THE FACT SHACK

By L.M. “Evangelo” Prodromou

* Some creatures can live for an astonishly long time on very small quantities of food.

* Men and women are different in some non-obvious physical and behavioral ways.

* Famous people often have had jobs that were menial or had nothing to do with what they eventually became famous for.

* Many U.S. cities and states have laws on the books that are so situation-specific or outdated culturally that they seem ridiculous.

* When you imagine scenarios that apply quantities from microscopic or cosmological scales to the everyday human scale, it can be really mind-boggling.

… Several English words have origins that have nothing to do with their current usage.

* Some animals can do things you wouldn't normally expect.

* People in cultures different from our own have rituals or taboos for courting, marriage, coming-of-age, birth or death that seem strange or even absurd to us.

* Sometimes surprising coincidences occur.

* Famous people have said some really funny or thought-provoking things.

* Occasionally someone committing a crime will make a really obvious mistake that will give away his or her identity, making it easy for authorities to track them. Sometimes the person even hurts themselves, and once in a while someone gets killed.

* There are names for things or activities that you didn't think had names. Sometimes these names are long and latinate.

* Sometimes individuals collect a really large amount of the same thing, or do the same thing over and over a whole lot, or *never* do something that other people commonly do.

… The sizes of some animals' organs would surprise you.

* Other animals either don't have organs that you would expect them to, or have very many of them.

* A larger percentage than you would think of the general population can't answer some basic science, history, or geography questions correctly.

* Some people or groups of people have remarkably high levels of endurance, enabling them to do things that you may find amazing.

* Some famous people have out-of-the-ordinary quirks or interests.

* Exponential growth can lead to some surprisingly large numbers very quickly.

* Sometimes people die in really strange and/or painful ways.