Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is one continous cyclone that has lasted at least 340 years.
It’s more than twice the size of Earth.
Sheep Rising
A tremendous blizzard in January 1978 buried a flock of sheep under a snowdrift in Sutherland, Highland, Scotland.
Weeks later, after digging out 16 dead sheep, Alex Maclellan found one ewe still alive. Its hot breath had created air holes in the snow, and it had gnawed its own wool for protein.
It had survived that way for 50 days.
A Tennessee Parthenon
Nashville’s Centennial Park contains a full-scale replica of the Parthenon.
Like the original in Athens, it’s “more perfect than perfect”: To counter optical effects, the columns swell slightly as they rise, and the platform on which they stand curves slightly upward. So the temple looks even more symmetrical than it actually is.
Unquote
“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.” — Albert Einstein
“The Quick Brown Fox …”
A pangram is a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet:
- John P. Brady, give me a black walnut box of quite a small size. (48 letters)
- Quixotic knights’ wives are found on jumpy old zebras. (44)
- By Jove, my quick study of lexicography won a prize. (41)
- Sympathizing would fix Quaker objectives. (36)
- Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz. (31)
- Foxy nymphs grab quick-jived waltz. (29)
- Brick quiz whangs jumpy veldt fox. (27)
The 26-letter ones are nearly incomprehensible:
- Nth black fjords vex Qum gyp wiz.
Or “An esteemed Iranian shyster was provoked when he himself was cheated: an alleged seaside ski resort he purchased proved instead to be a glacier of countless oil-abundant fjords.”
I Yam What I Yam
During the Depression, spinach farmers in Crystal City, Texas, erected a statue of Popeye — the cartoon character almost singlehandedly saved the spinach industry.
All the News …
The heaviest newspaper ever printed was the New York Times of Sunday, Sept. 14, 1987.
At 1,612 pages, it weighed more than 12 pounds.
Cadaeic Cadenza
Opening excerpt from “Cadaeic Cadenza,” a short story written in 1996 by Mike Keith:
One
A Poem: A Raven
Midnights so dreary, tired and weary,
Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap — the weirdest tap!
An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber’s antedoor.
“This,” I whispered quietly, “I ignore.” …
If you write out the number of letters in each word, they form the first 3,834 digits of pi.
Longest Hollywood Resume
Christopher Lee has 211 screen credits, more than any other living actor. He’s performed in English, French, Canadian, German, Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, Italian, Pakistani, Spanish, Japanese, American, Australian and New Zealand productions.
If that’s not impressive enough, he’s also 6 foot 5 and a direct descendent of Charlemagne.
The Weather Outside Is Frightful …
What are these?
They’re snow crystals, magnified by a scanning electron microscope.