Did you know?

Here we are, Monday morning and it is time for more Eccentric Spheres.

Today we look at fun facts from around the world, mostly because it's been a long time since I did that.

So, sit back and enjoy.

Did you know that the simple strawberry is in the same family as roses? And that it's not actually a berry at all? In fact, the strawberry is a so called aggregate accessory fruit. The watermelon on the other hand is a berry, as are tomatoes and bananas.

That the Kennedy family has money is hardly a surprise, but did you know that JFK's upbringing was so privileged that he didn't know about the Great Depression until he read about it in college, even though he grew up in it?

Most of you are probably familiar with a small Mexican cartoon mouse called Speedy Gonzales. What you may not be familiar with is that Cartoon Network banned him for being racially insensitive until the League of United Latin American Citizens insisted they bring him back, since they considered the mouse a cultural icon.

Fred Flintstone and the other characters live in the town of Bedrock. There is a Bedrock in Colorado, and they get so many letters addressed to the Hanna-Barbera figures they had to make a separate stamp that says “Return to sender – Fictitious Cartoon Character."

Originally, Superman couldn't fly. Thus the 'Able to leap tall building is a single bound'. Later on, the animators thought it looked stupid and petitioned to let him fly instead.

When WWII ended, the Russians partied so hard Moscow ran out of vodka.

Back in the day, Adriana Ferrarese del Bene was a very popular singer, but Mozart despised her for her habit of lowering her head on low notes and raising it on the high ones. So he wrote a song with multiple quick alternating highs and lows, just to ”see her head bob like a chicken.”

When We Are The World was being recorded, Stevie Wonder informed arriving singers that if they didn't get the song on the first try, he and Ray Charles would be driving everyone home.

The reason why Bic has a hole in their pen caps is to eliminate the risk of suffocation if the cap is accidentally inhaled.

Apparently, spiders have a taste in music. An experiment at Miami University showed that when rap and techno was played, the spider moved their webs as far away as possible, but they moved closer when Bach was played. I feel the same way...

There we go, ten things you might not have known. Until next week, take it easy!