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STRANGE BUT TRUE

STRANGE BUT TRUE

By Samantha Weaver

• It was American columnist Franklin Pierce Adams who made the following sage observation: “Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them.”

• If you’re like the average human, your heart will beat 100,000 times today.

• Before Humphrey Bogart became a famed star of the silver screen, he was famous for another reason. Bogart’s mother painted a portrait of little Humphrey as a baby, and that portrait was used as a trademark for Mellin’s baby-food company.

• John Quincy Adams was the first U.S. president to be photographed.

• If you’re a stargazer -- or a night owl -- you might already be aware of the fact that you can see about five times as many shooting stars after midnight as you can see before.

• Lexicographers claim that “queue” is the only word in the English language whose pronunciation does not change when the last four letters are removed.

• Only about 5 percent of the salt produced every year winds up on the dinner table to be used as a seasoning. And you might be surprised to learn the diverse purposes for which the other 95 percent is used: packing meat and feeding livestock, of course, but also building roads, tanning leather and manufacturing such items as soap, ash, detergents and glass.

• Here’s a fun experiment: Pour a glass of champagne, then drop in a raisin. The carbonation in the drink will cause the raisin to bounce up and down continuously until the wine goes flat.

Thought for the day: “There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.” - Logan Pearsall Smith