Trivia

Since 1981, China’s lonely have used the classified pages to find matrimonial mates, and correspondents say the success rate has been phenomenal - 25 percent. Two million have advertised, and 500,000 have matched up, they say.

Q. What’s an “Arizona paint job”?

A. Old-timey talk to describe any unpainted weathered wood building.

A health industry professional contends: “Women tend to go to doctors when they feel insecure about everything. Men usually don’t go until they’re scared of something in particular.”

Listmakers now say iceberg lettuce is the nation’s favorite vegetable. The banana is still atop the fruit list.

Q. British naval officer Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole in 1911 only to learn the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had come and gone. What happened to the Scott crew?

A. The five men started back. Severe storms hit. Food ran low. Scott rationed it evenly, so the biggest, a Petty Officer Evans, starved to death first. Farther, the second, a Capt. Oates, walked suicidally into the blizzard to leave his share for the others. Still farther, Dr. E. A. Wilson, Lt. H. R. Bowers and Scott died in unknown order. Their journals were found with the three bodies in battered tenting a few miles short of where they’d stored a food cache on the way in.