Miss America by hair color, 1921-2003:
- Brunettes: 70 percent
- Blondes: 24 percent
- Redheads: 6 percent
Too True
Secretary: It must be hard to lose your mother-in-law.
W.C. Fields: Yes, it is, very hard. It’s almost impossible.
Unfortunate URLs
The Internet is a great way to publicize your business, but be careful in choosing a Web address:
- Who Represents, a database of artists and agents, found itself with the URL whorepresents.com.
- Therapist Finder, a network for therapists, is at therapistfinder.com.
- Experts Exchange, a programmers’ site, is at expertsexchange.com.
- Pen Island, a seller of custom pens, is at penisland.net.
Amazingly, all four of these are still using these addresses. Maybe the novelty value brings in some customers.
Waiter!
Celebrities saved by the Heimlich maneuver:
- Ronald Reagan
- Ed Koch
- Elizabeth Taylor
- Goldie Hawn
- Cher
- Walter Matthau
- Carrie Fisher
- Dick Vitale
- John Chancellor
- Jack Lemmon
Irish Bulls
Three “Irish bulls” cited in Henry B. Wheatley’s Literary Blunders (1893). “We know what the writer means, although he does not exactly say it”:
- From the report of an Irish Benevolent Society: “Notwithstanding the large amount paid for medicine and medical attendance, very few deaths occurred during the year.”
- A country editor’s correspondent wrote: “Will you please to insert this obituary notice? I make bold to ask it, because I know the deceased had a great many friends who would be glad to hear of his death.”
- Quoted in the Greville Memoirs: “He abjured the errors of the Romish Church, and embraced those of the Protestant.”
“From the errors of others,” wrote Publilius Syrus, “a wise man corrects his own.”
Boom!
Sonic booms can get on your nerves.
NASA and the FAA learned this the hard way in 1964, when their testing over Oklahoma City caused eight booms per day for six months. It led to 15,000 complaints and a class action lawsuit — which they lost.
The idea seems to have caught Israel’s attention — last October it started using F-16 jet planes to create sonic booms over the Gaza Strip, to bug the Palestinians. Extra points for creativity, I guess.
Unquote
“What luck for rulers that men do not think.” — Adolf Hitler
Guaranteed Turnout
Countries with compulsory voting:
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Congo, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Fiji, Greece, Honduras, Lebanon, Libya, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mexico, Nauru, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela
No Laughing Matter
Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz served as an infantry squad leader during World War II.
Every year on June 6 he used the comic strip to memorialize his comrades who fell at Normandy.
Forward and Back
Temperature palindromes:
16° Celsius ≅ 61° Fahrenheit
28° Celsius ≅ 82° Fahrenheit