Strange But True: July 11, 2019

* It was Robert Wright, journalist, scholar and author of best-selling books about science, who made the following sage observation: "Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than virtue."

* Famously flamboyant country singer and songwriter Dolly Parton once entered a Dolly Parton look-alike contest ... and lost.

* The small Asian country of Bhutan, nestled in the mountains between China and India, had no access to TV until 1999.

* You've doubtless heard of narcolepsy, a medical condition that causes sufferers to sleep excessively -– sometimes up to 18 hours a day. You're probably not familiar with philagrypnia, though. People with this condition -- I won't call them "sufferers" -- require only three or four hours of sleep a day. What would you do with all that extra time?

* Those who study such things say that the average woman changes her hairstyle 20 times between the ages of 18 and 24. Between the ages of 50 and 80, though, women change it only four times.

* Now that summer is here in full force, you might want to keep in mind the fact that there are 1,500 known species of fleas and 9,500 known species of ants. Then again, that might be a factoid you'd rather forget.

* The English word "velvet" comes from the Latin for "shaggy hair."

* If you're out in the American West, you may see the iconic saguaro cactus. It matures extremely slowly -- it might grow only 6 inches in its first 10 years of life. It's persistent, though; the largest known specimen reached 60 feet in height.

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Thought for the Day: "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

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