Bon Appétit!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chapulines.jpg — Image: Wikimedia Commons

Menu proposed by Vincent M. Holst in Why Not Eat Insects? (1885):

Slug soup
Boiled cod with snail sauce
Wasp grubs fried in the comb
Moths sauteed in butter
Braised beef with caterpillars
New carrots with wireworm sauce
Gooseberry cream with sawflies
Deviled chafer grubs
Stag beetle larvae on toast

“Why on earth should these creatures be called loathsome, which, as a matter of fact, are not loathsome in any way, and, indeed, are in every way more fitted for human food than many of the so-called delicacies now highly prized?”

He has a point — viewed as livestock, house crickets convert energy to protein about 20 times more efficiently than beef cattle.

February 23, 2009June 22, 2013 | Oddities · Society

In a Word

maritorious
adj. fond of one’s husband

February 23, 2009February 22, 2009 | Language

“Fairy Castles”

On Oct. 21, 1796, at about 4 p.m., “a number of spectators” witnessed a curious mirage in clear weather near Cork, Ireland:

It appeared on a hill, on the county of Waterford side of the river, and seemed a walled town with a round tower, and a church with a spire; the houses perfect, and the windows distinct. Behind the houses appeared the mast of a ship, and in the front a single tree, near which was a cow grazing: whilst the Waterford hills appeared distinctly behind. In the space of about half an hour the spire and round tower became covered with domes, and the octagonal building, or rather round tower, became a broken turret. Soon after this change, all the houses became ruins, and their fragments seemed scattered in the field near the walls; the whole in about an hour disappeared, and the hill on which it stood, sunk to the level of the real field. The hill and trees appeared of a bright green, the houses and towers of a clear brown, with their roofs blue.

From Curiosities for the Ingenious, 1825.

February 22, 2009December 17, 2010 | Oddities

This List Contains …

fifteen Es
seven Fs
four Gs
six Hs
eight Is
four Ns
five Os
six Rs
eighteen Ss
eight Ts
four Us
three Vs
two Ws
three Xs

February 22, 2009 | Language

The Cardrona Bra Fence

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cardrona_bra_fence.jpg — Image: Wikimedia Commons

If aliens are studying us, they must be baffled sometimes.

In late 1999 four women’s bras appeared on a wire fence in southern New Zealand. That’s innocent enough, but by February the number had grown to 60. In October it reached 200, and by the following February nearly 800.

Why? Who knows? The local council waited until September to clear the fence — by which time it had accumulated more than 1,500 bras.

“Extraordinary Prediction”

It is recorded of the poet Dryden, by Charles Wilson, in his ‘Life of Congreve,’ that having, strange to say, belief in astrology, he was careful to ascertain to the second the time at which his son Charles was born. He then calculated the boy’s nativity, and was alarmed to discover that evil influences prevailed in the heavens. … He concluded that in his eighth year, and on the day of birth, his son’s life would be seriously endangered if not lost; and that if he lived, the same danger would exist when he attained his twenty-third birthday, and again on his thirty-third or fourth. On the boy’s eighth birthday, despite every precaution to keep the boy from every possible danger, he was nearly killed by the fall of a wall. On his twenty-third birthday he was seized with giddiness and fell from an old tower belonging to the Vatican at Rome; and he was drowned at Windsor while swimming across the Thames in his thirty-third year.

— The World of Wonders, 1883

February 21, 2009February 21, 2009 | Death · Literature · Oddities

A Pangrammatic Highway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I-287_Wanaque_NJ.jpg — Image: Wikipedia

A 0.8-mile stretch of northbound Interstate 287 in New Jersey contains these signs:

WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS
NO TRUCKS IN LEFT LANE
LAFAYETTE AVE.
EXIT 20 MPH
BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE ROAD SURFACE
INTERSTATE NEW JERSEY 287

To date this is the shortest reported stretch of U.S. highway whose permanent, official signs contain all 26 letters of the alphabet. Do you know a shorter one?

February 20, 2009June 24, 2013 | Language