Strange But True: Michael Phelps

By Lucie Winborne

• Composer Domenico Scarlatti wrote a piano piece, "Cat's Fugue," based on notes his cat walked across.

• Butcher Chris McCabe's life was saved in a rather unusual fashion when he accidentally shut himself into a walk-in freezer in 2017. The door release button was iced over and McCabe was alone, so he seized a 3.3-pound black pudding and bashed the button until he was able to safely exit.

• Pupaphobia is the irrational and persistent fear of puppets, dummies and marionettes.

• Prior to the creation of antibiotics, some syphilis patients were deliberately infected with malaria, resulting in such high fevers that the syphilis bacteria was often killed off. Once that disease was under control, doctors would then treat the malaria with quinine.

• Michael Phelps's total of 28 Olympic medals places him ahead of more than 160 nations in the all-time gold medal rankings.

• To celebrate the end of France's war with Russia, Napoleon organized a massive rabbit hunt. Things backfired when the thousands of animals acquired for the occasion swarmed toward him and his guests upon release from their cages, until even the legendary general was forced to beat a retreat to his carriage.

• A three-dollar bill issued by the Cook Islands features a topless Polynesian woman riding a shark.

• Due to his fear of flying, actor Sean Bean would hike for two hours to the set of "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" in full costume while the rest of the cast took a helicopter.

• Cuscuta (witch's hair) is a parasitic plant that lacks chlorophyll and feeds off other plants, using smell to identify the best hosts.

Thought for the Day: "Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter." -- Francis Chan

(c) 2026 King Features Synd., Inc.