Strange But True: Happier but shorter

By Lucie Winborne

• It is impossible for a human to sneeze during sleep due to a bodily state called REM atonia.

• For 200 years tomatoes were considered poisonous in Europe. In reality, their acidity was dissolving poisonous metals like lead from plates.

• Scientists investigating the occasional appearance of thousands of dead fish on the banks of an African river eventually discovered that the cause was huge numbers of hippos pooping in the water.

• Actor Danny DeVito used to be a beautician.

• Ten thousand years ago, everyone's eyes were brown until someone living by the Black Sea developed a genetic mutation that turned brown eyes blue.

• In 2007, a gorilla escaped from his exhibit, grabbed and mauled a nearby woman, and then attacked a restaurant. Later it was later revealed that the woman had been making eye contact and smiling at the primate several times a week, something zookeepers had warned her not to do.

• Freelance diamond setter Raffi Stepanian found he could collect enough bits of carelessly dropped diamonds, rubies, platinum and gold on the sidewalks of New York City's Midtown Diamond District to earn a living.

• In April of 2018, scientists at the Gladstone Institutes in California completely erased Alzheimer's disease damage in human cells by altering the structure of a single protein.

• The most expensive photograph ever sold, "Rhein II," a basic picture of the lower Rhine river under an overcast sky that had been digitally altered to remove dog walkers and a factory building, was purchased in 2011 for a cool $4.3 million.

• Research has shown that taller people are happier but shorter people live longer.

Thought for the Day: "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." -- Bernard M. Baruch

(c) 2024 King Features Synd., Inc.