Trivia

In ancient Rome, there were no strictly female names, only feminized male names: Claudia, Julia, Cornelia, Lucretia, so on.

The Russian name for Sunday translates “Resurrection.”

On Madagascar once foraged a hippopotamus about the size of a dog.

Neither ancient Greece nor old Rome - those cradles of Western civilization - had anything like a university.

People in portraits painted during the time of King Henry VIII all wear long sleeves. An art historian says it was considered indecent then not only for women to bare their arms in public but for men to do so, too.

Nepal’s Buddhists in the monastery of Thyangboche at the Shangri-La elevation of 13,100 feet sometimes in their mysterious ceremonies ring a gong. Its exotic tone lingers in the chill thin air for a long moment to charm the wonderment of strangers. In fact, that gong is an old oxygen cylinder abandoned by an Everest expedition.

The Constitution of Denmark clearly makes it illegal there to starve.

Q. Wasn’t Hawaii unknown when the Declaration of Independence was signed?

A. To the signers, yes. To the Hawaiians, no.