Cecil Rhodes’ Secret Ambition

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Now remembered chiefly for establishing Rhodes scholarships, South African diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes left an alarming provision in his will — he hoped to take over the world:

To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.

“I contend that we (the British) are the finest race in the world,” he once wrote, “and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.”

| History

The Bridges of Konigsberg

In old Konigsberg there were seven bridges:

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

Villagers used to wonder: Is it possible to leave your door, walk through the town, and return home having crossed each bridge exactly once?

Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler had to invent graph theory to answer the question rigorously, but there’s a fairly intuitive informal proof. Can you find it?

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| Puzzles · Science & Math

“Mister Eat-Everything”

France’s Michel Lotito, better known as Monsieur Mangetout, eats metal and glass for a living. He began eating unusual materials compulsively as a child and has made it into a career, performing publicly since 1966.

Thanks to an unusually thick stomach lining, Mangetout can safely consume 2 pounds of metal a day with no ill effects. Generally he cuts large items — bicycles, television sets, shopping carts, a coffin — into 1-kilogram pieces, which he washes down with mineral oil and plenty of water.

In 1978 he started eating a small plane, a Cessna 150. He finished it in 1980.

| Oddities

Petroleum V. Nasby on “The Woman Question”

  • From the begining woman has occupied a dependent position, and has been only what man has made her. The Turks, logical fellows, denied her a soul, and made of her an object of barter and sale; the American Indians made of her a beast of burden. In America, since we extended the area of civilization by butchering the Indians, we have copied both.
  • The inferiority of the sex is easy of demonstration. It has been said that the mother forms the character of the man so long, that the proposition has become axiomatic. If this be true, we can crush those who prate of the equality of women, by holding up to the gaze of the world the inferior men she has produced. Look at the Congress of the United States.
  • My friend is learned. She has a tolerable knowledge of Greek, is an excellent Latin scholar, and as she has read the Constitution of the United States, she excels in political lore the majority of our representatives in Congress. But nevertheless I protest against her voting for several reasons:
    1. She cannot sing bass! Her voice, as Dr. Bushnell justly observes in his blessed book, is pitched higher than the male voice, which indicates feminine weakness of mind.
    2. Her form is graceful rather than strong.
    3. She delights in millinery goods.
    4. She can’t grow whiskers.

— Satirical lyceum speaker Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby, “The Struggles of a Conservative with the Woman Question,” 1868

| History · Society