In 1871, while the Great Chicago Fire was riveting the nation’s attention, a blaze six times as deadly was ravaging a desperate town in northeastern Wisconsin. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll tell the story of the Peshtigo fire, the deadliest wildfire in American history.
We’ll also watch an automated western and puzzle over some discounted food.
In 1903, the Lexington, Ky., Blue-Grass Blade invited its readers to contribute to a feature titled “Why I Am an Atheist.” Twenty-three-year-old Minnie Parrish of Leonard, Texas, sent this response:
Why Am I an Atheist
Because it has dawned upon me that it is right to be so, and upon investigation I find no real evidence of the divine origin of the scriptures. And because I cannot, as a refined and respectable woman, take to my bosom as a daily guide a book of such low morals and degrading influences. Written by a lot of priests, I cannot accept a salvation that is based wholly upon the dreams of an ancient and superstitious people, with no proof save blind faith.
Everything that so many people think transpires from the supernatural, and many things that would really perplex the average mind, have a natural and material foundation in the workings of the human mind; that is, things that are not connected with our solar system.
It is ignorance of the scientific working of their own natures and mind that keep so much ‘mystery’ in the air; and as long as there is a mystery afloat the people will ascribe it to the supernatural.
I am an Atheist because I know the Bible will not do to depend upon. I have tried it, and found it wanting.
In fact, I found in the scriptures the origin of woman’s slayer, and that it was one of God’s main points to oppress women and keep them in the realms of ignorance.
I am in the ranks of Liberalism because of its elevating principles, its broad road to freedom of thought, speech, and investigation.
MINNIE O. PARRISH
She went on to become the first female doctor to practice in North Texas.
(From Letters of Note.)
Muhammad Ali’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is the only one not set in the pavement — it hangs on a wall near the entrance to the Dolby Theatre.
When he accepted the honor in 2002, Ali said, “I bear the name of our beloved Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and it is impossible that I allow people to trample over his name.”
(Thanks, Eloy and Alejandro.)
G.E. Bula devised this map in 1908 (click to enlarge it):
This unique map will make a lasting impression for good on all who study it. The names of states, towns, railroads, lakes, rivers and mountains are all significant. A copy of this map should be in every home, hotel, railroad station, and public place. It makes an interesting study for school children, both in the public and Sunday schools. It will cause many a one to leave the Great Destruction Route and finish his journey on the Great Celestial Route. Price 35 cents.
The Great Celestial Route leads from Decisionville through the states of Righteousness, Sacrifice and Service to the Celestial City via Prayerview, Peacedale, Purity Falls, and Goodhope. It is straight and, presumably, narrow. Wander slightly off the path and you can visit Hypocrisy Heights, Slumberfield, Masquerade, and Theaterburg, and further afield you’ll find Cigaretteville, Moonshine Hollow, Morphine Castle, and Wine Heights.
The bad road seems much more popular than the good one.
(From the Library of Congress.)
Manfred Laber’s public art piece in Wemding, Germany, doesn’t look much like a pyramid yet. That’s because a new concrete block is laid only every 10 years; the structure was begun in 1993 and will be completed in the year 3183, when the 120th block is placed at the top.
Altogether that’s 1,200 years, the town’s age when Laber conceived the project and laid its foundation.
During World War II, Hungarian mathematician Pál Turán was forced to work in a brick factory. His job was to push a wagonload of bricks along a track from a kiln to storage site. The factory contained several kilns and storage sites, with tracks criss-crossing the floor among them. Turán found it difficult to push the wagon across a track crossing, and in his mind he began to consider how the factory might be redesigned to minimize these crossings.
After the war, Turán mentioned the problem in talks in Poland, and mathematicians Kazimierz Zarankiewicz and Kazimierz Urbanik both took it up. They showed that it’s always possible to complete the layout as shown above, with the kilns along one axis and the storage sites along the other, each group arranged as evenly as possible around the origin, with the tracks running as straight lines between each possible pair. The number of crossings, then, is
where m and n are the number of kilns and storage sites and 
which is the number of crossings in the diagram above.
Is that the best we can do? No one knows. Zarankiewicz and Urbanik thought that their formula gave the fewest possible crossings, but their proof was found to be erroneous 11 years later. Whether a factory can be designed whose layout contains fewer crossings remains an open problem.
Today it’s possible to describe a color quantitatively, but how did people make such fine distinctions in the 18th century? German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner proposed a solution in 1774: His Von den äußerlichen Kennzeichen der Foßilien included a “color dictionary” that located each hue in the natural world. Updated by Scottish painter Patrick Syme, it describes 110 colors, telling where each might be found in animal, vegetable, and mineral form: Number 35, for example, “bluish lilac purple,” is the shade of the male of the dragonfly Libellula depressa, the blue lilac, and the mineral lepidolite. Number 82, “tile red,” may be found in the breast of the cock bullfinch, in the shrubby pimpernel, and in porcelain jasper.
This common language gave naturalists an objective way to communicate what they were seeing. Off Brazil aboard the H.M.S. Beagle in 1832, Charles Darwin wrote, “I had been struck by the beautiful color of the sea when seen through the chinks of a straw hat. It was according to Werner nomenclature ‘Indigo with a little azure blue’. The sky at the time was ‘Berlin [blue] with little Ultra marine’.”
The Internet Archive has Syme’s full text.
In 1816 the United States built a fort on Lake Champlain to guard against attacks from British Canada.
Too late the planners discovered that they’d chosen a site north of the border — they’d built their fort in Canada.
It’s now called “Fort Blunder.”
Brad Spencer’s sculptures are both familiar and foreign — they’re fashioned from one of the most common building materials, but they leave viewers wondering how this was accomplished:
More at his website. (Via eMORFES.)
