“I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory
for trifles.” I read this years ago in The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and
knew Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was talking about me. I read all sorts of things,
and the oddest, most useless bits get stuck in my head. For instance, did you
know oranges were originally green? In some countries, they still are. In the
movie The Impossible, Tom Holland shares a green orange with Naomi Watts.
In Thailand, where the movie was filmed, oranges are green when ripe. (So why
don’t we call them greens?) Also, did you know Antarctica has no one time zone?
It has them all. That’s because all the longitude lines meet at the south pole.
Stations there use the time zones of the countries that own them. Here’s one
more: walnuts, almonds, pistachios and cashews aren’t really nuts: they’re seeds.
And peanuts are legumes. True nuts include hazelnuts, chestnuts and acorns.
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