Strange But True: Animal insomnia

By Lucie Winborne

  • "White noise" is named such because, just as the color white is a mixture of many different shades at different ratios, it's a combination of all sound frequencies at once.

  • Some of the first soccer balls were made of clothing filled with rubble.

  • A young Bangladeshi woman with two uteruses gave birth to twins less than a month after having a son.

  • "Jazz on bones" or "Ribs" were bootleg vinyl recordings made from old X-rays with holes burned in the middle from cigarettes, used in the '50s and '60s to smuggle banned music into the Soviet Union.

  • A vending machine offering live crabs debuted in 2010 in Nanjing, China, with sales of around 200 per day and a promised refund of three live crabs for any dead one dispensed.

  • While enough was known about Halley's Comet in 1910 to predict its arrival, rumors about its dangers were so extensive that some people bought comet umbrellas and anti-comet pills in an attempt to protect themselves from it.

  • Between 2006 and 2007, Poland's prime minister and president were identical twin brothers, making them the first siblings in history to hold those titles simultaneously.

  • Ever wonder why sneezes frequently occur in threes? The first loosens the irritant. The second propels it to the front of your nose, and the third expels it. Problem solved!

  • Cats, dogs and even insects can all experience insomnia.

  • Stephen King, who has made a career out of scaring his readers, is scared of the number 13: While reading, he won't pause on a page with that number or a page whose number adds up to 13.

***

Thought for the Day: "Sometimes the steepest, most challenging and most rewarding paths in life are not meant to be walked, but crawled." -- Toni Sorenson

(c) 2022 King Features Synd., Inc.

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