The Most Curious Things I Have Read

The teacher asked the pupils to write the life story of Benjamin Franklin, and one pupil condensed Franklin's life as follows:
"Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston and traveled to Philadelphia, and there he met a lady in the street who smiled at him, so he married her and discovered electricity!"

There lives today, in a mountain village of the region of Russian Azerbaijan, a woman named Katchkhanum Gusalinova, whose age is 130 years. She dwells among her grandchildren, who number 59; as for her husband, he died at 106, and her eldest son is eighty-seven years old.

A thief entered a gasoline station and leveled his pistol at the attendant, demanding that he hand over the money in the till. The attendant objected, saying: "I shall lose my job, for my boss will never believe I was robbed." Said the thief: "Then I will write him a note telling him the truth." The attendant answered that he would never believe that either.
So the thief said: "Very well — let me speak to him on the telephone." And when he had got him on the line, the thief said to the owner of the station: "Listen, my friend... your man George is going to lose eighty dollars in circumstances over which he has no control whatever. I am going to take that sum from him by main force, so I beg you not to dismiss him." He hung up the receiver and went off with the money.

Danilova, the Russian ballet dancer, has become the most famous artiste in the United States, and the newspapermen have raced to talk with her and to secure her sayings on what she prefers in life. What she told them was: that she prefers intelligent women to the painted doll-women; that her aunt was a wise woman when she foretold that she would one day be a new Pavlova; that she has insured her legs in London for ten million francs; that she is the owner of the most beautiful pair of legs in the world; that the ugliest of the memories she carries as a dancer is the loss of her drawers on the stage; and that the greatest pain she ever felt struck her when the Duke of Windsor trod on her feet during a dancing party given in London.

At a meeting between an American journalist and a Russian colleague of his, each began to vaunt the progress of the press in his own country. Said the American: The daily papers in America sometimes come out with a hundred pages.
The Russian answered him: As for the Russian daily papers, they come out with four pages only.
The American asked: And how do you explain that?
The Russian answered: The matter is very simple... we publish only the true news.

After a friendship of years, a coolness fell between Oscar Wilde and the painter James Whistler. One day the two friends tried to make peace and forget the past. In the course of it Wilde showed his friend the latest poem he had composed. The artist read the poem and handed it back to the poet without offering any remark.
Wilde asked him: What do you think of this poem? Whistler smiled a delighted smile and returned the poem to Wilde, saying: It is worth its weight in gold. He said this with entire sincerity, then bowed in farewell and left the room.
Wilde remained for a while after Whistler's departure, overcome with pleasure. Then it struck him all at once what Whistler had meant by his words: for the poem was written on the thinnest and lightest of paper. From that time on, these two friends rarely spoke to one another.

A good spirit was breathed into the clay, and it brought forth this heavy-blooded creature. He had barely begun to walk the earth before his foot slipped on a peel thrown down by a monkey, and he fell and broke a rib!
Iblis doctored him: he performed a surgical operation on him and drew out the broken rib! And from that rib came Eve.
Adam awoke from the "anesthetic" and saw Eve at his side; so he forgot his wound and his pain and sat up straight in his cave.
And it is said that Eve went on for a week trembling whenever our father Adam sneezed, and trembling whenever she beheld his body all mantled with hair.