Strange But True: Bonnie and Clyde

By Lucie Winborne

• Giraffes have no vocal cords but can still communicate with low-frequency sounds.

• In 1926, Clyde Barrow, of Bonnie and Clyde fame, was arrested with his older brother Buck for possession of a truckload of stolen turkeys.

• The first recorded cookbook was written in cuneiform on tablets in ancient Babylon around 1700 B.C.

• Gioachino Rossini's aria "Di tanti palpiti" was known throughout Europe as "the rice aria," since it was composed while he waited in a Venice restaurant for his risotto to cook.

• Sunsets on Mars are blue.

• Studies have suggested that the average human attention span is now about nine seconds -- shorter than that of a goldfish.

• In 1820, Missouri imposed a $1 bachelor tax on unmarried men ages 21-50. The short-lived law was designed to encourage marriage, population growth and family establishment in the new state.

• A Russian safari park became famous after a tiger named Amur didn't eat a goat that had been placed in its enclosure as live food.

• Detachable heads were used on Roman statues.

• The first U.S. submarine was a hand-cranked, pedal-powered wooden craft from the Revolutionary War dubbed "the Turtle."

• Astronauts sent to space can experience a kind of motion sickness known as space adaptation syndrome, or space sickness, with the most notable case inflicting former senator Jake Garn, whose bout was so disabling that his name became used as an informal measurement for the illness.

• Great Sand Dunes National Park allows visitors to race down all its dunes on custom-made sand boards and sleds.

• Incas believed that sunflowers were the physical manifestation of their sun god, Inti, on Earth, adorning temples and priestesses with them.

Thought for the Day: "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." -- Matsuo Basho

(c) 2026 King Features Synd., Inc.