Strange BUT TRUE

• It was influential American science-fiction author Philip K. Dick who made the following sage observation: “Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.”

• The skin of the African elephant, the largest living land animal in the world, weighs 2,000 pounds by itself, and there are more than 60,000 muscles in its trunk alone.

• You've almost certainly heard of narcolepsy, a medical condition that causes sufferers to sleep excessively, sometimes up to 18 hours a day. You're probably not familiar with philagrypnia, though. People with this condition — I won't call them “sufferers” — require only three or four hours of sleep a day. What would you do with all that extra time?

• If you're like most people, the length of your footprint is approximately 15 percent of your height.

• While at a Turkish bath in San Francisco, Samuel Clemens — better known to us as Mark Twain — got involved in a chat with a local fireman. This may not seem at all interesting until you learn the name of that longago firefighter: Tom Sawyer. The author liked the name so much that today, American schoolkids all know it.

• There is a law on the books in Maine that prohibits having your shoes untied in public. I assume that this one is not much enforced.

• Ever had to make a large claim to your insurance company? If you thought it was a pain to fill out all the paperwork and explain what happened, consider the plight of the poor soul who had to handle the claim in 2006 when a guard dog mauled a teddy bear that once belonged to Elvis Presley — the stuffed animal was valued at $80,000.

Thought for the Day:

“What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to.” — Hansell B. Duckett