Strange But True
By SAMANTHA WEAVER

+ If you're like the average American adult, you sleep for 6.85 hours every night - or day, if you work the third shift. That's nearly seven hours, which doesn't seem too bad, does it? Well, consider this: 80 years ago adults slept an average of 8.77 hours.

+ Aldous Huxley, celebrated author of "Brave New World," once defined an intellectual as "a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex." Makes you wonder how many intellectuals agree with that estimation.

+ You've probably seen the game show "The Price Is Right" at some point in your life - it seems like it's been on television forever. Reruns of old shows are aired from time to time, but you won't see any of the very earliest episodes on TV. The host, Bob Barker, won't let them be shown - he now objects to the use of fur coats as prizes way back before the animal rights movement had the recognition it has today.

+ It was 1920 when women were granted the right to vote, but that wasn't anywhere near the end of the battle for equality. For instance, it wasn't until 1983 that the Supreme Court ruled retirement plans can't pay women less than they pay men.

+ In 1889, German composer Richard Strauss wrote a piece called "Death and Transfiguration," which he described as a musical depiction of an artist on his deathbed. Sixty years later, as he was dying from an illness, Strauss turned to his daughter-in-law and said, "Funny thing, Alice. Dying is just the way I composed it in 'Death and Transfiguration.'"