Trivia

The original Popeye cartoon character ate garlic, not spinach. Many urged New York cartoonist Elzie Crisler Segar to put his character on a different diet. Back then, garlic wasn’t all that popular, not even roasted.

No, you won’t find sugar cane growing wild.

A man in love is likely to be a poor driver. Or so contends the Coed’s Safety League of Brussels, Belgium. In a pamphlet about hazards behind the wheel, this group claims, “Love is more dangerous than liquor.”

Q. What’s the only kind of bird that gives birth to live young?

A. Trick query. No birds do that. Eggs are their only way.

Q. I know Murphy’s Law holds that if anything can go wrong, it will. But who was Murphy?

A. Edward A. Murphy, a development engineer in 1949 at Ohio’s Wright Field Aircraft Lab. He tossed off such a line while troubleshooting a faulty gauge and was quoted and misquoted at length thereafter.

Client asks if John F. Kennedy invented dogtags. Not the president. An earlier John Kennedy. In 1852, he couldn’t sell them to the Union Army, but numerous soldiers then bought them individually, so his idea caught on.