Canny sheep sometimes resist going down the slaughterhouse ramp to their deaths. So workers sometimes train a goat to go down first, triggering the herding instinct and solving the problem. The goat isn’t harmed and can be used over and over for this purpose.
It’s called a judas goat.
Petersburgh, July 30, 1817. — The ground of a village, distant twenty-two versts from Abo, has sunk suddenly to the depth of many fathoms, and twelve peasants’ houses have been buried in a manner that no trace remains of their former position. A similar event happened at the same place, in the years 1755 and 1788. Among other unknown causes of this phenomenon, it is attributed to the situation of the village upon a swampy soil, and to a river which flows beside it. It is not stated, whether any lives were lost.
— London Morning Post, Aug. 30, 1817
Sweden’s Björketorp runestone (center, above) certainly means business. Thirteen feet tall, it bears this threatening inscription:
Here, I have hidden the secret of powerful runes, strong runes. The one who breaks this memorial will be eternally tormented by anger. Treacherous death will hit him. I foresee perdition.
That’s scary, but it’s not very clear. Archaeologists had thought the curse protected a grave, but a dig in 1914 found no remains. So maybe it’s a cenotaph (meaning the body is buried elsewhere), or a shrine to Odin, or an ancient border marker between Sweden and Denmark. Anyway, be vaguely careful.
ombibulous
adj. drinking everything
More proof (if any were needed) that 2 equals 1:
s = 1 – 1/2 + 1/3 – 1/4 + 1/5 – 1/6 + 1/7 – 1/8 + 1/9 – 1/10 + 1/11 – 1/12 …
2s = 2 – 2/2 + 2/3 – 2/4 + 2/5 – 2/6 + 2/7 – 2/8 + 2/9 – 2/10 + 2/11 – 2/12 …
Rearrange terms:
2s = (2 – 2/2) – (2/4) + (2/3 – 2/6) – (2/8) + (2/5 – 2/10) – (2/12) …
2s = 1 – 1/2 + 1/3 – 1/4 + 1/5 – 1/6 …
But that’s just s again. So 2s = s, and therefore 2 = 1.
(Thanks, Gonzalo!)
On Dec. 15, 1900, a passing steamer noticed that the lighthouse on Scotland’s Flannan Isles had gone dark. A relief crew, arriving on Dec. 26, found that the flagstaff was bare, the beds were unmade, the clock was stopped … and there was no trace of the three men who manned the lighthouse.
A chair had been overturned by the kitchen table, but otherwise there were signs of order. The lamps had been cleaned and refilled, the entrance gate and main door had been closed, and a set of oilskins were found inside, which was strange, considering the violent weather.
As they explored further, the relief crew discovered at the island’s west landing signs of damage that were “difficult to believe unless actually seen.” An iron railway was wrenched out of its concrete, a rock weighing more than a ton had been displaced, and turf had been ripped from a clifftop 200 feet above sea level. But the keepers had kept their log after this point.
What really happened? An investigation suggested that the three were swept away while trying to secure a box on the west landing. But no one really knows.
What John de Mandeville lacked in travel experience, he made up in imagination:
In Ethiope are such men that have but one foote, and they go so fast yt it is a great marvaill, & that is a large fote that the shadow thereof covereth ye body from son or rayne when they lye uppon their backes, and when their children be first borne they loke like russet, and when they waxe olde then they be all blacke.
The writer published a singular book full of such prodigies in the 14th century, most of it apparently borrowed from other writers or spun from whole cloth. Who would do such a thing? We’ll never know — as it turns out, the name “Mandeville” itself was made up.
One last unlucky elephant. In the early 1900s, Thomas Edison was locked in a historic “war of currents” with George Westinghouse. Edison wanted the nation to use direct current; Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla wanted alternating current.
That sounds like a pretty tame dispute, but Edison went to some horrific lengths to sway public opinion. To prove that AC was dangerous, he began electrocuting stray cats and dogs. He said they were being “Westinghoused.” He also secretly funded the first electric chair, which ran on AC but was underpowered — its first use resulted in “an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging,” in the words of one witness.
Anyway, around this time a Coney Island elephant named Topsy was condemned to death for killing three men in three years. Hanging was out, thanks to the ASPCA, so Edison suggested they send 6,600 volts of AC through her. So on Jan. 4, 1903, 1,500 people gathered at the amusement park and watched as Topsy ate carrots laced with 460 grams of potassium cyanide and was Westinghoused. She died quickly, reportedly, but Edison recorded the whole thing on film, and later played Electrocuting an Elephant to audiences around the country.
He lost the fight for DC power, though. There’s some justice.
Mr. Zachariah Pearce, aged 21, died at Cranbrook, Kent, October 17, 1786. The following remarkable occurrences are related as matters of fact, which can be attested by many persons in Cranbrook. Mr. W. Pearce, the father of the above Zachariah, died of a frenzy fever, November 30, 1785. Some time before he died, a small bird, of the dish-water kind, came often every day, and pecked hard against the chamber window where Mr. Pearce lay sick. The window was set open, to try if the bird would enter the room, but it did not; and means were used to catch it, but in vain. The bird continued to come and do the same, till Mr. Pearce died, and was buried, and then it ceased to return. Since the above Zachariah Pearce was taken ill, the same bird, or one of the like kind, frequented his chamber window, and continued to do so occasionally to the time of his death. A similar circumstance occurred in the same parish, about two years and a half before. These are real facts.
— Gentleman’s Magazine, 1786
In August 1971, a human face formed on the kitchen floor of María Gómez Cámara in Bélmez de la Moraleda, Spain. Her husband and son destroyed it with a pickaxe and laid new cement, but the face formed again. In the ensuing 30 years, the family says, a succession of human faces, of varying shapes and sizes, have appeared on the cement floor.
An excavation beneath the house reportedly found human remains, but removing them didn’t stop the apparitions. Spanish parapsychologist Germán de Argumosa claimed that the faces continued to develop even when the floor was sealed to prevent fraud, which he said proved their “paranormal origin.”
But, using infrared photography, his colleague Ramos Perera concluded that pigmentation had been added to alter one face, “and even the paint brush bristles could be perceived.” A third parapsychologist, José Luis Jordán, believes that an acid was used to oxidize the cement.
Maybe they should just switch to linoleum.
