Analysis

Mark Twain reports on a student who was asked to analyze this stanza from Walter Scott’s “The Lady of the Lake”:

Alone, but with unbated zeal,
The horseman plied with scourge and steel;
For jaded now and spent with toil,
Embossed with foam and dark with soil,
While every gasp with sobs he drew,
The laboring stag strained full in view.

The student wrote:

The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with weariness, while every breath for labor he drew with cries full or sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight.

Twain’s comment: “I see, now, that I never understood that poem before. I have had glimpses of its meaning, it moments when I was not as ignorant with weariness as usual, but this is the first time the whole spacious idea of it ever filtered in sight. If I were a public-school pupil I would put those other studies aside and stick to analysis; for, after all, it is the thing to spread your mind.”

| History · Humor

“Uncovered Skeleton Limbs”

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Starving_Irish_family_during_the_potato_famine.JPG

“… six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearance dead, huddled in a corner, their sole covering what seemed to be a ragged horse cloth, and their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the knees. I approached in horror and found by a low moaning that they were alive, they were in fever — four children, a woman and what had once been a man. … In a few minutes I was surrounded by at least 200 of such phantoms, such frightful spectres as no words can describe. By far the greater number were delirious either from famine or fever. … Within 500 yards of the Cavalry Station at Skibbereen, the dispensary doctor found seven wretches lying, unable to move, under the same cloak — one had been dead many hours, but the others were unable to move, either themselves or the corpse.”

— From a letter by a Mr. O’Brien to the Duke of Wellington describing a visit to Skibbereen during the Irish potato famine, Dec. 17, 1846

| Death · History

Arboreal Genocide?

During aerial surveys in 1992, German forestry students were surprised to see a giant swastika north of Berlin. Apparently locals had planted larches in that pattern in 1937, presumably to prove their loyalty to the party. After the war it was forgotten, as the effect could be seen only from the air, and only as the leaves changed.

When the giant Nazi symbol was rediscovered, though, Brandenburg authories worried that it would attract right-wing extremists — so they started cutting down the larches. In the end, 68 of the 100 trees had to fall before the effect was obscured. There’s an irony here, somewhere …

| History · Oddities

Here We Go Again

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carol_in_Rhode_Island.jpg

Hurricane Carol hits the Rhode Island Yacht Club, 1954.

Hurricanes seem to run in cycles of 50-70 years. Destructive storms were common between 1926 and 1960, but five of the 10 most expensive storms in U.S. history have occurred since 1990.

| History

Who?

In May 2005, someone delivered a box of ashes to the council chambers of Queanbeyan, a city in New South Wales, Australia. It was engraved with the words “Elizabeth Clarke Cunningham, Aged 59 years, Died 13 June 1997.”

The box was passed on to the New South Wales police, but no one has been able to discover who Cunningham was, whether she had any relatives, or who delivered her ashes.

| Death · Oddities

A Bedtime Story

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10987/10987-h/10987-h.htm

“At length, the moon arose in great splendour, and little Henry saw at a distance an old abbey, all covered with ivy, and looking so dark and dismal, it would frighten any one from going in. But Henry’s little heart, occupied by the idea of his mamma, and with grief that he could not find her, felt no fear; but walking in, he saw a cell in the corner that looked like a baby-house, and, with Fidelle by his side, he bent his little steps towards it, and seating himself on a stone, he leaned his pretty head against the old wall, and fell fast asleep.”

— From The Extraordinary Adventures of Poor Little Bewildered Henry, Who Was Shut Up In An Old Abbey For Three Weeks, A Story Founded on Fact, 1850

| History · Literature

Långrocken

In 1893, five years after Jack the Ripper disappeared from London, someone began attacking and raping women and girls in the Swedish city of Norrköping.

He struck in the early snowy months, all over Norrköping and always after dark, alarming the city, which came to know him as Långrocken, “the Longcoat.” As many as 18 undercover policemen patrolled in women’s clothes in an attempt to trap him, to no avail.

The attacks stopped suddenly in the spring. The crimes have never been solved.

| Crime