I shook hands with . . .

Answer: U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt no doubt shook hands with all the members of Congress at the time, governors of the states, military leaders, and prominent players in governments around the world, as well as thousands of ordinary citizens, say Edward Burger and Michael Starbird in "Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz."

And all these people in turn shook hands with other politicians, activists, religious leaders, who shook hands with their families, neighbors, parishioners, coworkers. By now, essentially everyone has been indirectly touched by FDR.

Question: You pretty much know how your health was yesterday and probably for today. But what about tomorrow? How much might you be able to predict and how much might you want to?

Answer: A full-body CT scan (a sophisticated X-ray) can pick up early signs of cancer, heart disease, aneurysm, osteoporosis, kidney stones, gallstones and more, says Graham Lawton in "New Scientist." It might even turn up a real surprise, such as "situs inversus," a benign condition where your internal organs are the wrong way round — heart on the right, liver on the left, etc. — making you a scientific curiosity at 1 in every 8,500 people.

Question: Tired of your kid's wild antics, you decide to nickname him "Frankenstein" after the classic monster of Mary Shelley's 1818 Gothic novel. "Dad, that would be a monstrous mistake," he responds. Why is he right?