Strange But True: Human Jaw

By Lucie Winborne

• Boxing heavyweight champion Jack Johnson invented the household wrench in 1922.

• The movie title "Death Wish III" was changed to "Death Wish 3" after a survey conducted by the Cannon Group revealed that nearly half of Americans couldn't read Roman numerals.

• Tom Hanks' brother Jim voices "Toy Story's" Woody when his sibling is too busy.

• A hat that doubles as a weapon? Sure, if you're a gum-leaf skeletonizer caterpillar, which wears its old molted heads on top of its noggin and uses them to bat away predators!

• The human jaw can clench with 250 pounds of force.

• Those chocolate-covered caramel candies we fondly know as Milk Duds were originally intended to be perfectly round. But when machines in 1928 couldn't produce them consistently, the misshaped goodies were called "duds," hence their unusual name.

• From the "nothing like planning ahead" files: CNN has prepared a doomsday video, to be played by the last surviving employee. In 2009, a former intern posted the footage online. It shows a low-resolution video of a U.S. Army band playing a mournful rendition of "Nearer My God to Thee."

• The center of the Milky Way tastes like raspberries and smells like rum.

• In the 1970s, Chrysler advertised its luxury cars as containing "Corinthian leather." But spokesman Ricardo Montalban admitted on "Late Night with David Letterman" that the term really meant nothing, as said leather was actually sourced out of New Jersey.

• Romania's Movile Cave, isolated from the outside world for more than 5 million years, contains more than 30 species not found anywhere else on Earth.

• In the 1700s, "bitch the pot" or "standing bitch" was English slang for hosting a tea party.

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Thought for the Day: "Try to be a rainbow in someone else's cloud." --Maya Angelou

(c) 2022 King Features Synd., Inc.