Trivia

The poet John Ciardi said, “A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in the students.”

Claim is that waitresses almost invariably are good dancers.

If you live where you see a lot of stars at night, note this: About half of them are “binaries” - two stars revolving around each other.

Q. Did Native American kids play with dolls before the colonists showed up?

A. Evidently. Collectors say settlers’ first dolls were copies of Indian dolls, dressed in cornhusks, dyed with berry juices.

Q. In political jargon, what’s a “Moses”?

A. A candidate who wanders the talk show circuit at random without focusing on specific issues.

In the livestock language of Great Britain, a pig remains a pig, no matter how old, no matter how fat. It’s never a hog, I’m told.

Q. On cruises, who besides the captain gets to sit at the captain’s table?

A. Celebrities, honeymooners, suite occupants, repeat tourtakers, and others of influence in the pecking order.

“Avoid actors,” said the typical Victorian father to his typical Victorian daughter. “They’re a worthless lot who don’t pay their bills.” What he didn’t tell her might be what he didn’t know. When actors skipped out in the dark of night, it was oftentimes because show managers left early with the box office receipts, leaving the actors stranded. This was not a rare occurrence.

Silversmiths of 300 years ago found a market for tongue scrapers - small edged instruments then used by some practitioners to scrape the coated tongues of patients. Fairly common treatment. Today, it’s the key procedure at the bad-breath clinics.