• Both William Shakespeare and Miguel D. Cervantes, who is considered by some to be Shakespeare’s literary equivalent, died on the same day, April 23, 1616.

• In 1958, a Kansas tornado ripped a woman out of her house and deposited her, unharmed, 60 feet away, next to an LP record of the song Stormy Weather.

• In Paris in the Twentieth Century, Jules Vern describes the Paris skyline dominated by a large metallic structure. The book was written in 1863, years before the Eiffel Tower was conceptualized in 1887.

• The bubonic plague was nicknamed the Black Death because of the nasty black sores it left on its victims’ bodies.

• In January 2008, the Dunkinfield Crematorium in Manchester, England, asked local residents and clergymen to support its plan for heating and powering its chapel and boiler using the heat created by burning bodies.

• John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman, was a church group leader. It is said that he would lead sing-alongs to the tune of Lennon’s song “Imagine”, during which he would change the lyrics to “Imagine there is no John Lennon”.

• If 13 people sit down to eat at a table together, one of them will die within the year.

• A grilled cheese sandwich bearing the image of the Virgin Mary was sold in 2004 for $28,000.

• Novelist Ernest Hemingway and poet Hart Crane were both born on July 21, 1899. Both struggled with alcoholism and depression, and both committed suicide.

• American author Norman Mailer once stabbed his wife and then wrote a novel about it (An American Dream).

These 10 items are just a mishmash of oddities. Fortunately for me the more I research the more of them I stumble upon. Like it or not I’ll be passing them on to you for your enjoyment. I’d like to finish this post with a quote from John Lennon which I found interesting:

“Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground,”