STRANGE BUT TRUE

• It was 20th-century American author and playwright Rose Franken who made the following sage observation: “Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.”

• There are only three places in the world that include St. Patrick's Day among their official public holidays: Ireland (of course), the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Caribbean island of Montserrat.

• It's not clear exactly how they do it, but, according to those who study such things, bald eagles mate while they're in midair.

• Do you ever get to the end of a relaxing weekend, only to feel depressed at the prospect of heading back to work Monday morning? Well, the Germans have a word for that: sonntagsleerung. It literally means “Sunday emptying.”

• Some historians claim that President Andrew Jackson believed the world was flat.

• If it could avoid its inevitable dissipation, the typical cloud could circumnavigate the earth in less than two weeks.

• In the United States, nuns have a longer life expectancy than any other demographic group.

Thought for the Day:

“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America … when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” — Carl Sagan