Strange But True: Feb. 28, 2019

Feb 28, 20190

* It was 20th-century British actor George Sewell who made the following sage observation: "Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt."

* When someone mentions the band ZZ Top, you probably think of a group of musicians with long beards. They don't all have beards, though; the drummer is clean-shaven as a matter of safety (imagine being in the middle of a drum solo and getting a stick caught in a long beard -- ouch!). Interestingly, the unbearded drummer's name is Frank Beard.

* If you're like most people, you've probably never encountered a tziganologist. That is, unless you consort with those who study Hungarian gypsies.

* Those who study such things say that the immortal bard, William Shakespeare, used a grand total of 17,677 words in his works. (That must have been a tedious calculation.) They also say that fully one-tenth of those words had never been used in writing before.

* Unless you were around on April 17, 1964, you may not be aware of the hullabaloo caused by the introduction of the Ford Mustang. In Seattle, a truck driver was so distracted by a display of new Mustangs that he crashed his cement truck through the window of the dealership. In Chicago, so many people were trying to crowd into the cars in a showroom that the dealer had to lock all the vehicle doors. A dealer in New Jersey had only one Mustang, so he auctioned it off. The winner of the auction insisted on sleeping in his new car that night, just to make sure nobody else got it before his check cleared.

* By the time he was 5 years old, 19th-century French composer Camille Saint-Saens was already composing waltzes.

Thought for the Day

"Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion."

--Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel