Strange But True: Sleepy Parrotfish

By Lucie Winborne

• The Statue of Liberty was originally brown.

• Parrotfish are among the sleepiest of sea creatures, averaging around a good 13 hours of rest per night. When not dozing, they spend as much as 90% of their time eating algae that grows on coral reefs.

• Reindeer eyes change color according to the seasons -- they're golden in the summer and blue during winter.

• The at symbol was invented more than four centuries before email was.

• The U.S. Postal Service employs a sharp-eyed group of folks whose job is to determine where to send letters and packages with illegible addresses. They work their magic at the  USPS Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, the first facility of its kind and now the only one still standing.

• Just 43 people have been known to have "golden blood," the rarest of blood types.

• Pomatoes are potato plants that also grow tomatoes. The hybrid occurs when a tomato plant is grafted onto a potato plant, a relatively easy thing since they're both members of the solanum genus of the nightshade family.

• LEOnardo da Vinci's famous painting "The Last Supper" originally included Jesus' feet.

• Portland, Oregon, was named in a coin toss in 1845 between Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove when the two couldn't agree on a suitable moniker for their new land claim.

• Cacti aren't native to most deserts.

• The human stomach can expand to hold as much as a 2-liter soda bottle, since its inner surface, the mucosa, is lined with folds called rugae that unfold and stretch out to accommodate food as it arrives.

Thought for the Day: "If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience." -- Robert Fulghum

(c) 2026 King Features Synd., Inc.