Strange But True

* It was Kurt Vonnegut, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, who made the following sage observation: “There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”

* Greyhounds aren’t just fast; they also have better vision than any other breed of dog.

* The venerable diner saw its peak as a place for a casual meal in the late 1940s, when there were around 7,000 of them across the country. Today there are fewer than 2,000.

* Thomas Jefferson was an inventor as well as a statesman, but he refused to take out patents on any of his ideas. He believed that inventions should benefit all of humanity, not just himself.

* In January 2018, the City of New York paid 200 formerly homeless people $85 each to pretend to be homeless again for one night. At midnight that night, in order to get an estimate of the city’s homeless population, volunteer canvassers took to the streets, approaching apparently homeless people to ask if they have somewhere to sleep. If a canvasser came across one of the paid “homeless” decoys, that decoy went home. The decoys were, essentially, a check to see how well the canvassers did their job — and they did it pretty well, it seems, finding 90 percent of the decoys in the course of the night.

* In Switzerland, it’s considered bad luck to tell anyone your baby’s name before it is born.

Thought for the Day

“People of small caliber like to sit on high horses.”

--Magdalena Samozwaniec

(c) 2018 King Features Synd., Inc.