The Mountain Eagle
WHITESBURG WEATHER

Strange But True





 

 

• It was 20th-century architect and businessman Charles Luckman — known as “the Boy Wonder of American Business” — who made the following sage observation: “The trouble with America is that there are far too many wide-open spaces surrounded by teeth.”

• The Balkan country of Serbia has seen an odd trend in funerals lately: airconditioned coffins. Even though the coffins cost approximately $6,600, a casket company that offers the chillers is having a hard time keeping them in stock.

• Experts claim that if you make a line of flour on the floor — or the counter, or table, or wherever you’re having trouble with the pests — ants won’t cross it.

• Back in the day, if you wanted to be a Pony Express rider, you couldn’t weigh more than 120 pounds.

• Those who study such things — and, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure who those people would be — say that in the United States, people who live on the East Coast wash their clothes the least often, while those in the South wash them the most (a fact for which I, who live in the sweaty South, am eternally grateful).

• The town of Key Largo, Fla., did not exist before the 1948 film of that name starring Humphrey Bogart made it famous.

• Harry Benson, a photographer who covered the Beatles in the early days of their success, says that the Fab Four celebrated their first No. 1 U.S. hit, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” by having a pillow fight in their hotel room.

• An interesting note for all the towheads out there: In ancient Rome, prostitutes were required to dye their hair blonde, if it wasn’t already that shade.

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Thought for the Day: “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” — Kurt Vonnegut

(c) 2009 King Features Synd.

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