Strange But True: Flintstone First

By Lucie Winborne

• The Statue of Liberty's thumbnail is more than a foot long.

• During an attempt to use electrocution to kill the turkey meant for his Christmas dinner party, Benjamin Franklin accidentally shocked himself so badly that all of the blood temporarily drained out of one of his hands.

• Fred and Wilma Flintstone were the first married couple to be portrayed as sharing a bed on television.

• The Rainbow Group, a government-funded organization in Amsterdam, hires alcoholics to clean litter from city streets and includes beer as part of their payment.

• NASA defines an astronaut as someone who has flown 50 miles above sea level.

• A rare condition known as "exploding head syndrome" can cause people to hear loud bangs, crashes or explosive noises while drifting to sleep. Researchers believe the phenomenon is generally harmless, if alarming.

• The sun and moon appear to be the same size because the moon is 400 times smaller but also 400 times closer.

• Some scorpions rub their legs together to "sing" like crickets. However, while crickets aim to attract mates, scorpions make the sound to warn away predators or rivals.

• The longest recorded pickleball rally, held on Oct. 10, 2021, consisted of 16,046 shots and was launched by players Angelo and Ettore Rossetti to help increase awareness of children under age 5 who die of preventable causes.

• Some of the earliest universities in the world were Sumerian scribal schools, which were created soon after 3,500 B.C. and called eduba, which possibly meant "house of tablets."

• The first known reference to the word baseball was in a 1744 publication "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book," by children's publisher John Newberry.

Thought for the Day: "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." -- Winston Churchill

(c) 2026 King Features Synd., Inc.