Strange But True: Women's golf

By Lucie Winborne

• Sloths might be the only mammals that don't fart.

• Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg feared the number 13 so intensely that  he deliberately misspelled his opera "Moses und Aron" to have 12 letters instead of 13. He also died on July 13, 1951, which would seem to confirm his phobia.

• The first round of women's golf was played in 1811 -- four centuries after the sport was invented.

• Almost all of the first major television networks -- NBC, ABC and CBS -- still exist today, but the second network to get off the ground, the DuMont Television Network, is mostly forgotten, though it aired the first two seasons of "The Honeymooners" and "Mary Kay and Johnny," which is widely considered to be the first sitcom.

• Believe it or not, May is Zombie Awareness Month, which celebrates zombie media and recognizes ways to prepare for a zombie apocalypse. Participants are encouraged to wear gray ribbons to spread awareness of the potential dangers of the undead.

• In 2023, North Dakota was named the best state for surviving a zombie apocalypse.

• We obtain 60% of our energy intake from just three plant species -- rice, wheat and maize.

• Spiders recycle webs by eating them.

• The sitcom "30 Rock" was known for its fast-pace writing, with one reporter calculating in 2014 that there was an average of 7.44 jokes per minute.

• After "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" first aired in 1966, Charles Schulz's California office was inundated with shipments of candy sent from kids who were upset that Charlie Brown only got rocks in his Halloween goodie bag.

Thought for the Day: "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most people dread it." -- George Bernard Shaw

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