L. M. Boyd quotes:

That phrase "hocus-pocus" started out as "hocus-pocus dominocus", and was, in the beginning, a mocking imitation of the holy incantations of the Catholic Church's Latin liturgy. So say the lexicologists.

Think today's interest rates are high? The Pilgrims borrowed $7000 from a London company of 70 investors in 1620, and devoted the next 23 years to repaying it at 43 percent.

The code of Hammurabi in ancient Babylon prescribed this punishment for a doctor convicted of inept surgery: amputation of the hands.

Chopsticks or no chopsticks, it was the Chinese who first used knives and forks.

First truck called a 'pick-up' was an International Harvester S in 1921.

Anyone who eats three meals a day should understand why cookbooks outsell sex books three to one.

Having a baby isn't so bad. If you're a female Emperor penguin in the Antarctic. She lays the egg, rolls it over to the father, then takes off for warmer weather where she eats and eats and eats. For two months, the father stands stiff, without food, blind in the 24-hour dark, balancing the egg on his feet. After the little penguin is hatched, the mother sees fit to come home.

There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool.

If you're more than three feet away from a housefly, it can't see you.

It has long been believed that a man who gets bald across the front of his head is a thinker while a man who gets bald on the crown of his head is a lover. It follows, certainly, that a man who gets bald all over his head thinks he's a lover.

No single expression denotes love. It's so complex it requires combinations of expressions. These create an identifiable look. You see something like it sometimes in the eyes of slaughterhouse steers.