Flights

SANITARY PADS

Each of the wrappers from the pads I’d picked up at the pharmacy had entertaining little facts on them:

The word ‘lethologica’ describes the state of being unable to recall the word you’re looking for.

Ropography is a painting term for the attention the artist pays to trifles and details.

Rhyparography is the painting of decaying and disgusting things.

Scissors were invented by Leonardo da Vinci.

In the bathroom, where I unwrapped the entire box of these pads with their curious teachings, it hit me like a revelation that this was yet another part of the project of the great encyclopaedia now coming into being, the encyclopaedia that would encompass all things. So I went back to the pharmacy and scoured the shelves in search of the name of this strange company that had determined to unite necessity with usefulness. For what sense could it ever possibly make to wrap pads in paper that had flowers and strawberries on it? Paper was created to be the bearer of ideas. Paper packaging is wasteful and should be banned. But if you really do have to package something, then you ought to only be able to do it in novels and poems, and always in such a way that what is contained and what contains it have some connection.

Starting at the age of thirty, humans begin to slowly shrink.

Each year more people are killed by kicks from donkeys than by plane crashes.

If you wind up at the bottom of a well, you’ll be able to see the stars even during the day.

Did you know that your birthday is shared by nine million people around the world?

The shortest war in history was waged between Zanzibar and England in 1896, lasting thirty-eight minutes.

If the earth’s axis were tilted just one degree more, the planet would be uninhabitable, because the regions around the equator would be too hot and the poles too cold.

Due to the earth’s rotation, throwing something westward will send it flying further than if it’s going east.

The average human body contains enough sulphur to kill a dog.

Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of getting peanut butter stuck to your palate.

But the one I was the most struck by was this:

The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue.