Currier & Ives published this lithograph in 1875: “Six moral sentences beginning with the letter T.” I can’t find the answers! My guesses:
True honesty brings prosperity.
Trace[?] the footsteps of the wise.
Those do well who never lie.
Tears of repentency are like diamonds.
Train yourself to be temperate.
That which is well earned is most comforting[?].
From John Scott’s The Puzzle King, 1899:
“A locomotive with a truck is travelling over a straight level line at the rate of 60 miles an hour. A man standing at the extreme rear of the truck casts a small stone into the air in a perpendicular direction. The stone travels upward at an average rate of 30 feet per second for 3 seconds; the height of the man’s hand from ground when the stone leaves is 15 feet. At what distance behind the train will the stone strike the ground in its descent?”
Take any triangle and divide it into sub-triangles as shown. Inscribe a circle in each of these smaller triangles.
Rearrange the order of the circles and adjust the intervening lines so that each line touches two circles:
No matter how this is done, each circle will always fit perfectly in its triangle. Here are some proofs.
This photo was taken at the reopening of the South Fork Bridge in Gold Bridge, British Columbia, in 1941. It’s sometimes claimed that the man at the center appears too modern to belong in such a crowd. It’s true that he’s dressed more casually than those around him, but the sunglasses he’s wearing first appeared in the 1920s, and his “T-shirt” appears to be a sweater with an emblem sewn on, possibly that of the Montreal Maroons, a contemporary hockey team. His camera is small for the time, but Kodak had begun offering portable cameras of that size three years earlier.
And no one around him seems to feel he’s out of place.
Catullus wrote this poem in the first century B.C.:
Mourn, o Venuses and Cupids
and however many there are of more charming people:
my girl’s sparrow is dead—
the sparrow, delight of my girl,
whom that girl loved more than her own eyes.
For he was honey-sweet and had known
the lady as well as a girl [knows] her mother herself,
nor did he move himself from that girl’s lap,
but hopping around now here now there
he chirped constantly to his mistress alone,
he who now goes through the shadowy journey
thither, whence they deny that anyone returns.
But may it go badly for you, evil shadows
of hell, who devour all beautiful things.
You have taken from me so beautiful a sparrow.
Oh evil deed! Oh wretched little sparrow!
Now through your deeds the eyes of my girl,
swollen with weeping, are red.
In 1912 G.S. Davies translated it into, of all things, a Scottish brogue:
Weep, weep, ye Loves and Cupids all,
And ilka Man o’ decent feelin’:
My lassie’s lost her wee, wee bird,
And that’s a loss, ye’ll ken, past healin’.
The lassie lo’ed him like her een:
The darling wee thing lo’ed the ither,
And knew and nestled to her breast,
As only bairnie to her mither.
Her bosom was his dear, dear haunt—
So dear, he cared na lang to leave it;
He’d nae but gang his ain sma’ jaunt,
And flutter piping back bereavit.
The wee thing’s gane the shadowy road
That’s never traveled back by ony:
Out on ye, Shades! Ye’re greedy aye
To grab at aught that’s brave and bonny.
Puir, foolish, fondling, bonnie bird,
Ye little ken what wark ye’re leavin’:
Ye’ve bar’d my lassie’s een grow red,
Those bonnie een grow red wi’ grieving.
Each of these buses is proceeding smoothly along the striped street. Yet each seems to be varying its speed dramatically.
When the blue bus encounters a white stripe, it becomes easy to see due to the high contrast, so it appears to move faster. When it encounters a black stripe it becomes harder to see, so its movement seems slower. The reverse is true of the yellow bus. When the stripes are removed, the buses stop staggering.
UCSD psychologist Stuart Anstis first demonstrated the illusion in 2003.
What does this say? It’s an excerpt from a small bound volume given in 1841 by Harvard law professor Theophilus Parsons Jr. to John Davis of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Davis noted, “It was found in his father’s Library after his decease, its origin and contents unknown. I hoped to find some person of sufficient skill in stenography, to decipher the pages. But it is still, to me & those whom I have consulted, a Sealed Book.”
It seems to be a dated record of some kind. The anonymous writer used Arabic numerals, so we can see that the entries are organized by year, month, and day, with long entries on one side of each page and shorter ones on the other.
But no one has ever determined its meaning. It was conjectured that the volume might be the diary of a clergyman, perhaps Theophilus’ father, the Rev. Moses Parsons of Byfield, but the entries extend to 1799, 16 years after Moses’ death.
For now the diary (if that’s what it is) is kept at the Massachusetts Historical Society. MHS reference librarian Jeremy Dibbell writes about it here.
“There exist only two kinds of modern mathematics books: ones which you cannot read beyond the first page and ones which you cannot read beyond the first sentence.” — Physics Nobelist Yang Chen-Ning
Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.
— Mark Twain’s epitaph for his daughter Susy, adapted from Robert Richardson’s poem “Annette”
A self-inventorying crossword from Lee Sallows:
This one even tallies the number of spaces it contains!
(Thanks, Lee!)
