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Sam the Eagle and his Muppet friends salute America on its 232nd birthday. Happy Independence Day! -via Fuzzytopia
She realized I had lied about my "restaurant experience" when she saw her ceiling was dripping with balsamic vinaigrette.
If there was ever a good time to stop drinking, it was this morning when I woke up next to a woman in a giraffe costume.
If I had known I was going to accidentally turn my head to face yours at just the right moment, I would have chosen a much more romantic setting than a Walgreen's parking lot.
The gray-striped tabby roamed the halls of the Echo Park school for 16 years, sauntering in and out of classrooms, sleeping on kids' desks and, to a teacher's dismay, wiping out a chalked lesson with his fur as he crept along the eraser tray below the blackboard.
"My first recollection of Room 8 was Miss Mason introducing him to our kindergarten class," said student Angie (Medrano) Nicolai. "She wanted us to know that he belonged to the school and that there may be times he would come into our classroom to visit. She put him down and he immediately jumped up on the desk next to the window to take a nap in the warm sun."
The local news media began to take notice of his annual autumnal return to school. His renown spread after Look magazine ran a three-page spread in November 1962 titled "Room 8: The School Cat."
Weekly Reader, a national magazine for elementary school pupils, featured the feline in January 1967. Art Linkletter had the cat as a guest on TV's "House Party," and Room 8 also was featured on "Big Cats, Little Cats," a television documentary that aired in 1968.
According to his biography, Room 8 received more than 10,000 fan letters from 47 states and several foreign countries -- sometimes more than 100 letters in one day.
"I was coming down the street and he was just in the middle of the road," Phillips said. "I just kept driving and I was like, 'What is that?' It's like a big guinea pig, I guess, which kinda bums me out because I was hoping it was like a kangaroo or something."
We throw out a topic and all you have to do is come up with the smartest, funniest, most interesting fact related to it. Simply enter your fact in the comments below and if yours is chosen, you'll win a brand new prize from the mental_floss store (along with endless bragging rights!). One fact per comment, but you can enter as many facts as you'd like.
Today's topic: In honor of the Christmas trees going up all over, give us an odd fact about plants. The odder, more obscure, or baffling, the better!
Here are two examples to get your mojo working:
The largest single flower is the Rafflesia or "corpse flower". They are generally 3 feet in diameter with the record being 42 inches.
For more than 30 years, Nova Scotia has donated a giant Christmas tree each year to the people of Boston as a thank you for their assistance following the 1917 Halifax Explosion.
Today's prize: The cool When life gives you scurvy, make lemonade! T-shirt.
And even if you don't have a winning fact, mental_floss is giving Neatorama readers a special discount in the mental_floss store. This week only, visit mentalfloss.com/store and get 15% off anything in the store by entering "neatorama" into the coupon code.
Good luck, guys!
Notice: Because the mental_floss staff has been jet-setting (and therefore jet-lagging), we will announce both yesterday's winner and today's winner on Monday.Prof Cosgrove, who is Chief Scientific Officer of Revolymer, said: "The advantage of our Clean Gum is that it has a great taste, it is easy to remove and has the potential to be environmentally degradable."
"I am delighted with our progress" added Roger Pettman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "In 18 months we have converted UK technology into a commercial product, significantly changing the pollution issues facing chewing gum."
Pettman's daughter has done tests of gum on her hair, such is his dedication to his product. The additive has yet to be approved but it is expected before the end of the year and "we are planning our product launch for 2008," said Pettman.