Trivia

Andre Jacques Garnerin was the first person of record to use a parachute. In 1797, it was. At 2,230 feet, he jumped out of a hot-air balloon in a chute with no air vent, and it oscillated all the way down.

Can you say “popocatepetl”? Good, you speak the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. At least, you can say “smoking mountain” in it.

One scholar has concluded that most animals that flee their societies in groups tend to head west. Including humans.

Can you explain why a woman is more susceptible to sunburn when she’s pregnant than at other times? Such is said to be the case.

Airplanes beat helicopters into the air by only 35 years.

In mammals, the normal number of breasts, from two to 16, is twice the number of the expected litter, say the experts.

By weight, the head is 40 percent of the shrimp, and fortunately that’s gone by the time you’re ready to buy.

“We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.” So wrote La Rochefoucault, the French master of the maxim.

Q. Don’t all big cats in the wild attack their prey by biting into the neck?

A. Except the jaguar. It bites through the skull.