Strange But True: Fear of ghoulish creatures

By Lucie Winborne

• In 2009 the British zombie movie "Colin," on which writer/director Marc Price spent 18 months and a whopping $70, won an award at the renowned Cannes Film Festival.

• Further on the subject of zombies, their fans are known as zombopiles, while fear of the ghoulish creatures is known as kinemortophobia.

• Nineteen-year-old Jonathan Parker, of Fort Loudoun, Pennsylvania, was charged with burglary after stealing two diamond rings and using the computer in his victim's house to check his Facebook profile, forgetting to log off from the site.

• Vikings believed a goat in Valhalla supplied an endless supply of beer from its udders.

• A football's shape (prolate spheroid) is that of an inflated pig's bladder, which is what the first footballs were made of.

• The 1934 mystery novel "Cain's Jawbone" by Edward Powys Mathers is printed with its 100 pages out of order. To solve the mystery, readers must determine the correct page order and the names of the six murderers and six victims. The mystery has only ever officially been solved by four people.

• Researchers in Japan have fitted a train with a speaker that barks like a dog and snorts like a deer in order to prevent collisions with deer on the railway.

• Canadian radio stations are required by law to play Canadian artists on the airwaves at least 35% of the time.

• The Windows XP default background image of rolling green hills known as "Bliss" was historically a vineyard. The vines were taken out a couple years before the photo was taken due to a pest infestation.

Thought for the Day: "When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." -- Helen Keller

(c) 2022 King Features Synd., Inc.