Moments in Time

By Samantha Weaver

• It was pioneering British film director and producer Alfred Hitchcock who made the following sage observation: "Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it - as well as contributing to the need for it."

• The grapefruit is so named not because of any relation to or resemblance to a grape (obviously), but because it hangs from the tree in grapelike clusters.

• Those who study such things say that the three most recognized words in the world are God, Coca-Cola and Titanic.

• Although darts is a traditionally English pub game, there are now more than three times as many darts players in the United States than there are in the United Kingdom.

• Jazz musician Glenn Miller was the recipient of the first gold record ever awarded, for the big-band hit "Chattanooga Choo-Choo."

• The amount of fuel in a jumbo jet single tank would be enough to allow a car to drive around the world - four times.

• If you had visited Peru in the mid-1980s, you could have bought toothpaste with cocaine in it.

• Before he became the celebrated author of such novels as "Pale Fire" and "Lolita," Vladimir Nabokov was a tennis instructor.

• The longest game in the history of professional baseball was played between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings in April of 1981. It lasted just shy of 8 1/2 hours, and ran for an unbelievable 33 innings.

• It's traditional in Italy for a prospective groom to spend a full year's earnings on an engagement ring.