Strange But True: Bat Birth

By Lucie Winborne

  • When Texas was its own sovereign nation in the mid-1800s, it briefly had a diplomatic mission in Paris.

  • In 1939, George Bernard Dantzig, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, arrived late for a statistics class and copied the two problems on the blackboard, assuming they were the homework, then handed them in a few days later. Several weeks afterward, he was awakened by his professor's excited knock at the door: The "homework" was actually unsolved problems in statistics that Dantzig had managed to prove.

  • Since avocados never ripen on trees, farmers can use the trees as a way to store and keep the fruit fresh for up to seven months.

  • Maine is the closest U.S. state to Africa.

  • It's a sweetly romantic tradition for the post offices of Romeo, Michigan, and Juliette, Georgia, to offer a special dual postmark leading up to Valentine's Day.

  • As comedian Bob Hope lay on his deathbed in 2003, his wife Dolores asked where he'd like to be buried. His reply? "Surprise me."

  • The three dots on the Domino's Pizza logo represent the chain's three original locations. Co-founder Tom Monaghan originally planned to add a new dot for every pizzeria he opened.

  • Female bats give birth while hanging upside down, catching the baby in their wings.

  • England's King Richard the Lionheart spent a mere six months of his 10-year reign in England, being there only briefly in 1189 and 1194.

  • At the end of 1914, when Russia was fighting in World War I, the country's army had 6,553,000 men, but just 4,652,000 rifles.

Thought for the Day: "Happy is the person who knows what to remember of the past, what to enjoy in the present and what to plan for in the future." -- Arnold H. Glasow

(c) 2024 King Features Synd., Inc.

Previous
Previous

Celebrity Extra: Drew Carey

Next
Next

Divas on a Dime: Homemade Tomato Jam