Strong smells, missing digits

Wed., March 19, 2008

Samantha Weaver King Features Syndicate

•It was Academy Award-nominated actress and comedian Lily Tomlin who made the following observation: “Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy 2 percent that get all the publicity. But then — we elected them.”

•During Elizabethan times, it was customary in England for a wife to wear her wedding ring on her thumb.

•Have you ever heard of Jasper Daniel? Probably not by that name — he’s better known today as Jack Daniel, thanks to the whiskey that bears his name. He was the youngest of 10 kids, which may explain a lot: Being picked on by nine older siblings could drive anyone to drink.

•Those who study such things say that people during the Stone Age used shells and even shark teeth to shave.

•Other than the fact that they’re all performers, what do Darryl Hannah, Telly Savales, James Doohan and Jerry Garcia have in common? They are (or were) missing one finger.

•In ancient Greece, honey was often used to embalm corpses.

•If you’re ever in South Carolina in November, you might want to stop by the tiny town of Salley and check out the annual Chitlin Strut festival. (For those of you who didn’t grow up in the Deep South, chitlins are hog intestines that are boiled until tender, then battered and deep-fried.) The smell is truly awful, yet every year thousands of people descend upon Salley to sample this Southern delicacy.

•Tony Curtis, who co-starred with Marilyn Monroe in the famous film “Some Like It Hot,” once said that kissing Ms. Monroe was “like kissing Hitler.” Makes you wonder how he knew what kissing Hitler was like.

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