Strange BUT TRUE

• Sigurd the Mighty, a ninth-century Norse earl of Orkney, was killed by an enemy he had beheaded several hours earlier. He’d tied the man’s head to his horse’s saddle, but while riding home one of its protruding teeth grazed his leg, causing an infection from which the unlucky Sigurd died.

• Irish author and politician Edmund Burke was not a skilled public speaker. In fact, his speeches at the House of Commons were so boring, many MPs left the building once he stood up.

• In 1907, an ad campaign for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes offered a free box of cereal to any woman who would wink at her grocer.

• While Jackie Robinson was laid up for two weeks in 1948 with a hamstring injury, the Dodgers secretly replaced him with Herschel Morowitz, a white man in black face.

• The average human body contains enough iron to make a 3-inch-long nail. It also contains enough fat to produce seven bars of soap.

• The first washing machine was invented in 1782 by H. Sidgier of Great Britain. His design was later honed by other inventors, including William Blackstone, who invented the first at-home washer as a birthday gift for his wife.

• Drinking seawater will

cause rapid dehydration and, if enough is consumed, eventually death. Frozen seawater is a much safer alternative, since it contains only a tenth as much salt as the liquid form, due to the fact that the salt is separated from the water when freezing as it does not fit into the crystalline structure of ice.

• The first lipstick appeared in ancient Mesopotamia approximately 4,000 years ago, when women decorated their lips with dust made from precious gems.

Thought for the Day: “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” — Albert Einstein