Strange BUT TRUE

• It was 19th-century journalist and women’s rights advocate Margaret Fuller who made the following sage observation: “A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.”

• There is a patron saint for everything, it seems. You’ve probably never heard of Saint Drogo of Sebourg, but this 12th-century Flemish noble became the patron saint of those whom others find unattractive. After he turned 18, he got rid of all his wealth, became a shepherd and made several pilgrimages to Rome. On one of these pilgrimages, he was “stricken with an unsightly bodily affliction” and became hideously deformed. In order to spare others the sight of his deformity, he was confined to a small cell attached to his village church. Until the end of his life, 40 years later, he remained there, subsisting only on barley, water and the bread and wine of communion.

• The longest beard ever recorded belonged to a man named Hans N. Langseth. Upon his death in 1927, it was 17.5 feet long. In 1967, the beard was donated to the Smithsonian Institution.

• Those who study such things say that your ears secrete more wax when you’re afraid.

• A recent survey by Baskin-Robbins revealed some interesting trends in parenting. It seems that when trying to get kids to do an unpleasant task, dads are 75 percent more likely to use ice cream as a bribe. Also, dads are twice as likely as moms to use ice cream to resolve an argument, and 90 percent of dads give ice cream to kids who need some cheering up.

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Thought for the Day:

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” — Niccolo Machiavelli