Truth is stranger than fiction

♦ George Washington gave rations of rum to his troops during the American Revolutionary War.

♦ Did you ever dream of being a famous novelist? Be careful what you wish for; it was renowned author George Orwell who said, “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows, that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention.”

♦ The banana is in the same plant family as the lily and the orchid.

♦ In the town of Eastling, in Sussex, England, a depressed scientist committed suicide by hanging himself. While unfortunate, there was nothing particularly unusual about the suicide itself. Before he took his final action, however, the man came up with a singular way to announce his demise: He changed the greeting on his answering machine to say, “I can’t come to the phone at the moment because I’m dead.”

♦ That icon of disco extravagance, Studio 54, never had a permanent liquor license; the club got by on day licenses in order to cater to the appetites of its trendy clientele.

♦ When infamous bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde were finally tracked down by authorities, there was a violent gun battle — immortalized in rather gory detail in the 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde.” The pair was killed, of course. The investigation of the scene revealed that they were collectively hit by 50 bullets — and a total of 167 rounds were found to have struck the car the robbers were in.