Trivia

Researchers say they can’t figure out a paw preference in monkeys. Neither right nor left. And the fact that they can’t, they say, is exceedingly odd.

Q. Are cats sex symbols?

A. Sigmund Freud said so, but he saw sex symbolism in a lot of things.

Q. How are the Ms printed on M&Ms?

A. The candies are fitted into holes on conveyor belts and whisked through rolling print presses.

Q. You said the tax collector was probably the most dangerous man in the Ptolemy Dynasty of ancient Egypt. Why?

A. He personally had to pony up the tax of any evader assessed in his assigned group. So he became a dedicated hunter of delinquent men and their money.

The height of a grown-up human, ideally, is exactly eight times the height of that grownup’s head. Or so contends the American Chiropractic Association.

Q. How many new towns do the cartographers put on the maps of the world every year?

A. About 1,000. That’s how many old towns they take off, too.

How are your arteries doing, sir? It was almost two centuries ago that the French physician Pierre J. G. Cabanis said, “A man is as old as his arteries.”