Strange But True: Mountain Dew

By Lucie Winborne

• Fireflies are the most efficient producers of light in the world.

• Tong Aonan solved 840 Rubik's cubes, then used them to create a portrait of his crush and declare his love for her. Sadly, she rejected him.

• A runaway tortoise in Putnam County, Florida, covered a span of five miles in three and a half years before ending up at Florida's Wildest Animal Rescue, where a staff member was able to determine its identity and reunite it with its owners.

• Snake Venom, the world's strongest beer, has an alcohol level of 67.5%.

• Breton, a great white shark, created a self-portrait of sorts with its GPS tracker on its travels through the Atlantic Ocean. What made the mapped outline remarkable was its resemblance to a great white shark!

• Anuptaphobia is the fear of being single forever.

• Sixteen-year-old Titanic survivor Katherine Gilnagh didn't understand the ship's dire situation until she made it safely to New York, but thought that being put into lifeboats and picked up by the Carpathia was part of the voyage.

• Asian hair grows 30% faster than Caucasian hair.

• The soft drink Mountain Dew was created in Tennessee in the 1940s as a mixer for whiskey, hence its name (a slang term for moonshine).

• If, like many Americans, you have trouble getting to sleep, you might try the advice of researchers and go low-tech camping for at least a week. The lack of electronics helps reset the body clock and synchronize melatonin hormones with sunrise and sunset.

• A bookstore in Australia wraps its volumes in paper with short descriptions attached so potential buyers won't "judge a book by its cover."

Thought for the Day: "How wonderful is it that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." -- Anne Frank

(c) 2024 King Features Synd., Inc.