Strange But True: Solar Eruption

By Lucie Winborne

• At just 15 years old, actor Sylvester Stallone's classmates voted him "most likely to end up in the electric chair."

• One day in 1930, the BBC announced on air that "there is no news," and played piano music.

• Fulmars, a type of seabird, vomit putrid fishy oil on predatory birds in self-defense, which not only smells awful but is lethal to the attackers, as it permanently glues their feathers together.

• If viewed from space or a high altitude, the sun appears to be white.

• Larry Lemieux, a Canadian sailor at the 1988 Olympics, was about to win a silver medal when he abandoned the race to save two other competitors whose boat had capsized. While he lost the silver medal, he was given the Pierre de Coubertin medal for sportsmanship.

• A hydrangea flower's color is determined by the relative acidity of the soil in which it's grown: Acidic soil will produce a blue flower, while alkaline soil will yield a pink blossom.

• The Sami people of Northern Finland have a unit of measurement called the "poronkusema"-- the distance a reindeer can walk before it needs to urinate.

• Had a solar eruption happened nine days earlier than it did in 2012, the Earth would have been hit by a massive solar storm that would likely have caused major X-ray and UV radiation and power failure over the planet. It also would likely have cost trillions of dollars and taken four to 10 years to recover from. Timing really is everything!

• The hotel that inspired Stephen King to write "The Shining" plays the Stanley Kubrick film of the same name on a continuous loop on channel 42 for guests.

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Thought for the Day: "Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us every day." -- Sally Koch

(c) 2023 King Features Synd., Inc.