Trivia

Q. What was the life expectancy in the Greece of Socrates?

A. Age 40.

Q. How do natives of the Far North mark their trails where no trees grow?

A. With empty oil cans mostly. They used to leave shaped rock piles.

Q. What’s the least money a U.S. major league baseball player can make now?

A. $109,000 a year.

Nature has its own way of cleaning up contaminated ground, evidently. Consider the New Jersey site, dead of lead, where batteries once were made. Planters put in a crop of Indian mustard, then reported it drew out almost all the lead in a single season. Remarkable, what?

Not all the world’s classic water fountains were built for beauty’s sake. Old Rome’s served practically to relieve the pipe-popping pressure of powerful water from the long, steep aqueduct.

In a spider’s web, the circling threads are sticky, and the spoke threads are dry. The spider always walks on the spokes so it doesn’t get hung up in the web.

Florida’s Tampa is more westerly than any place in South America.

“Red rum, sir, is murder.” Even when you read it backwards.