Strange But True: Airplane Lightning

By Lucie Winborne

• We should all be so lucky as to have vision like that of the mantis shrimp: Not only do its eyes possess four times as many color receptors as a human's, it can see UV, visible and polarized light as well.

• The rise in global temperatures has led to flowers emitting less scent.

• Lightning hasn't brought down an airplane since 1963, thanks to engineering that allows a bolt's electric charge to run through and out of the aircraft.

• Spinraza, a drug prescribed for spinal muscular dystrophy, has a list price of $750,000.

• By 2018, more than 100 people living in the U.S. owed at least $1 million in federal student loans.

• A one-euro breakfast featured at an IKEA store in the Netherlands proved so popular that it had to be canceled after it attracted too many customers and even led to highway traffic jams.

• Kellogg's All-Bran cereal is actually 87% bran.

• Heading for the gym in the new year? Be sure to take some hand sanitizer! A report found that a typical gym's free weights boast 362 times as much bacteria as a toilet seat.

• During the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to put aside their political differences if Earth was ever invaded by aliens from outer space.

• Nicaraguan Catholics who abstain from meat during Lent include iguanas and armadillos in their diet.

• In 1978, Equatorial Guinea's President Francisco Macias Nguema, widely considered one of history's most brutal, possibly even insane dictators, tempted fate by changing his country's national motto to "There is no other God than Macias Nguema."

• More than four tons of old American paper money is mulched into compost every day.

Thought for the Day: "Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often." --Lisa Nichols

(c) 2023 King Features Synd., Inc.