Trivia

Q. Where’d the old-timers get that exclamation “Holy Smoke!”?

A. From the Latin “Fumo Santos” to express astonishment over the results of cardinal balloting in papal elections. After each ballot count, the cardinals burned the ballots. To send up white smoke, if they’d achieved a two-thirds-plus-one agreement. Or tar-darkened black smoke, if they hadn’t.

Archeologists have dug up Neolithic flint knives sharper than today’s scalpels.

Client writes: “Man is the only animal that doesn’t routinely take daytime naps.” This client does not know man as I know man.

Nine out of 10 people reported missing nationwide every year are children.

Most fine artists who draw human beings are actors of a sort. With their own bodies, they mimic the stances of the figures they sketch. It’s said Norman Rockwell did it, always himself striking the gesture and the pose. Dante wrote: “Who paints a figure, if he cannot be it, he cannot draw it.”

The Scots long ago came up with an ancient word for a magic spell that creates an illusion of beauty where no beauty exists. The word is “glamour.”

Approximately half the people who go to places of worship worldwide find no seats therein.