The Fear Liath

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Summit_benmacdhui.jpg

In 1891, mountaineer John Norman Collie was descending from the peak of Scotland’s Ben MacDhui when “I began to think I heard something else than merely the noise of my own footsteps.”

“For every few steps I took I heard a crunch,” he told the Cairngorm Club in 1925, “and then another crunch as if someone was walking after me but taking steps three or four times the length of my own.”

Collie could see nothing in the heavy mist, but “[as] the eerie crunch, crunch sounded behind me, I was seized with terror and took to my heels, staggering blindly among the boulders for four or five miles.”

Reports of a “big gray man” on the mountain have never been substantiated, though other climbers have reported uncontrollable feelings of panic. Collie concluded only that there is “something very queer about the top of Ben MacDhui.”

| Oddities

Sweet Dreams

http://www.google.com/patents?id=o-ZcAAAAEBAJ&dq=applegate+1882

If a conventional alarm clock doesn’t wake you, consider this Improved Device for Waking Persons from Sleep, patented in 1882 by Samuel Applegate.

It suspends a frame “directly over the head of the sleeper” from each of whose cords hangs “a small block of light wood, preferably cork.”

“When it falls it will strike a light blow, sufficient to awaken the sleeper, but not heavy enough to cause pain.”

If that’s not dangerous enough, “By a simple connection between the cord B and the key of a self-lighting gas-burner, provision may be made for turning on and lighting the gas in the room at the same time that the sleeper is awakened.”

| Oddities · Technology

A Locked-Room Murder

On June 11, 1920, bridge expert Joseph Elwell was found dead in his Manhattan home, a bullet between his eyes. All the windows and doors were fastened except for Elwell’s bedroom window on the third floor. There was no evidence of a break-in, nothing of value was missing, and ballistics evidence ruled out suicide. The case has never been solved.

| Death · Oddities

The Elevator Paradox

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/424214

In the 1950s, physicists George Gamow and Moritz Stern worked in the same seven-story building. Gamow, on the second floor, noticed that the first elevator to arrive at his office was most often going down. For Stern, on the sixth floor, the first elevator was most often going up. It was as if elves were manufacturing elevator cars in the middle of the building.

You can observe the same phenomenon in most tall buildings, and there are no elves involved. Do you see why it occurs?

| Science & Math

Unquote

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” — Seneca

| Quotations

Human Anagrams

In Literary Frivolities, Fancies, Follies and Frolics (1880), William Dobson tells of a curious spectacle presented to Stanislaus, the future king of Poland, on his return to Lissa:

There appeared on the stage thirteen dancers, dressed as youthful warriors; each held in his hand a shield, on which was engraved in characters of gold one of the thirteen letters which compose the two words DOMUS LESCINIA. They then commenced their dance, and so arranged it that at each turn their row of bucklers formed different anagrams. At the first pause they presented them in the natural order:

DOMUS LESCINIA [O (heir to the) House of Lescinius,]
At the second: ADES INCOLUMIS [Thou art present with us still unimpaired–]
At the third: OMNIS ES LUCIDA [Thou art all that is wonderful.]
At the fourth: MANE SIDUS LOCI [Stay with us, O sun of our land!]
At the fifth: SIS COLUMNA DEI [Thou art one of God’s supporters—]
At the last: I, SCANDE SOLIUM. [Come, ascend thy regal throne.]

“This last was the more beautiful,” writes Robert Moritz, “since it proved a true prophecy.”

| Language

Privacy

There is a secret chamber at the old Cumberland seat of the ancient family of Senhouse. To this day its position is known only by the heir-at-law and the family solicitor. This room at Nether Hall is said to have no window, and has hitherto baffled every attempt of those not in the secret to discover its whereabouts.

Remarkable as this may seem in these prosaic days, it has been confirmed by the present representative of the family, who, in a communication to us upon the subject, writes as follows: ‘It may be romantic, but still it is true that the secret has survived frequent searches of visitors. There is no one alive who has been in it, that I am aware, except myself.’

— Allan Fea, Secret Chambers and Hiding-Places, 1908

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