Strange But True: Be there in a jiffy

By Lucie Winborne

• Boston College has a policy allowing employees' children to attend for free once they've been accepted. One janitor's five children all made it in, saving the family almost $700,000 in tuition costs.

• At some point, you've probably promised someone you'd "be there in a jiffy," but did you know that's an actual unit of time? 1/100th of a second, to be precise.

• Bob Ross, known for his TV show "The Joy of Painting," received up to 200 fan letters per day. If regular correspondents failed to keep in touch, he would phone them to make sure they were all right.

• The numbers on a roulette wheel, when added together, sum up to 666.

• The Eco Gym in Rochester, New York, uses cardio equipment that harvests energy from members' workouts as a means of reducing energy costs. Savings are passed on to the members as an incentive to keep coming back for regular exercise.

• Women's fashion changed with the invention of cars, when skirts in the 1900s were shortened to allow women to step into automobiles with more ease.

• The "XXX" that is often used to signify "poison" originated from moonshiners, indicating that their alcohol had been run through the still three times and was now pure and strong.

• In Sweden, millennials are known as the "Curling Generation," after the sport in which teammates sweep the ice in front of their stone to guide it, in the same manner as parents of millennials have swept away obstacles from their children's paths.

• Since snowflakes fall at about the rate of 1.5 mph, every one you see has traveled from 45-60 minutes to reach the ground.

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Thought for the Day: "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." -- Immanuel Kant

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