STRANGE BUT TRUE - Nov. 4, 2010

* It was British playwright Tom Stoppard who made the following observation: “Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.”

* You’ve probably had some experience with hail at some point in your life, but probably not with hail like this: The heaviest recorded hailstone in the world fell in Bangladesh in 1986; it weighed a whopping 2.25 pounds. The largest hailstone, which fell earlier this year in South Dakota, measured 8 inches in diameter. Be glad your car — or your head — wasn’t in the way.

* William Henry Harrison, the country’s sixth commander-in-chief, had the shortest tenure of any United States president. He died of pneumonia just 32 days after taking office.

* In 1666, the Great Fire of London destroyed 13,200 homes, 87 parish churches and St. Paul’s Cathedral, and it left some 70,000 people homeless. It also provided the impetus for the beginning of the insurance industry. After the conflagration, Nicholas Barbon, a well-to-do doctor, realized how much of his wealth was flammable. A year after the Great Fire, he began the world’s first insurance company.

Thought for the Day: “Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe.” — Jackie Mason

(c) 2010 King Features Synd., Inc.