We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because ‘two’ is ‘one and one’. We forget that we have still to make a study of ‘and’.
— Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, 1928
First Steps
Tennessee Williams wrote for Weird Tales! The 16-year-old author, writing under his given name, Thomas Lanier Williams, published “The Vengeance of Nitocris” in the magazine’s August 1928 issue. An Egyptian queen invites her enemies to a banquet, where she opens sluice gates to drown them in the waters of the Nile:
[T]he black water plunged in. Furiously it surged over the floor of the run, sweeping tables before it and sending its victims, now face to face with their harrowing doom, into a hysteria of terror. In a moment that icy, black water had risen to their knees, although the room was vast. Some fell instantly dead from the shock, or were trampled upon by the desperate rushing of the mob. Tables ware clambered upon. Lamps and candles were extinguished. Brilliant light rapidly faded to twilight, and a ghastly dimness fell over the room as only the suspended lanterns remained lit. And what a scene of chaotic and hideous horror might a spectator have beheld!
He received $35 for the story, his first published work. “[I]f you’re well acquainted with my writings since then,” he wrote later, “I don’t have to tell you that it set the keynote for most of the work that has followed.”
Company
In 1907, historian Reginald Hine, photographer Thomas Latchmore, and artist F.L. Griggs took a camera to Hertfordshire’s Minsden Chapel hoping to photograph the ghost of a murdered monk whose spirit was said to haunt the place. Hine published this photo in his 1929 History of Hitchin, pointing out “the cowled apparition whose form can faintly be discerned” in the image:
In 1930 Latchmore admitted that the image had been a hoax, created with a double exposure; the ghostly figure may be Hine himself.
While we’re at it: In 1963 by the Rev. Kenneth Lord took this photo in the Church of Christ the Consoler on the grounds of Newby Hall in North Yorkshire:
Ostensibly the figure is another ghostly monk, this one wearing a shroud over its face. If it’s not a double exposure then the figure stands as much as 9 feet tall; make your own judgment.
And a reader sent this image in to the Strand in July 1897:
Taken at Scale Force, the Lake District’s highest waterfall, “It is a perfect representation of a stately, long-bearded old man, clothed in a flowing robe, with a crown and sceptre. … The form is perfect natural. I did not notice it until after the photo was developed.”
Interestingly, as recently as 2006 the old man was still there:
Whatever he’s looking for, he hasn’t found it yet.
A Dudeney Square
From Lee Sallows:
“In his book Amusements in Mathematics, H.E. Dudeney presents a method of classifying 4×4 magic squares based on the distribution of their 8 complementary pairs 1 & 16, 2 & 15, .., 8 & 9. There are just 12 distinct such distributions or ‘graphic types’, which he labelled I to XII. The square above is an example of a type X square.”
(Thanks, Lee.)
Dead Center
In a shooting match, Andryusha, Volodya, and Borya each fired 6 shots, and each totaled 71 points.
Andryusha’s first 2 shots earned him 22 points, and Volodya’s first shot earned 3 points.
Who hit the bullseye?
Vivid
The manuscript for Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-Flat Major, K. 495, is written in inks of four colors, red, green, blue, and black.
It’s not clear why. Possibly the composer was teasing his friend Joseph Leutgeb, the intended performer. But possibly it’s a code meant to inform the performance.
Sum of Squares
The sum of the first n square numbers is n(n+1)(2n+1)/6.
These sums comprise the square pyramidal numbers — each corresponds to the number of oranges that can be stacked in a square pyramid whose base has side n.
This visual proof, for n=3, shows that six square pyramids with n steps fit in a cuboid of size n(n + 1)(2n + 1).
(By CMG Lee.)
Credential Envy
In June 1936, when the University of Wisconsin bestowed an honorary doctorate of letters on actress Katharine Cornell, she received a telegram from Noël Coward:
DARLING DARLING DOCTOR KITTY,
THOUGH QUITE REASONABLY PRETTY
THOUGH UNDOUBTEDLY A STAR, DEAR
PLEASE REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE, DEAR.
WHY, IN LIEU OF ALL YOUR BETTERS,
SHOULD YOU HAVE DISTINGUISHED LETTERS?
THIS COMES FROM THE JEALOUS SOEL
OF YOUR SOMEDAY DOCTOR NOËL.
Uh-Oh
Body Heat
London doctor Thomas Ellerby had strong feelings about the disposal of his remains — in his will of February 1827 he threatens to haunt his doctors if they don’t follow his instructions:
I bequeath my heart to Mr. W., anatomist; my lungs to Mr. R.; and my brains to Mr. F., in order that they may preserve them from decomposition; and I declare that if these gentlemen shall fail faithfully to execute these my last wishes in this respect I will come — if it should be by any means possible — and torment them until they shall comply.
The Lancet records that “[t]he gentlemen named — eminent in their day — rightly renounced the legacies left them, and it never appeared that they were, like St. Dunstan and other medieval saints, tromented by visitations from the other world.”