Today I Learned …

A book given to an Australian girl by her father found its way back to her after 66 years and a journey around the world. When Betty Fowkes of Melbourne was 11, her father gave her the book, titled Magic Australia, and inscribed it, “To Betty, from Daddy, Christmas 1944.” She lost the book in a house move four years later. In 2014 she heard the author’s name mentioned on a radio broadcast and asked her daughter, Liz Crooks, to search for a copy online. Liz randomly selected a copy from New York’s Austin Book Shop — and when it arrived, it was Betty’s original, complete with her father’s inscription. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)