Strange BUT TRUE

• It was British author P.L. Travers, best known for her series of books about Mary Poppins, who made the following sage observation: “A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader, and from the reader the writer learns.”

• You’ve probably been to a restaurant with a dessert called Death by Chocolate, but the real-life event is less appetizing. After falling into a vat of boiling chocolate in New Jersey, a man died before his co-workers were able to pull him out.

• Colgate toothpaste is good for more than just cleaning those pearly whites, evidently. Domestic scientists claim that it’s also great for cleaning piano keys and removing scratches from glass.

• It’s not known why there’s a New Jersey law banning the sale of cabbage on Sunday.

• The first Band-Aid brand bandage didn’t exactly look like the Band-Aids we’re familiar with today. For instance, it was 3 inches wide and 18 inches long. A bit of overkill for a scraped elbow, I imagine.

• At weddings here in the United States, it is common for the bride to toss her bouquet to determine who will be the next to be married. At weddings in Finland the custom is a bit different, though the outcome is the same: There, the bride traditionally wears a golden crown, and at the reception she is blindfolded and spun around. Then all the single girls in attendance dance around her while the bride, still blindfolded, tries to place the crown on one of them. It’s believed that the lucky girl who ends up wearing the crown will be the next to wed.

Thought for the Day:

“Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.”

— John Morley