As you all know, I collect weird, unusual, and strange facts. Over the years my collection of weird facts has grown so large that I feel the need to share them with you just so someone other than me can enjoy them. Here are just ten of them that I’d like to pass along. It’s giving me something to do on this cold, rainy, and dreary day in Maine. I can feel winter sneaking up on me and I’m not sure I ready for the frigid cold weather and snow. Here we go . . .

• Two 1903 paintings were sold at auction for $590,000 – the paintings were in the famous “Dogs Playing Poker” series.

• Actor Burt Reynolds was originally cast to play Hans Solo in the first Star Wars film. He dropped out just before filming started.

• 7% of Americans claim they never bathe at all.

• The number of U.S. college students studying Latin is three times the number studying Arabic.

• If you could drive to the sun at 55 mph it would take you about 193 years.

• Everyone has his or her own unique odor identity, or “smelly fingerprint”.

• 10% of the world’s volcanoes are in Japan. Among them, 108 have erupted in the last 10,000 years, 50 in the last 100 years, and 36 are currently active.

• There are approximately 250,000 sweat glands in a pair of feet, and they excrete as much as half a pint of moisture each day.

• Each domestic cow emits about 105 pounds of methane a year.

• It takes your mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, gallbladder, pancreas and liver just to digest a glass of milk.

Now that the weird facts list has been completed, I thought you might enjoy a little humor. Being a former police officer this joke made me laugh out loud. Any cop can tell you that things like this actually do occur and they always helped to break up a slow work day. Enjoy!

There was a middle-aged guy who had just bought a Mercedes 2000 convertible.  He headed down the road, flooring it up to 80 mph and enjoying the wind blowing through what little hair he had left. “This is great,” he thought, and floored it some more, only to hear a siren and see the flashing lights of a State Police car in his rearview mirror. “I can get away from him no problem,” thought the man, and he stepped on it again until he was flying down the road at over 100 mph. Then he thought, “What am I doing? I’m too old for this kind of thing,” so he slowed and pulled over to the side of the road to wait for the officer to catch up with him. The pursuing officer pulled in behind the Mercedes, got out, and walked up to the man. “Sir,” he said, looking at his watch, “my shift ends in 30 minutes and today is Friday the 13th. If you can give me one good reason why you were speeding that I’ve never heard before, I’ll let you go.” The fellow looked at the patrolman and said, “Last week my wife ran off with a  State Trooper and I thought you were bringing her back.”

The patrolman said, “Have a nice day.”

THERE ARE DAYS WHEN I STILL MISS POLICE WORK