Strange But True: Red Bull

By Lucie Winborne

• Competitive swimmer Tim Duncan grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he trained for the 1992 Olympics, until Hurricane Hugo destroyed his island's only Olympic-size pool. Since the only alternative was to swim in the ocean, and he was afraid of sharks, he decided to play basketball instead.

• Red Bull was developed in Thailand as an energy drink for truck drivers.

• Georg Gartner, a German POW, escaped his American prison camp near the end of World War II and lived in America for 40 years under a fake name before finally confessing his true identity on "The Today Show."

• History's longest prison sentence, a whopping 384,912 years, was given to a mailman -- for not delivering the mail.

• Johnny Depp dropped out of high school to become a rock musician. When he attempted to return two weeks later, the principal told him to follow his dream of being a musician.

• A shopping center in Zimbabwe uses an air conditioning system inspired by African termite hills. Ventilated and cooled by natural means, it uses less than 10% of the energy of a conventional building its size.

• The largest-known bird nest belonged to a pair of bald eagles and measured 9 feet wide by 20 feet deep, with an estimated weight of 4,400 pounds.

• Colorblind people tend to have better night vision and can sometimes see a luminosity of colors that normal-sighted people can't. As a result, the U.S. Army discovered that they could perceive camouflage colors that are difficult for those with normal color vision to see, giving them the unique ability to better make out hidden enemies at night.

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Thought for the Day: "If you are working on something that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed. The vision pulls you." -- Steve Jobs

(c) 2023 King Features Synd., Inc.