Trivia

Q. Where did sunflowers originate?

A. North America. Conquistadors took them back to Spain. They spread. Now 85 percent of Russia’s cooking oil comes from their own sunflower seeds.

An artificial pancreas is only about as big as a hockey puck.

Q. How long does it take mice to mate?

A. Five seconds.

Medical statisticians will tell you the safest job of all is stock broker. But you won’t hear a claim like that on Wall Street.

Q. What natural phenomena - floods, fires, earthquakes - kill the most people?

A. Heat waves.

The French Parliament four centuries ago passed a law to exile all werewolves. It didn’t specify where to.

Q. What animal most often has been stuffed by a taxidermist?

A. Bobcat.

Client writes: “I’ve repeatedly read in fiction that one train or another stopped at every jerkwater town. Trains didn’t stop at jerkwater towns. As they passed through, they scooped water up from troughs between the tracks - whence ‘jerkwater.”’