Strange But True: Calvin and Hobbes

By Lucie Winborne

  • A Calvin and Hobbes comic from 1992 referred to the start of the universe as the "Horrendous Space Kablooie" because they thought "The Big Bang" was too boring.

  • When a man noticed that his food supply was mysteriously diminishing he set up a webcam, only to discover that a woman had been living in one of his closets -- for a year!

  • The cable car is the only moving National Historic Monument in the world.

  • During Spain's colonial period, the builders of Filipino churches used millions of egg whites in the mortar to make the structures more durable. This also accounts for why Filipino desserts often use lots of eggs: Many of the recipes were developed to use up all those leftover yolks.

  • In 2013, Belgium created five limited edition stamps that smelled and tasted like chocolate.

  • A service operated in several Chinese cities that we'd like to see replicated in America is that of "jam busting." Drivers stuck in traffic snarls who urgently need to be somewhere make a phone call and two people show up on a motorbike. While one stays with the driver's car, the other transports the frustrated driver to their destination.

  • According to the American Kennel Club, dogs will fake a sneeze for play and communication purposes.

  • Iceland has the largest population of green-eyed people in the world.

  • Modern negligence law resulted from a 1932 Scottish court case, Donoghue v. Stevenson, aka the "Snail in the Bottle" case, in which Mrs. May Donoghue sued beer manufacturer Mr. David Stevenson after she drank a bottle of ginger beer with a dead snail in it and became ill.

***

Thought for the Day: "History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again." -- Maya Angelou

(c) 2023 King Features Synd., Inc.

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