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

jeweled egg: The Fabergé “Winter Egg,” decorated with more than 3,000 diamonds. In 2002 it was sold for $9.6 million.
    • The most expensive perfume, Parfum VI, is packaged in a gold bottle covered with diamonds. Cost: $71,380.
    • Carat for carat, emeralds—the traditional birthstone for the month of May—are the most valuable gemstones in the world.
    • The world’s largest silver nugget was found near Aspen, Colorado, in 1894. It weighed 1,840 pounds!

THE PLANE TRUTH
    • The first Boeing passenger plane, the 247, carried only 10 passengers.
    • The propeller-driven Black Widow spy plane, designed to give ground troops a quick overview of a particular area, is—surprise!—about the size of your hand.
    • The Wright brothers made a total of 105 flights.
    • In the United States, there are an average of 240 collisions between airplanes and Canada geese every year.
    • On April 18, 2000, 588 military and civilian parachutists from five nations jumped from seven aircraft flying at 12,000 feet over the Santa Cruz Air Base in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
    • In 2001 an unmanned solar-powered plane called the Helios Prototype achieved the highest altitude ever reached by a propeller-driven aircraft: 96,500 feet, over the island of Kauai.
    • There are 13,387 airports in the United States.
    • The Airbus A380 is the largest passenger aircraft ever built, with a wingspan of over 261 feet and a length of over 239 feet. It can carry 800 people.
    • Iris Peterson, the oldest active flight attendant, is still flying for United Airlines at the age of 85. She was born in 1921 and joined the company in 1944.

(HAVE SOME)
CANDY
    • Hey, who’s eating all the candy? American adults eat 65% of the candy produced worldwide.
    • How did Toblerone come up with that triangular shape? They based it on the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps.
    • In some circles, licorice is called “sweet wood” or “Spanish juice.”
    • The most popular candy in the Netherlands is a salty licorice candy called “Drop” (rhymes with “rope”).
    • Back in 1953 it took 27 hours to make one Marshmallow Peep; nowadays it takes 6 minutes.
    • President Ronald Reagan bought 12 tons of jellybeans during his eight years in office.
    • Every year candy manufacturers make 90 million chocolate Easter bunnies.
    • When the first 3 Musketeers Bars were introduced in 1932, the package included three small, individual bars—a vanilla, a chocolate, and a strawberry.
    • Licorice was found in King Tut’s tomb.
    • It takes an average of 252 licks to get to the chewy center of a Tootsie Roll Pop.

GORILLAS
    • Young gorillas like to play games like Follow the Leader and King of the Mountain.
    • Gorillas share 98% of our genes, making them our second-closest relatives (chimpanzees share 99%).
    • Gorillas laugh when they’re tickled and cry when they’re sad or hurt.
    • There can be as many as 30 gorillas in a troop .
    • Every gorilla troop has a leader, a large older male known as a “silverback” because of the gray-silver hair on his back. He makes every decision for the troop—and will protect it to the death.
    • Gorillas support their weight on their knuckles when they walk on all fours (unlike monkeys, who use the palms of their hands).
    • Adult male gorillas are about 5’6” when they stand up straight.
    • Gorillas are mainly vegetarians, although insects make up 1-2% of their diet. They don’t seem to drink anything at all—observers think they get their water from the plants they eat.
    • The mountain gorilla is an endangered species; fewer than 400 are left in the wild.

TREES
    • The world’s oldest tree—a bristlecone pine in California called “Methuselah”—is 4,789 years old. Experts say it grows .00035 inches every 24 hours.
    • What’s the tree most often used in street names? Is it elm? How about maple? Birch? Pine? No—it’s oak.
    • There are 128 cubic feet in a cord of wood.
    • The tallest