Strange But True

* It was popular British romance author Jilly Cooper who made the following observation: “The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.”

* If you’re like the average human, you blink about 17,000 times every day.

* Filmmaker George Lucas is arguably best known for his “Star Wars” franchise, but he also directed “American Graffiti.” During the making of that earlier film he designated each reel of film with an R before the reel’s number, and each instance of dialog was prefixed with a D. At one point during the sound mixing, the sound designer needed to use Reel 2, Dialog 2, and so asked for “R2D2.” Lucas liked the sound of it so much that he used it for the name of a robot character in his later work.

* At 6 feet, 4 inches tall, Abraham Lincoln is the tallest president in the history of the United States.

* I’d be very surprised if you’d ever heard of Bokassa I, former emperor of the Central African Republic. It’s interesting to note, though, that while he was on trial for infanticide, cannibalism and torture, he commented, “Being head of state is an extremely thankless job.”

* If you suffer from ophidiophobia — and, sadly, many people do — you may find the following tidbit to be rather unsettling: There are more than 3,000 different species of snakes.

* Researchers have discovered that humans aren’t the only ones to imbibe alcohol on a regular basis. It seems that the tiny pen-tailed tree shrew makes a habit of consuming naturally fermented palm flower nectar, which has an alcohol content of 3.8 percent — comparable to that of most beers.

Thought for the Day:

“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”

--Ernest Hemingway

(c) 2018 King Features Synd., Inc.