ENTERTAINMENT: THE SCORPIONS

Many bands are much older than you think. Exhibit A is this 1965 photograph of the Scorpions, who were to be an immensely popular rock band in the '70s and '80s. The band's hits include "Holiday," "Lady Starlight," "You Give Me All I Need," "No One Like You," "Blackout," "Still Loving You," "Big City Nights," "Rock You Like A Hurricane" and "Wind of Change." [Picture found at http://www.the-scorpions.com/images/history/history1965.jpg.]

THE REAL DIGGITY DOGGONE DIGGITY: STRANGE ACTUAL WORDS & EVENTS

Sometime in 2008 the AAA member magazine Texas Journey requested reader submissions for an article titled "My First Car" to appear in its January/February 2009 issue. One respondent was the 77-year-old Denton, Texas doctor William F. King, who said he still owned his first car: a Ford Model T. He was 15 and World War II had just ended when he bought the car from a Dr. Rebecca Evans, who had delivered him at birth.

THE REAL DIGGITY DOGGONE DIGGITY: STRANGE ACTUAL WORDS & EVENTS

Barry Vinocur, an eloquent college dropout, conned his way into a job as a medical technician. He excelled in the position and later used his cousin's medical records in forging a medical license. He then learned the position by extensive reading and watching physicians on the University of California's medical faculty. With this knowledge he correctly diagnosed a rare blood disorder in an infant at the university and saved its life. He later became the supervisor of the university's helicopter transport services for newborns and co-authored a textbook on intensive care treatment with three other doctors. After his exposure as a fraud he received a light sentence due to his excellent work: probation and 100 hours of community service. [Source: How Con Games Work, M. Allen Henderson, 1985; 1994]

SCIENCE: THE MAYFLY

Anyone who says he's been bitten by a mayfly is lying. An adult mayfly has no functional mouth parts and so cannot bite--or eat. It lives for just a day. It spends most of its life as an aquatic nymph feeding on debris from plants and algae. That's if it's not eaten by predators. Mayflies are the only group of insects that molt after sprouting wings. The wingless nymph swims to the water surface or perches on nearby rocks or plants. Within seconds or minutes it molts into a winged nymph. It soon flies to nearby plants and molts again into a winged adult. Its total life span is about a year. [Source: http://insects.tamu.edu/fieldguide/aimg3.html, et al]

THE REAL DIGGITY DOGGONE DIGGITY: STRANGE ACTUAL WORDS & EVENTS

A common grammatical error is substituting myself for me. An example of this was on an A&E Biography profile of Timothy McVeigh, who with cohort Terry Nichols bombed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. One woman interviewed recalled that in her childhood McVeigh was her next-door neighbor and baby-sitter and that he would "come over and baby-sit me and play with myself."