Random Factoids

One of my small pleasures is to read the Sunday New York Times each Sunday afternoon. Its writing is consistently excellent and I always learn something. Here are a baker's dozen of factoids that I wasn't aware of before today.

1. The pay gap between college graduates and those people who did not graduate is 54 percent as of last year, a record high.

2. William F. Buckley was buried with his favorite peanut butter and the ashes of his wife.

3. Henry David Thoreau accidently burned down 300 acres of Concord forest in 1844.

4. Warren Buffett's Bershire Hathaway stick has fallen 39 percent since December 2009.

5. Mine that Bird, with 50-1 odds, wons the 2009 Kentucky Derby six and a quarter lengths ahead of 18 other horses.

6. Carol Ann Duffy was named Britian's poet laureate, the first women in 340 years. Example:

I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,

possessive and faithful

as we are,

for as long as we are.

7. Evidence to date suggests that the swine flu is no more dangerous than the average flu.

8. The 1970 Pontiac GTO The Judge" had a hood-mounted tachometer.

9. Red Sox's Fenway Park, built in 1912, holds 33,000 seats.

10. Microsoft is shutting down Encarta, their online enclopedia, next year.

11. Calcutta is now called Kolkata. Its other names: City of Palaces, Black Hole, Graveyard of the British Empire.

12. Odds of having three multi-platinum albumns: 1/1,650,000.

13. Odds of having a child diagnosed with autism: 1/150.