Trivia

Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the Unitd States since 1916, when a man mailed a 40,000-ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.

While living in Memphis, Tenn., in 1866-67, Thomas Edison worked up a device to electrocute cockroaches.

The earth is proportionally smoother than a billiard ball.

Your brain pulsates within your skull in time to your heartbeat.

If it’s “favonian,” it has to do with the west wind.

This is about passion: Normal wing speed of hummingbirds runs 44 beats per second. Except during mating. Then it’s about 200 beats per second.

Q. Who was the ruler who permitted a man to divorce his wife on the grounds her perfume had seduced him into matrimony?

A. England’s King George III once so decreed. According to the historical footnotes, the king believed such scents could overpower reason.

When the Pilgrims negotiated with the Indians for wild turkeys, both Pilgrims and Indians wanted to get right down to business. That’s how far back you have to go for the origin of our phrase “talk turkey.”