Trivia

Ask the scholar in your neighborhood network to name the first school in America to award a doctorate. That worthy may say, “Harvard,” and you can pump your fist in high glee and sneer, “Wrong! It was Yale!”

Approximately 40 percent of the money pulled in by TV evangelists comes from the retired citizenry.

An old law in Bellingham made it illegal for a woman to take more than three steps backwards while dancing.

If U.S. Navy messes about 150 years ago hadn’t started the relentless daily serving of certain seeds - genus Phaseolus, pea family - they doubtless would not have come to be called navy beans.

In northern Spain’s mountainous Sierra Atapuerca, a young man wants to give a special engagement token to his lady love. So he creeps 1,600 feet into an ancient cave called the Cueva Mayor, And crawls back out with a fossilized bear tooth. Tough task, they say. No doubt. Still, our Love and War man notes many an American Indian retrieved just such a token. But not fossilized. Still attached to the bear.

No photos are taken at Quaker weddings.

The poet Robert Frost explained himself: “I’m not confused. I’m just well-mixed.”