you) burp or fart as least 10 to 15 times per day.
• Beans are famous for making you fart, but cauliflower, broccoli, apples, milk, raisins, and popcorn can make you fart even more than beans do.
• A fart smells the same to the farter and the farted-at. But since the fart blasts away from the farter, the other guy usually smells it first.
• A fart can take 30 to 45 minutes to travel through your body. Bon voyage , and be sure to let us know (loudly) when it gets to the end of its trip.
• If farts could be measured like water, the gas you pass each day would amount to between one cup and one half gallon.
• Picture this: You’re up in space without a spacesuit. And you fart. Hang on, because the force is enough to propel you forward through space.
• If you soak dried beans in water for twelve hours before cooking, they’ll produce less flatulence.
• It may not be ladylike, but the fact is that women fart three times more often than men.
WEIRD WEATHER
• Hailstones the size of bowling balls fell on Coffeyville, Kansas, on September 2, 1970.
• Great balls of fire: Thousands of people have reported seeing what’s called “ball lightning”—glowing balls that are as bright as light bulbs—flying though the sky, or even entering their houses.
• In 1979 a thunderstorm in Norwich, England, generated 2- to 4-inch flakes of ice that fluttered out of the sky like falling leaves.
• Whirlwinds (or “dust devils”) usually just carry sand and debris, but they’ve also been known to suck up flames from nearby forest fires and carry them away.
• Golf-ball-size hailstones fell in Alberta, Canada, in 1953, killing 36,000 ducks—not to be confused with a 1933 storm in Worcester, Massachusetts, that generated huge hailstones that contained freshly frozen ducks.
• The secondary rainbow in a double rainbow is the exact reverse of the primary rainbow: The red is on the inner edge and the blue is on the outer edge.
• An 1877 issue of Scientific American reported a rain of snakes, some as big as 1 ½ feet long, that fell out of the sky in Memphis, Tennessee.
• A “sun dog” is a bright spot in the sky that’s 22 degrees to the left or right of the sun.
PLACES OF
INTEREST
• Where are they? “Land of the Midnight Sun,” “Land of Enchantment,” and “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” are the nicknames of Alaska, New Mexico, and Minnesota, respectively.
• What city has the most telescopes in the world? Tucson, Arizona.
• The first log cabins in North America were built in 1683 by Swedish immigrants in Delaware.
• Coolest state? It could be Florida. In 1851 Dr. John Gorrie of Apalachicola, Florida, patented the process of manufacturing ice.
• In a competition for “Longest Main Street in the United States,” Island Park, Idaho, would win: Its main street is 33 miles long.
• In 1928, Baltimore, Maryland, became the home of the first umbrella factory in America.
• Visit the Elephant Hall in the University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, and you’ll see the world’s largest collection of elephant skeletons.
• The next time someone you know gets a parking ticket, tell them to blame it on Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. That’s where, in 1935, the first parking meter was installed.
CREEPY QUIZ
Q: Why do mosquitoes bite?
A: They need the protein in blood to produce their eggs—that’s why only female mosquitoes bite.
Q: Beehives seem like pretty busy places, but how many bees have been known fit into one hive?
A: A beehive can contain as many as 80,000 bees at a time.
Q: Is it true that doctors once used bloodsucking leeches as a medical treatment for sick people?
A: Yes. Back in the 1800s, doctors thought leeches could drain “bad blood” from sick patients. The practice was so widespread that leeches became an endangered species. (Some doctors still use them.)
Q: How many legs does the biggest centipede have?
A: The biggest, Scolopendra gigantea , only
Michelle Freeman, Gayle Roberts
Brad Strickland, THOMAS E. FULLER
Kerri A.; Iben; Pierce Mondrup