Trivia

Certain tribespeople in old Africa had a saying that translates: “The problem of the thief is not how to steal the chief’s bugle but where to blow it.”

New Hampshire’s legislature has 400 members. If the U.S. Congress were proportionately as large, it would have 100,000 members.

Q. How come falconers prefer to use female hawks?

A. Because the female is a third bigger, so considerably stronger than the male.

If there’s too much sediment in the wine, you stylishly put a piece of toast in the glass, and the sediment looks as though it were toast crumbs. That turned into a fad in 16th-century England and somehow led to our use of the word “toast” in the little glass-clinking ritual. If there’s too much seaweed in the oyster, you smother it with spinach and call it Oysters Rockefeller, in honor of the worthy for whom it was first concocted. That became a fad in early 20th-century America, and it’s still going strong. Fads that last serve some practical purpose, do they not?

A Justice Department study indicates the odds now that a newborn American eventually will go to prison run one in 20.

Monkeys, too, play peek-aboo.