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by Samantha Weaver

• It was way back in the 17th century when noted Scottish scholar Patrick Young made the following sage observation: “The trouble with weather forecasting is that it’s right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.”

• As 2019 winds down, you might want to keep this crime fact in mind: Those who study such things say that New Year’s Day is the No. 1 holiday for car theft. Perhaps they’re making up for Christmas Day, which is typically the holiday with the fewest auto thefts.

• I bet you didn’t know there’s a word speciﬁ cally used to refer to the space between your eyebrows. Yep: It’s called the “ophryon.”

• Fans of old Westerns have doubtless seen depictions of Native Americans scalping their enemies. Most probably don’t realize, though, that the brutal practice didn’t originate with the Indians. When the Dutch and English settlers were trying to clear out the natives, they were paid a bounty for each scalp they brought back. The Native Americans adopted the practice only after the Europeans’ arrival on the continent.

• If you’re a runner -- and a compulsive counter -- you might already be aware of the fact that the average person’s feet hit the ground approximately 800 times per mile when running.

• The food eaten by a typical American travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from the farm where it was grown to the plate where it’s consumed.

• Paleontologists claim that Neanderthals used toothpicks. How can they tell, you might well ask? It seems that toothpick use leaves distinctive grooves on teeth.

• We can thank beloved 19th-century English novelist Charles Dickens for the colorful phrase "eat my hat."

• Wildlife documentarians have captured footage of elephant mothers spanking their calves; sometimes she uses her trunk, and sometimes she goes so far as to pull up a shrub and use it as a switch.

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• On Jan. 5, 1643, in the first record of a legal divorce in the American colonies, Anne Clarke of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is granted a divorce from her absent and adulterous husband, Denis Clarke, by the Quarter Court of Boston.

• On Jan. 1, 1818, “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” is published. The book by 20-year-old Mary Shelley is frequently called the world’s first science fiction novel. In Shelley’s tale, a scientist animates a creature constructed from dismembered corpses.

• On Jan. 4, 1896, six years after Wilford Woodruff, president of the Mormon Church, issued his Manifesto reforming political, religious and economic life in Utah, the territory is admitted into the Union as the 45th state. Woodruff’s 1890 Manifesto included a renunciation of the traditional Mormon practice of polygamy.

• On Dec. 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine and the Transcaucasian Federation. In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved following the collapse of its communist government.

• On Jan. 3, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower closes the American embassy in Havana and severs diplomatic relations between the United States and Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba. The action signaled that the U.S. was prepared to take extreme measures to oppose Castro’s regime.

• On Jan. 2, 1974, President Richard Nixon signs the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, requiring states to limit highway speeds to 55 mph or lose federal highway funding. It was a result of fuel shortages caused by the Arab oil embargo.

• On Dec. 31, 1999, the United States officially hands over control of the Panama Canal, putting the strategic waterway into Panamanian hands for the first time. The 50-mile canal, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, officially opened when the SS Arcon sailed through in August 1914.