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Usually I give you 10 things I wouldn't know if I couldn't read, but some of these morsels are kind of small so you get a couple extra.

1

Eighteen percent of Americans think the First Amendment - you know, freedom of the press and all that - goes too far.

2

Every correspondence with a school committee or any other elected or appointed municipal board is a public record and available for review by any citizen. 3

Pez was invented to help people quit smoking. It was only later it was redesigned for kids.

4

Seuss, as in Dr. Seuss, is the middle name of his creator, Theodor Geisel.

5

There is a house in Rockport, Mass., made almost entirely of newspaper. It took 20 years to build and the walls are 215 layers of newspaper thick.

6

On the top level of the radio tower of the Eiffel Tower there's a wax figure of Thomas Edison offering Gustave Eiffel a phonograph.

7

China has more honor students than the United States has students. China, by the way, is the most populous country in the world, followed by India and the United States. And there are more chickens than people in the world. 8

The first toy advertised on television was Mr. Potato Head, in 1952. In those days you had to use a real potato for the body.

9

No president of the United States was an only child.

10

The average lifespan of a taste bud is 10 to 14 days.

11

It takes 80 feet of wire to make a Slinky.

12

Your printer imprints its traceable serial code into every sheet of paper you print.

13

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

14

Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite.

15

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt."

16

While our nose and ears never stop growing, our eyes are the same size from birth.

17

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

18

Quote of the week: "Even people who say they don't trust the press, trust the press." - Jon Carroll, columnist for the San Francisco Gate.

See you next week.

ORESTE P. D'ARCONTE is publisher of The Sun Chronicle. Reach him at 508.236.0394 or at darconte@thesunchronicle.com.