Sometimes, there’s truth in fiction

• With April 17, this year’s deadline for filing your income-tax return, approaching, it seems an appropriate time to remind you that it was Mark Twain who made the following observation: “The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.”

• Perhaps unsurprisingly, the word “souffle” comes to us from the French; its original meaning was “to blow or puff up.”

•Valentine’s Day is over, and the flowers are wilted or dead by now. But what about the chocolates? It seems there must be some still left in their boxes, uneaten — especially considering the fact that retailers estimate that 36 million boxes of chocolates were given as gifts for this year’s holiday.

•More than 18,000 species of butterflies have been documented by researchers.

•It’s still not known who said, “An X-ray reveals a lot about a man, but an ex-wife can reveal much more.” But I’m willing to bet it wasn’t a single man.

•Another item from the Poetic Justice files: A Philippine man, Renato Salazar, broke into the building of his employer in Manila. He headed to the kitchen, where he opened two industrial-size gas tanks and then climbed into a large drum full of water.

He then tossed a lighted match at the gas tanks and ducked down inside the drum, presumably with the idea that the water would protect him from the effects of the fire. Unfortunately for him, though water may not burn, it certainly does get hot. In the process of destroying the two-story building, the fire also boiled the arsonist alive.

• A region can’t be technically classified as a desert unless it receives less than 10 inches of rainfall every year.