Strange …

• It was American cartoonist, humorist and journalist Kin Hubbard who made the following sage observation: “It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he adores the flag.”

• It requires 30 tons of ore from a gold mine to produce a single new gold ring.

• You are almost certainly aware of the fact that the Impressionist painter Claude Monet is famous for his paintings of water lilies. However, you may not be aware of the fact that he painted more than 300 pictures of water lilies. The same water lilies, in fact — and they can still be seen today in a pond behind his house.

• Medical experts say that men are twice as likely to get leprosy as women are.

• Chicago gangster Bugsy Moran got an early start in crime; he committed 26 robberies while he was still a teenager.

• Inexplicably, in Florence, Italy, in the 15th century, it was illegal for women to wear buttons.