Odd but true

•Ain’t life strange? Having published more than 100 books over the course of her 40-year writing career, Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prolific writers alive. She’s a shrewd observer of human nature, too; she once remarked, “We [humans] are the species that clamors to be lied to.”

•If you’re in Germany and someone says to you, “shhhh,” that doesn’t mean that you should be quiet — people there use it to mean “hurry up.”

•Do you think dads get a raw deal when it comes to the parental holidays? It certainly seems so when you look at the statistics: The busiest day of the year for florists and restaurants is Mother’s Day, and that’s also the day the most long-distance phone calls are made. In contrast, Father’s Day is when the most collect phone calls are made. Also, Mother’s Day has been an official holiday since 1914, but dads didn’t get their own official day until 1972. Poor guys.

•The word “mascara” comes from the Italian word for “mask.”

•At various points in its history, New York City has been the largest Irish or Jewish or Italian or black African city in the world. Today it’s the most polylingual city on the planet.

•In 1978, a 14-year-old named Billy Nichols water-skied barefoot for 2 hours and 42 minutes, breaking the Guinness world record by five minutes. That quite an impressive feat, but there’s more: Later he discovered that there’d been a publishing error in the old record — he’d actually demolished the record by an hour and five minutes.

Thought for the Day: “The ideal committee is one with me as chairman, and two other members in bed with the flu.” — Lord Milverton