Strange But True

* It was Scott Adams, best known as the creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip, who made the following observation: “Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you’re a consultant.”

* According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word that has the largest number of different meanings is “set”; it takes 26 pages to detail them all.

* As fall approaches, here’s some good news: Except for the queens, all wasps die in the autumn.

* There are those who feel that we should adopt the metric system of measurement, claiming that our current system is outdated and archaic. To go truly archaic, though, we could start measuring things in flags, baronies, falls, roods, townships and hides. Yes, those are actual terms of measurement. They equal, respectively, 25 square feet, 4,000 acres, 342 square feet, a quarter of an acre, 36 square miles and 10 acres.

* Do you suffer from misoneism? Quite a few people these days seem to; it’s a hatred or fear of change or innovation.

* Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, it’s estimated that Americans eat a whopping 818 hot dogs every second.

* In 1938, Fortune magazine published a prediction that, in hindsight, turns out to have been rather egregiously off the mark: “Few scientists foresee any serious or practical use for atomic energy. They regard the atom-splitting experiments as useful steps in the attempt to describe the atom more accurately, not as the key to the unlocking of any new power.”

Thought for the Day

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”

--Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

(c) 2018 King Features Synd., Inc.