Strange But True: IKEA bias

By Lucie Winborne

• Do you like to shop at IKEA? You might be interested to know that the "IKEA bias" makes you place a disproportionately high value on things you partially assemble yourself, regardless of the end result's quality.

• An attempt to set the Guinness World Record for the world's most expensive cocktail sadly proved futile after a customer dropped and broke a bottle of cognac worth $77,000.

• Upon hearing of the 9/11 attacks, the Maasai tribe in Africa gifted 14 cows to America.

• In 1987, a 93-gram radioactive device was stolen from an abandoned hospital in Brazil. After it was passed around, four people died, 112,000 people had to be examined, and several houses had to be destroyed.

• Gal Gadot trained for nine months to gain 17 pounds of muscle for the movie "Wonder Woman."

• Elevator operator Betty Oliver survived a 75-story fall from the Empire State Building in 1945 when a B-25 crashed into it due to fog. Three crewman and 11 people in the building died, but Betty, who died in 1999, still holds the Guinness World Record for longest survived elevator fall.

• A cat named Barsik, in Barnaul, Siberia, won a mayoral race with more than 90% of the vote. Notwithstanding that fact, and his clever campaign slogan -- "Only mice don't vote for Barsik!" -- he was, alas, not allowed to actually take office.

• While John and Clarence Anglin, two of the only three men who ever escaped from Alcatraz, were officially reported to have drowned in the bay, their mother received flowers anonymously every Mother's Day until she died, and two very tall, unknown women were said to have attended her funeral.

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Thought for the Day: "Try not to become a man of success, but rather become a man of value." -- Albert Einstein

(c) 2023 King Features Synd., Inc.