Trivia

During a Hollywood screen test in 1935, a sophisticated young actor named David Niven, now the late, was asked to say something out loud. He recited in dry clipped Britishese a dirty limerick about an old man from Leeds. Such be our misfortunes: Niven goes, and the limerick hangs around.

The only bird that walks altogether upright is the penguin.

The scholars who produced the Oxford English Dictionary hired a special editor to compile all the words beginning with “Q.”

If U.S. postal workers mishandle only 18,000 pieces of mail every hour, they’re still dealing properly with 99.9 percent of the mail.

Q. How much money did science-fiction authority Arthur C. Clarke make on his invention of the communications satellite?

A. Exactly $40. He elected to publish his bright idea in “Wireless World” but did not personally try to detail its development.

If the dolphins are healthy, the seawater is still all right; dolphins make up an early warning system to detect oceanic pollution. So say the sea scientists.