Trivia

Of those now labeled alcoholics, Abraham Lincoln said: “I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.”

The Massachusetts Bay Colony sent 300,000 codfish to market in 1640. You can remember the year because that was when Pope Urban VIII ordered Spanish priests to stop smoking cigars.

You already know about those ants, the dalmatie, that cook their own food. But maybe you haven’t heard about the leafcutter ants that grow their own food. Mushrooms.

They cultivate and harvest same.

Actor Walter Mathau said, “I never mind my wife having the last word. In fact, I’m delighted when she gets to it.”

Put the sometime Ethiopian droughts together with the sometime El Nino wind currents and what do you get? Red mud of Africa falling on Miami, Fla. That has happened.

Word is your typical new book will have a shelf life of about 30 years before its paper will deteriorate so badly it will fall apart when you open it.