Baby otters wag their tails like dogs.

Cremating one body uses as much fuel as a 500-mile-plus road trip.

“The Great Turkish Bombard,” also known as “the Dardanelles Gun,” was a 17-foot-long bronze cannon designed and cast in 1464 by Munir Ali to fire balls of almost 25 inches. It weighed 16.8 tons. In 1807, 343 years later, Turkish forces fired it with deadly effect against the British in the Dardanelles campaign. In 1866, it was given by Sultan Abdulaziz to Queen Victoria as a present.

Dizzy Gillespie ran for president in 1964. He promised to rename the White House “the Blues House” and to put Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Malcolm X in his cabinet.

Six out of 10 Americans believe in an afterlife in which people are punished for evil deeds.

This article appears in December 7 • 2018.

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