Molière collapsed on stage in 1673 and died hours later.
The play was called The Hypochondriac.
Author: Greg Ross
Small World
“Formosa” is both a province in Argentina and the former name of Taiwan.
Curiously, those locations are on precisely opposite sides of the earth. Noon at one is midnight at the other, and midwinter at one is midsummer at the other.
Bread Alone
Andy and Bill are traveling when they meet Carl. Andy has 5 loaves of bread and Bill has 3; Carl has none and asks to share theirs, promising to pay them 8 gold pieces when they reach the next town.
They agree and divide the bread equally among them. When they reach the next town, Carl offers 5 gold pieces to Andy and 3 to Bill.
“Excuse me,” says Andy. “That’s not equitable.” He proposes another arrangement, which, on consideration, Bill and Carl agree is correct and fair.
How do they divide the 8 gold pieces?
Where the Boys Are
Men per woman:
- Northern Mariana Islands: 0.77
- Russia: 0.86
- Puerto Rico: 0.92
- United States: 0.97
- Canada: 0.98
- United Kingdom: 0.98
- Australia: 0.99
- Iceland: 1
- India: 1.06
- Greenland: 1.12
- Qatar: 1.87
The world average is 1.01.
In a Word
inkle
v. to attend a party to which one has not been invited
Peril at Sea
In crossing the Atlantic, in the month of November, 1749, the crew of an English ship observed a large ball of blue fire rolling on the water. It came down on them so fast, that before they could raise the main-tack, they observed the ball to rise almost perpendicularly, and within a few yards of the main chains: It went off with an explosion as if hundreds of cannon had been fired off simultaneously, and left behind it a great smell of brimstone. The main-top-mast was shattered into a thousand pieces, and spikes driven out of the main-mast which stuck in the main deck. Five seamen were knocked down, and one of them greatly burnt, by the explosion. The fireball was of the apparent size of a large mill-stone, and came from the N. E.
— Cabinet of Curiosities, Natural, Artificial, and Historical, 1822
Accidentally Famous
In 1838, a man made history by having his boots polished.
The man, in the lower left, was the only thing standing still when Louis Daguerre took this photograph of a busy Parisian street. Because the film was exposed for 10 minutes, the rest of the traffic blurred into nothing — and the anonymous man became the first person ever to appear in a photograph.
“The Pig”
It was an evening in November,
As I very well remember,
I was strolling down the street in drunken pride,
But my knees were all a-flutter,
And I landed in the gutter
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.
Yes, I lay there in the gutter
Thinking thoughts I could not utter,
When a colleen passing by did softly say
“You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses” —
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.
— Anonymous
Postscript
Lawrence Sterne, after a lifetime of peculiarities, and becoming notorious as an eccentric, curious and able writer, at his death was buried in a graveyard near Tyburn, belonging to the Parish of Mary-le-bone, and the ‘resurrection man’ disinterred his corpse and conveyed it to the professor of anatomy at Cambridge where being laid upon the dissecting table, was at once recognized by one of those present who knew him well while living.
— Bizarre Notes & Queries, February 1886
The St. Paul
On April 25, 1908, the American liner St. Paul collided in the English Channel with the cruiser HMS Gladiator, killing 27 sailors.
Ten years later the St. Paul was chartered by the Navy to serve as a troopship in World War I. While in Brooklyn to be fitted out and repainted, she heeled over mysteriously in New York Harbor. Divers found that a port had been left open, flooding the lower boiler room.
No one ever discovered a reason for this, but it was noted that the St. Paul sank at 2:30 p.m. on April 25, 1918 — 10 years almost to the minute after she had sunk the Gladiator.