Trivia

If you have trouble going to sleep, blame anxiety. If you have trouble staying asleep, blame depression. That’s a generality shredded by exceptions and riddled with contradictions. But doctors say it’s accurate often enough to note and remember.

The Telmatobius frogs in Lake Titicaca have no tongues. They eat with their fingers.

Q. A magician on television demonstrated that he could stop his own pulse at will. How did he do it?

A. Easily. It was Blackstone’s trick years ago. He put a wad of cloth a couple of inches thick into his armpit, then pressed down hard against it.

Q. How far back does store spaghetti go?

A. Only 172 years. One Paolo B. Agnese opened the first pasta factory at Imperia on the Italian Riviera in 1824. His family ran it for more than 150 years.

It was the Irish-born American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens who said, “What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.”