Strange But True: Lightning bolt
By Lucie Winborne
In 2020, a lightning bolt extending a total of 477.2 miles spread across Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, setting a new world record for the longest flash.
Rubber bands last longer if you refrigerate them.
Rooms at the Null Stern ("zero star") Hotel are situated in repurposed nuclear bunkers and include open-air mountain rooms with equally zero walls. The designers obviously weren't kidding about that rating.
In 2002, NASA intern Thad Roberts stole a safe full of moon rocks so he and his girlfriend could have "sex on the moon." Their otherworldly romantic encounter backfired when they later tried to sell the $21 million worth of rocks. Roberts was caught and sentenced to eight years in prison.
And speaking of romance: Tinder's not just for humans! Well, not at the Dutch zoo that created a "Tinder for orangutans" to help a female named Samboja find a breeding partner. The primate was shown photos of potential mates from an international breeding program on a tablet, but unfortunately her mother got hold of it ... and smashed it to pieces.
Poet W.B. Yeats and magician Aleister Crowley were such bitter rivals in the world of the occult that Yeats once kicked Crowley down a flight of stairs for being a proponent of "black magic."
Only humans have chins.
In 2012, the police chief of Vaughn, New Mexico, stepped down because his own criminal record prevented him from carrying a gun. That left just a drug-sniffing dog named Nikita as the only certified member of the town's police department.
Trained pigeons can tell the difference between paintings by Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet.
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Thought for the Day: "What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals." -- Zig Ziglar
(c) 2022 King Features Synd., Inc.