STRANGE BUT TRUE

* It was award-winning American novelist Ann Patchett who made the following sage observation: “The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived.”

* The world’s smallest city block can be found in the small town of Dothan, Alabama. Bordered by Appletree, College and Troy streets, the block was once home to a single two-story building measuring 38 feet long and 27 feet wide.

* Most Americans are familiar with graham crackers — they’re a favorite childhood snack. But have you ever wondered what they’re made of? The obvious answer is “graham flour” — but what is that? It’s just flour made from whole wheat. This type of flour was named after a 19-century Presbyterian minister named Sylvester Graham, who promoted the snack as a digestive aid and a cure for alcoholism.

* You might be surprised to learn that, although Charles Goodyear received a patent for vulcanized rubber in 1844, the Maya were creating objects with rubber 3,000 years before that.

* The quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) is the most widely distributed tree in North America (as well as the state tree of Utah). Groves of them can be found in high altitudes as far south as Guanajuato, Mexico, and as far north as the Brooks Range of mountains in northern Alaska. Most people don’t realize, however, that the groves are not made up of separate trees; all the visible trunks are part of a single organism, genetically identical and sharing the same root system.

Thought for the Day:

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved — loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” — Victor Hugo