Random Facts for a Few Neglected Days

Before the enactment of the 1978 law that made it mandatory for dog owners in New York City to clean up after their pets, approximately 40 million pounds of dog excrement were deposited on the streets every year.

Plain old vanilla is the favorite flavor of ice cream, accounting for 29 percent of all sales.

Some Chinese typewriters have 5,700 characters. The keyboard is almost 3 feet wide on some models, and the fastest one can type on these machines is 11 words per minute.

The "snood" is the fleshy projection just above the bill on a turkey.

Poliosis is the graying of the hair. It comes from polios, the Greek word for "gray."

The original title of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind was Tomorrow Is Another Day; her publisher changed it to Gone With the Wind and also changed the heroine's name from Pansy O'Hara to Scarlett O'Hara.