Origins of car company names:

• Cadillac: Named after the founder of Detroit, French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac. Cadillac is a small town in the South of France.
• Daewoo: “Great Universe” in Korean.
• Mercedes: The first name of the daughter of Emil Jellinek, who worked for the early Daimler company around 1900.
• Mitsubishi: “Water chestnut,” reflected as a stylized rhombus in the company’s logo.
• Pontiac: A Native American Ottawa war leader.
• Subaru: From the Japanese name for the Pleiades (Subaru was formed from a merger of seven other companies).
• Volkswagen: The “people’s car.”
• Volvo: Latin for “I roll.”

All cultures play games.

Unless it’s a leap year:

• January begins on the same day of the week as October.
• February begins on the same day of the week as March and November.
• April begins on the same day of the week as July.
• December begins with the same day of the week as September.
• No other month begins on the same day of the week as May or June.

This year Mensa accepted a new youngest member. Three-year-old Mikhail Ali of Bramley, Leeds, England, has an IQ of 137; he’s one of only 30 members under 10.

But he’s not the all-time youngest member — that’s Ben Woods, who was 2 years and 10 months old when he joined in the mid-1990s.

If Wal-Mart were a country, it would have the 33rd largest economy in the world, with a GDP between Ukraine’s and Colombia’s.

The world record for high-speed bicycling keeps going up, of course, but the record for low-speed bicycling has remained unchallenged for 40 years. In 1965, Tsugunobu Mitsuishi of Tokyo, Japan, remained perfectly stationary for 5 hours and 25 minutes.

Moscow has the most heavily used metro system in the world, carrying 8-9 million passengers on a normal weekday. It has 170 stations and 12 lines, including an unusual “ring line” that circles the city.

According to legend, this came about when Stalin’s coffee cup left a ring on one of the blueprints. Historians dispute this account — but on maps, the ring line is always printed in brown.

Famous tall women:

• Janet Reno – 6’3″
• Venus Williams – 6’1″
• Ann Coulter – 6′
• Geena Davis – 6′
• Allison Janney – 6′
• Elle MacPherson – 6′
• Brooke Shields – 6′
• Uma Thurman – 6′
• Tyra Banks – 5’11”
• Famke Janssen – 5’11”
• Anna Nicole Smith – 5’11”
• Sigourney Weaver – 5’11”
• Naomi Campbell – 5’10”
• Diana, Princess of Wales – 5’10”
• Jenna Elfman – 5’10”
• Daryl Hannah – 5’10”
• Queen Latifah – 5’10”
• Charlize Theron – 5’10”
• Liv Tyler – 5’10”
• Serena Williams – 5’10”