STRANGE BUT TRUE - Sept. 23, 2010

* It was 20th-century French air force brigadier general and geopolitician — and bearer of the nickname “father of the French atom bomb” — Pierre Marie Gallois who made the following sage observation: “If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no one dares criticize it.”

* Gravity makes you shorter. It’s true; gravity compresses your spine — in a weightless environment, you would be 2 to 3 inches taller than you are here on Earth.

* You might be surprised to learn that the first ceiling fan was introduced way back in the 1860s. The lack of electricity was no deterrent; the device was powered by a stream of running water.

* When the bubonic plague, more commonly known as the Black Death, was at its peak in Europe in the 14th century, a wide variety of remedies was prescribed, including smoking tobacco, bringing spiders into the household, inhaling the stench from a latrine, sitting between two large fires, drinking red wine in which new steel had been cooled, and bathing in goat urine.

* Those who study such things say that women are better at identifying smells than men are.

* In 1994, Singapore banned the importation and sale of chewing gum. Ten years later, lawmakers added a revision: Gum that has “therapeutic value” is now allowed.

* Over the past year, in the United States lottery sales have increased by a whopping $1 billion.

* Human skin is about 70 percent water, and the human brain is 80 percent water.

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Thought for the Day: “All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.” — George Santayana

(c) 2010 King Features Synd., Inc.