When Councilman Morty Povman secured $3,500 to improve Manton, we wondered.

But the Manton Povman is concerned with is not Queens Democrat boss Thomas Manton, but a Briarwood Park by the same name.

Manton Park is named after another Thomas Manton, whose decisions had an effect on people of the Queens of his day.

It was Judge Martin Thomas Manton, a Bayside resident, who rose through the ranks to become
a Court of Appeals Justice in 1918 at age 38.

The funds will provide floodlights that are
expected to brighten the way for Manton park goers after dark. The installation of the lights is expected to take place in May.

It seems that a group of South American monkeys may have a few thousand legs up on us humans when it comes to keeping away the pesky insects that carry the dreaded West Nile Virus.

While the summer months saw many Queensites reaching for spray bottles and skin softeners to ward off mosquitoes, a group of researchers studying the capuchin monkeys living in the rainforests of Venezuela discovered that the playful primates use their own form of bug repellent – one stronger than anything on drugstore shelves.

Researchers witnessed that the resourceful monkeys have devised a way of finding millipedes living in the bark of tropical trees, extracting the multi-legged creatures and then anointing themselves with the insect’s ground up remains — all in an effort to fight off mosquitoes.

According to scientists, the millipedes emit a powerful chemical that wards off insects just like the mosquitoes that have had local residents living in fear for the past two summers.

One expert even concluded that the millipede bug repellent is more powerful than even any the US Army has.

Just when you thought the real estate market was getting ridiculous in New York City, enter the Con Edison commissioned "Millennium Manhole Cover."

This special edition cover has a starting bid of $5,000 dollars on ebay. Shocked or confused? So were we (read on).

Apparently, Con Edison had commissioned Karim Rashid, internationally renowned artist, to design a commemorate piece for the Millennium in a form of a standard 350 pound iron manhole cover. The cover is "uniquely designed" and autographed by the artist himself and donated for a charity auction that will benefit the New York Hall of Science.

Whoopee Doooo!

Apparently, the donated manhole cover is expected to go up in value once a second Millennium Manhole cover is donated to a major museum.

Unfortunately, this raises two more questions:

1) For the person buying this piece of artistic expression: Where will you place a 350-pound manhole cover?

2) How much money can we get for the manhole cover outside our building?

Alan King recently added himself to the list of celebs pushing for the creation of an Astoria-based arts high school in honor of ol’ blue eyes.

Joining the likes of former borough residents
Tony Bennett and Harry Belafonte, as well as musician Wynton Marsalis, King said he thinks Queens is the perfect place for the specialized school that will bear the chairman of the board’s name.

"I’m really looking forward to it," King told the
Daily News. "Queens is such a diverse ethnic community—Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, African-American, Jewish, Christian. They’re all here, living and working. We ought to get quite an interesting student body."

Scheduled to open next September, the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts will be a full-curriculum school tailored for students interested in the fine or performing arts.

The school, which was conceived of by Bennett and will eventually accommodate 1,000 students from Queens and all over the city, will be temporarily located at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City until a site near Kaufman Astoria Studios is renovated.