“Australasian Monster”

At Liverpool, New South Wales, two men voluntarily made affidavits, that they had seen in a bush, two miles and a half out of town, a tremendous snake, which to the best of their belief, was forty-five feet in length, and three times in circumference of the human body!!! He who first saw it, thinking it dead, threw a stick at it, when it reared its monstrous body five feet from the ground. A third person offered to corroborate on oath the depositions. A party of respectable gentlemen went in quest of this extraordinary object, but succeeded only in finding its track, which bore the impression of immense scales, and confirmed the reports. Some conjecture it must be a species of crocodile, from a mark in the earth fourteen inches long, apparently indented by its jaw.

The Cabinet of Curiosities, 1824

The Tehachapi Loop

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Engineers despaired of getting trains over the Tehachapi Mountains in Southern California. The climb was just too steep.

The solution, reportedly suggested by a 9-year-old boy, is both simple and beautiful: Send the trains through an ascending loop.

A train with 85 boxcars will actually pass over itself on the way up.

Nonstop

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In August 2005, an Airbus A340 airliner overshot the runway at Toronto, plunged into a ravine, and burst into flames.

Of the 309 people on board, all survived.

It’s known as the Toronto Miracle.

“Light From Potatoes”

The emission of light from the common potato, when in a state of decomposition, is sometimes very striking. Dr. Phipson, in his work on ‘Phosphorescence,’ mentions a case in which the light thus emitted from a cellarful of these vegetables was so strong as to lead an officer on guard at Strasbourg to believe that the barracks were on fire.

— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882

“Ambiguous Lines”

First published in 1671, this anonymous verse came with a simple instruction that would render it into sense. Can you discover it?

I saw a peacock with a fiery tail
I saw a blazing comet drop down hail
I saw a cloud with ivy circled round
I saw a sturdy oak creep on the ground
I saw a pismire swallow up a whale
I saw a raging sea brim full of ale
I saw a venice glass sixteen foot deep
I saw a well full of men’s tears that weep
I saw their eyes all in a flame of fire
I saw a house as big as the moon and higher
I saw the sun even in the midst of night
I saw the man that saw this wondrous sight.
I saw a pack of cards gnawing a bone
I saw a dog seated on Britain’s throne
I saw King George shut up within a box
I saw an orange driving a fat ox
I saw a butcher not a twelvemonth old
I saw a great-coat all of solid gold
I saw two buttons telling of their dreams
I saw my friends who wished I’d quite these themes.

Click for Answer

An Early Escher

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“False Perspective,” a 1754 engraving by William Hogarth.

“Whoever makes a DESIGN without the Knowledge of PERSPECTIVE,” he wrote, “will be liable to such Absurdities as are shewn in this Frontispiece.”