You've read that alligators swallow rocks to balance their...

May 27, 1986|By L.M. Boyd

You've read that alligators swallow rocks to balance their bodies with their tails. But did you know that cormorants swallow stones so they can dive more deeply? And that sea lions swallow rocks for reasons unclear?

Orchids are bisexual.

In California's Santa Ana is the fourth-largest mine in the world, so to speak. Though it's not a mine, exactly. Gemini Industries there retrieves platinum out of the catalytic converters of wrecked and junked cars.

You never need more than four colors to produce a flat map on which no two bordering countries have the same color.

Q. Where did the stone come from to make Egypt's Sphinx?

A. It was there in place, geologists think. And they think further that constant winds eroded it into shape mostly, that the human sculptors just finished it off.

Japan spends a third as much per person as does the United States on health care. But Japanese life expectancy is a couple or three years longer.

Fishermen hated starfish. When they found them in their nets, they cut them into pieces and threw them back. Each piece made a new starfish. The fishermen didn't know.

Rifles are manufactured to fit small, medium or average body builds, inexactly. The shooters adjust. But the prize winners say they can improve their scores immensely by getting their rifle stocks cut perfectly to size. They say it's important. They call it ''gunfit.''

Andrew Jackson invited everybody to his inauguration. About 20,000 people showed up. He said, ''Dear me, I didn't mean everybody.'' And he escaped through a rear window.

Inmates of a prison in England were invited to further their education with correspondence courses. Two signed up for ''Scaffold Construction.'' They went over the wall on their homework.

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