STRANGE BUT TRUE

• It was Albert Einstein who offered the following explanation of relativity: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

• In Singapore, one of the colorful customs is training birds for singing competitions. It’s not always just a hobby, though; for some, it’s a serious — and costly — business. A single well-trained bird might sell for as much as $60,000.

• If you’re an oenophile — that’s an aficionado of wine — you probably won’t be surprised to learn that as the cost of a wine goes up, so does a drinker’s appreciation of that wine.

• Only one-fifth of homes in America are not air-conditioned. In the sweltering South, a mere 5 percent lack that vital amenity.

• Those who study such things say that the wind power in an average hurricane is equivalent to 1.5 trillion watts. That’s the same amount of power that is generated by fully half of the entire world’s generating capacity.

• The works of Agatha Christie have been translated more times into other languages than those of any other author in history.

• Many people see dogs as doing heroic work in tandem with law enforcement and the military, but they’re not the only animals put to such use. In Mozambique, sniffer rats are being used to find unexploded land mines so experts can disarm them. They’re known as HeroRATs.

Thought for the Day: “To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first. And, whatever you hit, call it the target.” — Ashleigh Brilliant

(c) 2012 King Features Synd., Inc.