Strange BUT TRUE

* It was 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire who made the following sage observation: "What's irritating about love is it's a crime that requires an accomplice."

* In 2012, a Swedish man named Henrik Ismarker was fed up with people speeding down the road in his Stockholm neighborhood, so he went to the local police department and asked them to crack down on drivers going too fast. In response, a speed trap was set up, and Ismarker

himself got a speeding ticket the very next day. He was embarrassed, he said, but added that he was "very satisfied with the police response."

* Thanks to extremely flexible jaws, the African egg-eating snake can swallow an egg that's much larger than the diameter of its head. It also can tell with a flick of the tongue whether an egg is fresh or not.

* Those who study such things say that if you start to lose your hearing, it's more than likely that you'll lose high notes before you lose low notes.

* According to a recent study, kids in the South have more playtime with their parents than kids in other parts of the United States. In a nationwide survey of parents with children ages 2 to 8, 76 percent of Southern parents say they play with their kids at least once a day. Compare that to the West at 46 percent, the Midwest at 40 percent and the Northeast at just 38 percent.

* I imagine that if someone screamed, "Eeek! A foggy-toddler!" you wouldn't have any idea what was going on. If you'd studied the vernacular of 18th-century England, though, you'd know to watch out for a bumblebee.