Strange BUT TRUE

• It was award-winning American author Ann Patchett who made the following sage observation: “The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived.”

• As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, you might want to remember that the color originally associated with the Apostle of Ireland was blue, not green.

• In 1861, when a group of Unionist counties decided they didn’t want to be part of Virginia any more, West Virginia became the only state formed by breaking away from a Confederate state. That wasn’t the only attempt, however; a group of citizens in northern Alabama and eastern Tennessee wanted to band together and form a new state that would be allied with the Union. Unfortunately for this pro-Unionist faction, plans for the would-be state of Nickajack never came to fruition.

• Are you a coddiwompler? You are if you sometimes travel purposefully toward an as-yet-unknown destination.

• At the time of its completion in 1885, the Washington Monument, at 555 feet, was the tallest building in the world. The cornerstone had been laid on July 4, 1848, but insufficient funds and other interruptions repeatedly delayed the work. When the monument finally opened to the public in October 1888, visitors could take a 10-minute steam-powered elevator ride to the top. During the last 12 years of the 19th century, more than 1.5 million people visited.

• Hibernation doesn’t always happen in cold weather; warm-weather hibernation, known as estivation, is common among some species of lizards, turtles and snails.

Thought for the Day:

“The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief … that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.”

— Walter Lippmann