We are thrilled (relieved?) to present our 38th annual edition, Uncle John’s Know It All Bathroom Reader. It’s almost overflowing with trivia, facts, stories, and wonders. At more than 400 pages, there’s enough bathroom reading in there to last you for a year. Because it’s our 38th go-around, here are 38 sneak peaks to what lies inside. (Get your copy today!)

1. The acts that have sold the most concert tickets of all time: U2, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and the Dave Matthews Band.

2. The singular and plural forms of fish are fish, if you’re talking about quantities of the same fish. If you’re talking about multiple kinds of fish, you would say fishes. 

3. The original name of St. Paul, Minnesota, was Pig’s Eye, named after the pub that catered to early settlers in the 1820s. 

4. Here’s all the hottest slang from the icy contintent of Antarctica: A snowquake is an avalanche, bronzy is sunburned, and a wolf of the sea is a whale. 

5. During a pork shortage affecting Great Britain in the 1870s, suppliers to Canada debuted a new kind of ham-like meat that they called Canadian bacon. That name made it sound exotic to Americans, while in Canada, it was known, then and now, as back bacon, after the location of the pig from where it’s sourced. 

6. In 1969, the NBA’s San Francisco Warriors drafted high school basketball star Denise Long, the first time a woman had been selected. There was nothing in the rule book forbidding that, but the league office nixed the draft pick, thinking that it was some kind of sexist publicity stunt.

7. New homes built in the 2020s are about 30 percent bigger than they were in the 1960s, but houses built in the 1960s sat on lots that are about 30 percent bigger than the ones used today. 

8. Aptronyms occur when someone’s name fits their profession. We found dozens, including Judge John Laws, Chef Tom Kitchin, Marine biologist Frank Fish, and wall builder Wally Wallington. 

9. Jeff Goldbum auditioned to play Doc Brown in Back to the Future. Filmmakers decided the 32-year-old was too young to play the older mad scientist, and after Gene Wilder, Gene Hackman, Robin Williams, John Candy, Danny DeVito, and Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh passed, 47-year-old Taxi star Christopher Lloyd got the gig. 

10. Each November, liars gather at the Bridge Inn in Cumbria, England for the World’s Biggest Liar Championship. Contestants have five minutes to tell a story that sounds true (but isn’t).

11. After Christmas, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is donated to Habitat for Humanity, and it’s used to build houses. 

12. Number of failed assassination attempts on Queen Elizabeth II: at least five, including one on a yacht sailing into San Francisco.

13. The one car that sold more than any other car: the 1965 Chevrolet Impala, with 1,074,925 purchased. 

14. It took Christopher Cross two years to write “Sailing,” and he finished it at the last minute to include on his 1979 debut album. It went on to help win Cross all four major categories at the Grammy Awards. 

15. The reason why the buttons on men and women’s shirts are on opposite sides? Up through the Victorian age, men dressed themselves and wealthy women  by assistants, so the buttons were mirrored accordingly.

16. There’s a rare medical condition called compound composite odontom, in which sacs of teeth grow inside the jaw. 

17. Paul and David Merage invented a frozen food called the Tasywich, a sealed pocket sandwich heated in a microwave with a carboard susceptor, or crisping sleeve. It flopped until they changed the name to Hot Pockets.

18. One of the best-selling book genres in the early 1800s was the travelogue, in which writers would describe in detail far-off lands. The arrival of photography killed the format. 

19. Green is the world’s second-most cited favorite color, and it’s mentioned in 49 bible verses.

20. Real museums in Canada: the World Famous Gopher Hole Museum, the Canadian Potato Museum, and the Sign Post Forest.

21. In 1926, Turkiye became the last country to adopt the Gregorian calendar.

22. The only dog breed named after a fictional character is the Dandie Dinmont terrier, reminiscent of the dogs in Walter Scott’s popular 1915 novel Guy Mannering.

23. In the pantheon of ancient Roman mythological gods, Crepitus was the god of the latrine and farting, and he could be called upon to relieve diarrhea and constipation. 

24. A Magic Eraser is made of porous melanine foam full of triangle-shaped air pockets that when moistened become as hard as glass and scrape stains away.

25. Yesterday Island and Tomorrow Island are 2.4 miles apart in the Bering Sea, but are 21 hours apart in time zones because they sit on opposite sides of the International Date Line. 

26. In 1939, Miami kid named Jerry Parr watched the Ronald Reagan movie Code of the Secret Service, which made him want to be a Secret Service agent. He eventually joined the agency, where in 1981, he prevented an assassin from killing President Ronald Reagan. 

27. New Zealand isn’t named after Zealand or Old Zealand. A Dutch navigator mapped it in the 1940s, and the government of the Netherlands named it after the province of Zeeland.

28. There are 250 different chemicals present in vanilla extract.

29. The only state with an official state nut that isn’t the pecan is Oregon, with its hazelnut.

30. While the authorship is contested, the subject of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was a girl named Mary Tyler who took a lamb to class in Sterling, Massachusetts, one day in the 1810s. 

30. The “stainless” in “stainless steel” doesn’t mean the surface won’t stain. It will stain less that other metallic materials might. 

31. When Tomorrowland opened at Disneyland in 1965, it was meant to depict life in the year 1986.

32. The only number with the same number of letters as its value: four.

33. King Ranch in Texas is larger than Rhode Island.

34. South Dakota is the only state without an Amtrak station.

35. A group of owls is called a parliament. C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia features a group of owls in a parliament-like setting, which was the inspiration for this grouping name.

36. When Emperor Nero died in 68 AD, he became the first celebrity subject to rumors about their death being faked.

37. Flop PEZ flavors: licorice, coffee, chocolate, and chlorophyll.

38. The national sport of Argentina is pato, a combo of basketball and polo.