Eric II of Denmark styled himself Eric the Memorable.
No one remembers why.
Author: Greg Ross
Hey, Wait a Minute …
Identities assumed by Ferdinand Waldo Demara (1921-1982), “The Great Impostor”:
- sailor
- civil engineer
- sheriff’s deputy
- assistant prison warden
- doctor of applied psychology
- hospital orderly
- lawyer
- child-care expert
- monk (Benedictine and Trappist)
- editor
- cancer researcher
- teacher
- surgeon
- hospital priest
When asked for his motivation, he said, “Rascality, pure rascality.”
“Some Geese”
Every child who has the use
Of his senses knows a goose.
See them underneath the tree
Gather round the goose-girl’s knee,
While she reads them by the hour
From the works of Schopenhauer.
How patiently the geese attend!
But do they really comprehend
What Schopenhauer’s driving at?
Oh, not at all; but what of that?
Neither do I; neither does she;
And, for that matter, nor does he.
— Oliver Herford
“My Dear Mrs. Budd …”
Excerpt from a letter sent by serial killer Albert Fish to a victim’s mother, November 1934:
On Sunday June the 3 –1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese — strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her.
On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said Yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them.
When all was ready I went to the window and Called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma.
First I stripped her naked. How she did kick — bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body.
The police traced the letter to Fish, and they found Grace’s skull buried in his garden.
In a Word
mariturient
adj. eager to marry
Here, Boy!
The French Romantic poet Gérard de Nerval had a pet lobster, which he would walk through Paris on a blue ribbon.
He said he regarded lobsters as “peaceful, serious creatures who know the secrets of the sea and don’t bark.”
Floor?
American building designers often skip the number 13 when numbering their floors, because 13 is considered an unlucky number.
The Chinese are similarly superstitious — they omit the fourth floor, because the word “four” sounds like “death” in Mandarin.
SORAS
Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome is the tendency of child characters on soap operas to age unnaturally quickly, so they can be included in more adult storylines.
This can lead to complications that even Einstein would admire. On The Young and the Restless, the character Colleen Carlton was born in 1991; 10 years later she was 14. Even more impressive, her uncle, Billy Abbott, born in 1993, reached his 16th birthday in six years. He had overtaken her, aging six years faster in the same amount of time.
I guess boys grow faster than girls.
Clean Your Room
If you think you’re a packrat — cheer up.
In 1929, brothers Homer and Langley Collyer holed up in a Harlem townhouse and basically set the all-time record for reclusive hoarding. They kept to the house during the day, and at night Langley fetched their water from a park four blocks away, dragging home abandoned junk.
In 1942, when they missed a mortgage payment, the police investigated but couldn’t get past a solid wall of junk behind the front door. In 1947, when rumors surfaced that Homer had died, a team of seven men finally began excavating the foyer, which was choked with old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes and parts of a wine press. A patrolman broke into the second floor and spent two hours crawling through packages and newspaper bundles before he discovered Homer, dead in a bathrobe, his head on his knees. The recluse had been dead only 10 hours, so the smell was coming from somewhere else.
Authorities began unpacking the house. Among other things, they found baby carriages, rusted bicycles, a collection of guns, gas chandeliers, the folding top of a horsedrawn carriage, three dressmaking dummies, a kerosene stove, thousands of books about medicine and engineering, human organs pickled in jars, a clavichord, two organs, the chassis of an old Model T, a horse’s jawbone, an early X-ray machine, and more than six tons of newspapers, magazines, and wood. After several weeks of searching, they found Langley 10 feet from his brother. He had been crushed in one of his own booby traps.
In total, police and workmen took 136 tons of garbage out of the house, including 14 pianos and more than 25,000 books. It was eventually torn down as a fire hazard.
Big Mac
Nearly one in eight American workers has been employed by McDonald’s.