Strange but true

•It was Marguerite Duras who observed, “You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they’re simply unbearable.”

•Some years ago, four Elvis impersonators were scheduled to skydive into the parking lot of a Boston nightclub during its opening celebration. Unfortunately, they were blown off course, and one of them was killed. A wit from the Boston police department commented, “Elvis hit town — he just hit it a bit too hard.”

•There was a time when people commonly used the word “treen” as the plural for “tree.”

•Ever wonder where the term “40 winks,” referring to a nap, came from? It was first published in 1872, in a magazine of British humor called Punch. The reasoning was that someone who had read all 39 articles enumerating the rules for the clergy of the Church of England would fall asleep out of boredom and therefore need “40 winks” to recover.

•After the Bible, the book that more early American colonists possessed was “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.”

•In Barcelona, Spain, a judge once had to intervene to prevent a widow from using the skin of her deceased husband to make a purse.