Strange But True
By SAMANTHA WEAVER

• You may not be surprised to learn that the word "gangrene," which indicates the death of the body's soft tissues due to lack of blood flow, comes from a Greek word meaning "to gnaw."

• It was Casey Stengel, famed baseball player and manager from the 1910s through the 1960s, who made the following observation about his career: "The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided."

• The world record for skipping stones is 40 skips with one toss.

• You have, of course, heard of Amelia Earhart, the record-setting aviatrix who fired the world's imagination in the early decades of the past century. You may not have realized, however, that her original ambition was to be a doctor. She was a medical student when she went to an air show in California, where she decided to become a pilot. Her daredevil career ended on July 2, 1937, when the plane she was flying in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean. Earhart wasn't officially declared dead, though, until Jan. 5, 1939.