by Curt Kovener
Maybe students will be in class in Jackson & Scott County next month. Maybe COVID-19 will have another plan for area education and educators.
Distant learning can occur; especially from out here in the wilderness. But it is more than dry book learning. Knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem, the Battle of Manassas Junction, when to us lie and lay, and doing your home work are all important aspects of our K-12 education.
But there are other things you may find useful to know as you make your way along life’s highway.
Did you know…
•It is impossible to lick your elbow.
•A shrimp’s heart is in its head.
•In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand.
•A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
•The “sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.
•If you sneeze too hard you can fracture a rib. And if you try to suppress a sneeze so you don’t risk fracturing a rib you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die. Decisions…decisions.
•Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.
•For you conspiracy theorists: if the government has no knowledge of aliens, then why does Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations implemented on July 16, 1969, make it illegal for a U.S. citizens to have any contact with extra-terrestrials or their vehicles?
•Most lipstick contains fish scales.
•Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different.
•Babies are born without kneecaps. They don’t appear until a child is 2-4 years old.
•Butterflies taste with their feet.
•Casts have over a hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.
•February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
•In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
•Our eyes are always the same size from birth but our nose and ears never stop growing.
•”Stewardesses” is the longest typed word with only the left hand, “lollipop” is longest with your right, and “typewriter” is the longest word that can be made using the letters of one row of the keyboard.
•If you are an average American, if your whole life, you will spend about six months waiting at a read light.
•The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
•Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.
•There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs five times: indivisibility.
•A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle; a group of geese in the air is a skein.
•A “jiffy” is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
•Most of us know that the sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every letter of the alphabet.”
•The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is “uncopyrightable”.
•Over 50% of people who have read this column this far have tried to lick their elbow.