STRANGE BUT TRUE

It was French writer, artist and filmmaker Jean Cocteau who made the following sage observation: “The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.”

If you were in or near Springfield, Mo., at the end of April, I hope you took the opportunity to attend a popular local festival: the Typewriter Toss. Every year on April 22 — Administrative Professionals Day (also known as Secretaries Day), appropriately — a local radio station sponsors the event, in which contestants are raised in a lift truck to a height of 50 feet, then compete to see who can land a typewriter closest to the bull’s-eye painted on the ground below.

Those who study such things say that sharks burp. Evidently it’s a mechanism for regulating the depth at which they swim.

Technically speaking, the green pepper is a fruit.

In the early 20th century, a wealthy Russian living in Odessa died but had no children to inherit his estate. Instead, he left his 4-million ruble fortune to his four nieces. This may not seem unusual, but he did include an odd provision in his will: Each of the girls had to serve for one year as a farm girl, a washerwoman or a chambermaid before she saw any of the money. They did as the will instructed, and during that year of service each received hundreds of proposals of marriage.

The Sahara Desert is spreading southward at a rate of slightly less than one-third of a mile each year.

Showman Buffalo Bill Cody, one of the most flamboyant figures of the Old West, portrayed himself in five films.

Thought for the Day: “All the world’s a stage, and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.” — Sean O’Casey

(c) 2011 King Features Synd., Inc.