Trivia

Presidential candidate Andrew Jackson in 1828 was handed a baby to kiss. This is the first political baby-kissing bit in the records. History notes Jackson blinked, murmured something unheard, and passed the baby along to future Secretary of War John Eaton to execute the honor.

Those who arrange funerals for dead elephants in Southeast Asia say they need 11 dumptruck loads of wood to make a decent funeral pyre.

Q. When does the average man lose his virginity and get married?

A. Age 17 and age 26 are the answers of the averagers.

Q. How tall is a newly hatched ostrich chick?

A. A foot or so. Then it grows about a foot a month.

Claim is the fat in chocolate doesn’t raise blood cholesterol.

Unpublished poets, even the great, defend their cloistered condition. Emily Dickinson, who put little into print during her lifetime, said, “Publication … is the auction of the mind of man.”

Q. Who was the first U.S. President to smoke cigarettes?

A. That inhaler was Chester Alan Arthur.

Ten snails crawl down a soaked wooden track. One crosses the finish line. That’s it for the Snail Grand Prix in Alsace, France. Onlookers roar. Corks pop. A pretty young woman draped “Miss Escargot” kisses the fastest snail that’s suddenly famous! Chatter resumes. Chefs heat up the contestants - winner and losers - and pass them around with garlic butter. Miss Escargot doesn’t know if the snail she eats is the snail she kissed. Fame is fleeting.

Not all in the Lower 48 know a diphtheria epidemic hit the children of Alaska’s Nome in 1925, and medicine was afar. Twenty dogsled racers relayed it from Anchorage in the “Race for Life.” That’s what the annual Iditarod commemorates.

The butcher raised his gun. The pig kicked. The gun shot the butcher. In Luneburg, Germany, this. Add it to the “Man Bites Dog Briefs.”

Clams surf, too. In and out, they ride the tides. For food. No boards.

It’s our Love and War man’s belief that no woman in search of male companionship should overlook this statistic: Among U.S. dart players, the men outnumber the women by 3-to-2.

Seventy-seven percent of Germany’s pain clinics use acupuncture, correspondents report.

Don’t mix up “fabulous” with “fabulist.” A “fabulist” is a liar.

Q. How old was Dolly Parton at the time of her first record?

A. “Puppy Love”? It came out in 1956, and the almanackers give her year of birth as 1946. Maybe so.

Pollsters asked a sizable sampling of auto mechanics whether they’d go into that line of work again, knowing what they know now, and 51 percent said not a chance or words to that effect. With a Rodney Dangerfield reprise of “no respect.”

A review of recent medical records from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean indicate Greek parents of late have been having heftier babies than parents of newborns elsewhere in Europe.

An old Michigan law made it a crime to put a skunk in your boss’s desk.

Joe Pesci once worked as a produce manager.