A 1-pound spool of spider web theoretically could unroll all the way around the world at the equator.

Item No. 933C in our Love and War man’s file is a line delivered by that ancient literary light Seneca: “It’s hard to keep a wife who’s admired by everyone, and it’s hard to live with a wife who’s admired by no one.” What’s said about a wife is also said about a husband, and more often, probably.

Q. What proportion of the issued patents ever make any money?

A. Only 3 percent. And only 10 percent ever go into the marketplace.

A female yak is called a “dri.” Lagniappe: Nepalese law long made it illegal there for the owner of a yak to kill it. But correspondents say many a yak fell off a cliff, thus to yield for its overjoyed owner 800 pounds of meat.

Computer switches typically transmit data 100,000 times faster than do human brain neurons.

Dime novelists of old fairly well established this distinction: a “gunman” was an outlaw, and a “gunfighter” was a lawman.

Every butterfly starts out with a pump in its stomach. To inflate its wings after it emerges from the chrysalis.