Fly due south from Key West, Fla., and you’ll pass entirely west of South America.
Author: Greg Ross
“Riddles for the Post Office”
The following ludicrous direction to a letter was copied verbatim from the original and interesting document:
too dad Tomas
hat the ole oke
otchut
I O Bary pade
Sur plees to let ole feather have this sefe.The letter found the gentleman at ‘The Old Oak Orchard, Tenbury.’ In another letter, the writer, after a severe struggle to express ‘Scotland,’ succeeded at length to his satisfaction, and wrote it thus: ‘stockling.’ A third letter was sent by a woman to a son who had settled in Tennessee, which the old lady had thus expressed with all phonetic simplicity, ’10 S C.’
— Robert Conger Pell, Milledulcia, 1857
Unquote
“There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.” — Denis Diderot
Sea Dog
In 1939 a Great Dane was officially enlisted in the Royal Navy. “Just Nuisance” earned his name by lying at the top of the gangplanks at a South African dockyard. When he began to follow sailors onto local trains, the Navy decided to accept him as a sailor, thus supporting morale (and granting him free rail travel).
Nuisance generally stayed ashore, and his record shows that he went AWOL, lost his collar, and was found sleeping in a petty officer’s bed. But his faithfulness eventually earned him a promotion to Able Seaman, and he was even “wed” to another Great Dane, producing five puppies that were auctioned off in Cape Town.
He was discharged in 1944 and buried later that year with full naval honors, and he’s remembered today with an annual parade of Great Danes in Simon’s Town.
Word-Unit Palindromes
These sentences read the same backward as forward:
- King, are you glad you are king?
- So patient a doctor to doctor a patient so.
- Dollars make men covetous, then covetous men make dollars.
- Husband by murdered wife lies cold, and cold lies wife, murdered by husband.
Shell Game
In the 1920s, American painter and eccentric Waldo Peirce gave a turtle to the concierge of the building in which he lived. She was delighted with the gift and took great care of her new pet, and she did not notice when Peirce secretly replaced it with a slightly larger turtle. This continued for some time, with Peirce sneaking successively larger turtles into her apartment while she praised her miraculous pet to the neighbors.
Then, after a suitable pause, he began using smaller turtles.
Death Scene
Sarah Bernhardt slept in a coffin. “I found it quite natural to sleep every night in this little bed of white satin which was to be my last couch,” she said — until her sister’s death led to a “tragic-comic incident”:
When the undertaker’s men came to the room to take away the body they found themselves confronted with two coffins, and losing his wits, the master of ceremonies sent in haste for a second hearse. I was at that moment with my mother, who had lost consciousness, and I got back just in time to prevent the black-clothed men taking away my coffin.
“The second hearse was sent back, but the papers got hold of this incident,” she adds wearily. “I was blamed, criticised, etc.”
Math Notes
8589934592 × 116415321826934814453125 = 1000000000000000000000000000000000
“Lord Dundreary’s Finger Puzzle to Count Eleven Fingers on the Two Hands”
Begin on one hand, and count the ten fingers throughout. Begin next time at the finger last counted in the first round, counting this time backwards — ten, nine, eight, seven, six — then holding up the other hand, say ‘And five are eleven.’
— Cassell’s Complete Book of Sports and Pastimes, 1896
Our Mutual Friend
Anagrams on Dickens titles:
- THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY = DICKENS: NAIVE ENTER FANCIFUL DOTHEBOYS HALL
- OLD CURIOSITY SHOP = STORY O’ PIOUS CHILD
- OLIVER TWIST, BY CHARLES DICKENS = BOLD CREW SINS AT SLICK THIEVERY
- THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD = FOOD ENDETH MY WEIRD STORY
“We talk about the tyranny of words,” writes David Copperfield, “but we like to tyrannize over them too.”