Strange But True: A tornado in Oklahoma

By Lucie Winborne

• In 2008, PETA requested Ben & Jerry's use breastmilk instead of cow's milk to make ice cream. This was unanimously rejected by Ben & Jerry's and La Leche League International.

• Sixty-five percent of test subjects had the urge to yawn after reading about yawning.

• From 1746 until 1996, English law considered bagpipes not as a musical instrument, but a weapon of war, used to "instill courage in soldiers and put the fear of God into the enemy."

• The kitchen dishwasher was invented by a politician's socialite wife who was fed up with servants breaking her expensive dishes.

• Author Roger Highfield's 1999 book "The Physics of Christmas: From the Aerodynamics of Reindeer to the Thermodynamics of Turkey" detailed a darker side to Rudolph's famously red nose -- not alcoholism, but some kind of parasitic infection.

• A tornado in Oklahoma once ripped a full motel off the ground. Its sign was later found in Arkansas.

• Born in 1924, a horse called Lady Wonder was considered by many to be psychic. Not only did she make predictions and answer questions for over 30 years and more than 150,000 people, she was credited with helping to solve several crimes.

• Chilean poet Pablo Neruda always wrote in green ink, which for him was a color of hope and abundance.

• LeBron James's decision to leave Cleveland to join the Miami Heat was such a shocker that even Osama Bin Laden's translator, who was being held at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, wrote about it to his lawyers, declaring that "LeBron James is a very bad man. He should apologize to the city of Cleveland."

Thought for the Day: "Beauty is the moment when time vanishes and eternity arises." -- Amit Ray

(c) 2021 King Features Synd., Inc.