Strange But True: Nov. 15, 2018

* It was 20th-century American singer and songwriter Bobbie Gentry who made the following sage observation: “Euphemism is a euphemism for lying.”

* In a match between a 200-pound mountain lion and a 20-pound porcupine, the lion is likely to be the loser — and probably will die if it tried to take a bite of the desired prey.

* The next time you’re annoyed by a bad case of the hiccups, consider poor Charles Osborne. In 1922, when he was 28 years old, Mr. Osborne got the hiccups. For the next 68 years, he continued to hiccup, finally stopping in 1990, one year before his death at the age of 97.

* Marilyn Monroe’s iconic film “Some Like It Hot” (which in 2000 was named the greatest American comedy film of all time by the American Film Institute) originally was titled “Not Tonight, Josephine!”

* At one time the Catholic Church considered it sinful to eat a hot dog.

* For a nation based on a foundation of democracy, the U.S. certainly has a lot of states (that were originally colonies, of course) named for British royalty or nobility. The state of Virginia, for instance, was named for Queen Elizabeth I, known as the “Virgin Queen”; and Georgia was named in honor of King George II. King Charles II got both North and South Carolina, while the Duke of York and Albany — later King James II — was honored when the state of New York was named. Even France got in on the action: When explorer Robert de la Salle claimed a large chunk of territory for France in 1682, he named it Louisiana, after King Louis XIV.

Thought for the Day

“It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.”

--Loren Eiseley

(c) 2018 King Features Synd., Inc.