Jimi Hendrix and George Frideric Handel lived in adjoining houses.
Handel lived at 25 Brook Street in London from 1723 until his death in 1759.
210 years later, Hendrix moved in at number 23.
Noisy Neighbors
Author: Greg Ross
Ninth Life
Agonizing over how to put down his ailing cat, Alexander Woollcott consulted Dorothy Parker.
She said, “Try curiosity.”
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.
The Elevator Paradox
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?
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
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.”
More Geometry Trouble
The top figure, measuring 8 × 8, can be reassembled to form the bottom figure, measuring 5 × 13. Thus 64 = 65.
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
Scherzando
In 1991 Harvard’s music library discovered a lost canon of Mozart, the composer who Leonard Bernstein said offers “the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering — a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages.”
It’s called “Lick Me in the Ass.”
Holiday for Vowels
What English word contains the letters GNT consecutively?