Trivia

You also can pass the time at stoplights by reciting things that come to mind in “threes”: Blind mice. Kings of Israel. Men in a tub. Bags full. Wise Men. Your turn. …

Tell that young lady with the small bottle of polish that her fingernails are made of the same sort of material as the scales on a snake.

In ancient China, Emperor Fushi decreed people would be identified thereafter with a formal family name as well as a familiar first name. Two names per person - another first for the Chinese. It was about 2850 B.C. in Western world time. Ages passed. Now everybody calls everybody by only one name again. We’re going backwards.

Caterpillars eat only at night.

Some religious people object to the language of the law. Hurricanes and herpes, they complain, are identified in legalese as “acts of God.” But rainbows and apple blossoms are called “natural phenomena.”

More than half the world’s lakes are in Canada.

It was the custom for centuries in what’s now Istanbul to light the harem quarters with candles fastened to the backs of wandering tortoises.

An old cowboy’s comment on good stew: “If you can tell what’s in it when you eat it, it ain’t done yet.”