Strange But True: Greenland
By Lucie Winborne
Venus is the only planet to spin clockwise.
Around 600 B.C., a Greek athlete by the name of Protesilaus threw a discus 152 feet from a standing position. His record remained unbroken for over 2,000 years, until Clarence Houser threw a discus 155 feet in 1928.
The nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty" doesn't state that Humpty Dumpty was an egg.
In the 1950s, Quaker Oats devised a clever marketing scheme in which the company bought 19.11 acres in the Yukon, divided them into 21 million parcels of just a square inch apiece, and included deeds to the tiny plots in boxes of Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice.
A game of bridge contains 53,644,737,765,488,792,839,237,440,000 possible ways in which the cards can be dealt.
To encourage his fellow Norsemen to settle a large, snow-and-ice-covered island he discovered in the year 982, Eric the Red called it Greenland. The ploy worked.
Niagara Falls is slowly eroding by 1 to 2 feet per year. Since their formation some 12,000 years ago, the falls have already withdrawn 7 miles upstream, and if that rate continues, they should meet up with Lake Erie, about 20 miles from their present site, within the next 35,000 years.
In movies and television, scientists are more likely to suffer a violent death than members of any other profession.
The lead-acid battery, the type most commonly used in cars, was invented by Martha C. Weston, who patented it in 1859 when she was only 17 years old.
Lemons float, but limes sink.
Thought for the Day: "I believe ambition is not a dirty word. It's just believing in yourself and your abilities. Imagine this: What would happen if we were all brave enough to be a little bit more ambitious? I think the world would change." -- Reese Witherspoon
(c) 2024 King Features Synd., Inc.