THINGS THAT SURPRISED ME LAST WEEK

The Huntsville Times says: A Marshall County (Alabama) woman is in the city jail here for having her 13-year-old daughter ride in a cardboard box atop her van. When asked about the child's safety, Smith said Knott told the officers that she had the box secured to the van with a clothes hanger.

The Straight Dope has undertaken a survey of street numbering systems around the United States. Some highlights:

Atlanta: Every street is named Peachtree. (HA!)

San Francisco: Streets are numbered from wherever they were thought to start, so that you can parallel streets numbered in opposite directions. Thus numbers on Central Avenue increase from south to north, whereas numbers on Masonic Avenue, one block away, increase north to south. (Really?)

Pittsburgh: The street surveying system in this city--Pittsters freely admit it--consisted in its entirety of the following: (1) Follow cow home. (2) Pound stakes. (3) Build street. (I thought that was Boston)

Boston: All the streets converge on a single point, where motorists crash into each other and die. This explains Boston's high mass transit use and low population.

Mussolini was a paid British agent during World War I. He led Italy's "fight" against the Allies in World War II. Perfidious Italians.