably need a translator, if not a few hundred of ’em.

  No country has more linguistic diversity than Papua New Guinea (PNG). More than 800 languages are currently spoken in the country, and no one linguistic group contains more than a small percentage of the population. In fact, many languages of the interior are poorly known, although missionary linguists are working hard to record them in preparation for Bible translation. So how does Papua New Guinea function as a country, considering this welter of tongues? Some form of common speech is necessary, and PNG has one in English. Well, not exactly English as we know it, rather Melanesian pidgin English, based on a simplified vocabulary and local grammatical and sound structures. Thus, a foreign tourist would generally be labeled a man bilong longwe ples (or “man belong long-way place”).

  LA-Z-BOY

  (and the genius who came up with it)

  USEFUL FOR: lazy afternoons, justifying a thoroughly inactive lifestyle, or convincing yourself exercise isn’t the key

  KEYWORDS: lazy, genius, and lazy genius

  THE FACT: Edwin Shoemaker was a genius (and we don’t throw that word around lightly). After all, the guy forever blurred the distinction between sitting up and lying down by developing the world’s first reclining chair. Even more impressive: He was only 21 years old at the time.

  Edwin Shoemaker came up with the concept back in 1928! Who knew a lazy kid with a lazy dream could make all that laziness work out so well? Of course, Fast Eddy’s initial model, a wood-slat chair intended for porches, wasn’t exactly the most comfortable thing in the world. It was fashioned out of orange crates and designed to fit the contours of the back at any angle. It took an early customer, appreciative of the concept but rather unexcited about the prospect of lying down on bare slats of wood, to suggest upholstering the invention. Shoemaker and his partner Edward Knabusch then held a contest to name the invention. “La-Z-Boy” beat out suggestions like “Sit ’n’ Snooze” and “The Slack-Back.”

  LEMMINGS

  USEFUL FOR: impressing your fourth-grade teacher, or any seven-year old who’ll listen to you

  KEYWORDS: lemmings, suicide, or lemming suicides

  THE FACT: Lemmings don’t intentionally jump off cliffs—they do it because they’re morons.

  Poor, oft-maligned lemmings—you couldn’t blame them for being suicidal, if they were, which they aren’t. So where exactly did the myth come from? The notion of lemming suicide extends back at least to Freud, who in 1929’s Civilization and Its Discontents explained the human death instinct in the context of the creatures. But the notion didn’t really take hold until Walt Disney’s 1958 so-called documentary White Wilderness hit the big screen. For the purpose of his film, the lovable animator shipped dozens of lemmings to Alberta, Canada, herded them off a cliff, taped them falling to their deaths, and passed it off as nonfiction. In reality, though, lemmings aren’t suicidal. They’re just dumb. The truth is, lemming populations explode in four-year cycles in Scandinavia, and when the tundra gets crowded, they seek out new land. Being stupid, they sometimes fall off cliffs, but not on purpose.

  LEONARDO DA VINCI

  (da genius, da Italian, da bastard?)

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, academic gatherings, and basically impressing anyone who’s ever heard of Leonardo da Vinci

  KEYWORDS: da Vinci, mistake, and Planned Parenthood

  THE FACT: Everyone knows of Leonardo da Vinci, the homo universalis who was a painter, a naturalist, a metallurgist, and a philosopher with equal ease. But not everyone knows he was basically the product of a one-afternoon stand.

  It’s true! The personification of the Renaissance was actually the son of a notary, Ser Piero, and a peasant girl of somewhat “easy virtue.” In fact, the two simply took a tumble in the hay together before going their separate ways and providing Leonardo, from their marriages with other people, with 17 half brothers and sisters. Needless to say, these assorted half siblings were none too fond of their renowned relation, whose birth was something of an embarrassment, and on his father’s death, in 1503, they conspired to deprive him of his share of the estate. Leonardo had the last laugh, however, when the death of an uncle led to a similar inheritance squabble, leaving him with sole custody of the uncle’s lands and property.

  LEONA HELMSLEY

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, punch lines, and tours of the Empire State Building

  KEYWORDS: Leona Helmsley, immigrant, tax evasion

  THE FACT: Believe it or not, the famous New York real estate mogul and class A witch actually lived the American Dream. Well, except for the whole prison thing.

  Leona was a divorced sewing factory worker with mouths to feed before she met and married real estate tycoon Harry Helmsley. In 1980, Harry named Leona president of his opulent Helmsley Palace Hotel, which she ruled like a despot. Her tendency to explode at employees for the smallest infraction (like a crooked lampshade) earned her the title “The Queen of Mean.” The tyranny didn’t exactly last. In 1988 Leona and Harry were indicted for a smorgasbord of crimes, including tax fraud, mail fraud, and extortion. She served 18 months in prison and was forced to pay the government $7 million in back taxes. That doesn’t mean things turned out that badly for poor Leona. Said to be worth over $2.2 billion, the dreaded Ms. H still owns the lease to the Empire State Building and lives in luxury with her aptly named dog, Trouble.

  LICKS

  (to the center of a Tootsie Pop)

  USEFUL FOR: Halloween parties, chatting up people nostalgic for the ’70s, and blowing the minds of seven-year olds across the globe

  KEYWORDS: owl, lick, or Tootsie Pop

  THE FACT: No thanks to that pesky owl and his woeful lack of willpower, the “How Many Licks Does It Take to Get to the Tootsie Roll Center of a Tootsie Pop?” question has been plaguing the American public ever since the commercial first aired in 1970.

  Fortunately, there have been plenty of noble efforts to get to the bottom (or center, as the case may be) of it all. But the answer depends on whom you ask. A group of students at Swarthmore Junior High conducted an extensive study on the subject and concluded that getting to the center of a Tootsie Pop took a statistical average of 144 licks. However, the more ambitious and distrusting engineering students at Purdue University chose instead to rely on a “licking machine,” modeled after the human tongue for their results. The Boilermakers and their mechanical contraption found that it requires an average of 364 licks. Other studies have been done, and all results vary, so only one thing is certain: The world may never know.

  LIONS

  (and one particularly sexy bea
st)

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, chatting up scientists, making friends at the fertility clinic

  KEYWORDS: virility, fertility, sex fiends, or the zoo

  THE FACT: Despite his world wide rep, Frasier, the Sensuous Lion, didn’t actually do much bragging about his amorous exploits. Then again, he didn’t have to—his proof was walking all around him!

  Here’s how the story goes: Frasier was about 20 years old, ancient for a lion, when he came to a wild animal park in southern California. Unfortunately, the Mexican circus refugee was so doddering that he could hardly walk, and his keepers simply figured his demise would be any day. But that didn’t stop the old lion from tomcatting about. Frasier hung on for 18 months and sired a stunning 35 cubs in his spare time. Amazingly, the press about the fertile feline was so widespread that Frasier fan clubs started sprouting up everywhere. Wives even began writing in to find out what park rangers were feeding the beast. In fact, the lion’s fame grew so much that a popular song was written about him, and a film was made as well. When the old cat’s time finally came, it’s said, Frasier, the Sensuous Lion, went with a smile on his face.

  LIQUID PAPER

  USEFUL FOR: making friends with people at Staples, OfficeMax, and Kinko’s