Trivia

Q. What are the measurements in lumber of a board foot?

A. One foot by 1 foot by 1 inch.

Q. Why do toymakers watch the divorce rate?

A. When it rises, so do toy sales. Four parents and eight grandparents tend to compete, though subtly maybe, for a child’s affection, so buy toys.

Q. Why can’t a swan with a broken leg fly?

A. It has to run to take off.

Whales can’t roll their eyes.

The physical size of a city once was limited by how long it took to walk to work. The uncharted city limit was that ring around town beyond which was too far to hike downtown in a reasonable time.

Under the law of New York’s Orange County, it’s reported, a man can be arrested just for “looking at a woman that way.”

Q. How many mass extinctions have hit life on Earth?

A. Five insofar as the paleontologists now know.

Betsy Ross didn’t create the first U.S. flag, report the debunkers. Around 1876, her descendants spread that myth to create a tourist attraction in Philadelphia, they say. Maybe so. But our Language man finds no joy in retwisting harmless old lies into harmless new lies. Nobody knows the whole truth about anything.