Strange BUT TRUE

• Think money doesn’t grow on trees? Try telling that to a certain dog in Colombia. After seeing students pass money to a food stall attendant, the enterprising pooch began a regular practice of “paying” for dog biscuits with tree leaves.

• In a few American cities, Halloween was originally called “Cabbage Night.” The name came from a Scottish fortune-telling game in which girls would use cabbage stumps to predict the identity of their future husband.

• Best-selling author Maya Angelou was San Francisco’s first Black streetcar conductor.

• Sea sponges, like humans, sneeze to clear their internal filter systems. Unlike humans, such sneezes last about half an hour.

• In the 18th century, some wealthy folks with gardens decorated their plots with “ornamental hermits” — actual people whom they paid to dress like a Druid (however they took that to look) and wander around their estates.

• America’s eighth president, Martin Van Buren, tried to keep a pair of tiger cubs given to him by the Sultan of Oman, but Congress made him send them to the zoo.

• The space between the bottom of a cabinet and the floor is called the toe kick.

• “Chess boxing” is a sport in which opponents alternate between rounds of chess and boxing until either competitor is checkmated or knocked out.

• In 2004, Alice Pike tried to use a fake $1 million bill to purchase $1,675 worth of merchandise at Walmart, expecting to receive change from the undoubtedly startled cashier. Well, she did think the bill was genuine … as she remarked (from jail), “You can’t keep up with the U.S. Treasury.”

• The WD-40 Company never patented the WD-40 formula in order to avoid having to publicly disclose its trade-secret ingredients.

Thought for the Day: “Stay in your own lane. Comparison kills creativity and joy.” — Brene Brown