Trivia

In Civil War times, a few short telegraph lines were camouflaged as grapevines. From these, says one scholar, we got “I heard it through the grapevine.”

Advises a pet authority: “Do not blow on your tarantula.”

Now those researchers claim to know women are 30 percent more active sexually during a full moon. So reports our Love and War man, turning to his almanac.

Could you say about yourself what actor James Woods remarked of himself? To wit: “Woe to the man or woman who thinks that the capacity to kill is not lurking behind these civilized eyes.”

Q. What’s “IVLIVS”?

A. That’s how Romans in Caesar’s time spelled “Julius.”

Q. In 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote “Frankenstein,” and people in the western world started wearing different shoes on their left and right feet. What did shoes have to do with “Frankenstein”?

A. Nothing - left-shoe and right-shoe lasts were invented the same year, that’s all.

You can say fish don’t have feathers, but not say birds don’t have scales, they do. On their feet.