Odd select box behaviour - SOLVED

I had a wild thought and changed the select box definition.

First I dropped the 'selected' attribute. That solved the problem.

Then I added it back, but as such: selected="selected". That worked too.

My DOCTYPE is HTML 4.01 Transitional, and I remembered reading about all 
attributes must now have a value, even the ones that didn't normally 
require one.

I hope this helps some other programmer save some time.