In a Word

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Angostura_aromatic_bitters_dD.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

argute
adj. sharp, as a taste

missment
n. a mistake, an error

mauvais quart d’heure
n. a short period of time which is embarrassing and unnerving

deligible
adj. worthy to be chosen

The label on Angostura bitters is larger than the bottle. When company founder Johann Siegert died, his sons planned to enter the tonic in a competition and divided the preparatory work between them. One oversaw the design of a new bottle, the other of a new label. They failed to coordinate the work, and by the time the mismatch was apparent they had no choice but to use the oversize labels. The oddity was so distinctive that it’s been retained as a branding measure.

(Thanks, Colin.)

| Language · Oddities

Top Secret

But the most absurd and preposterous of all [ventures offered during the South Sea Bubble], and which shewed, more completely than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one started by an unknown adventurer, entitled ‘A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.’ Were not the fact stated by scores of credible witnesses, it would be impossible to believe that any person could have been duped by such a project. The man of genius who essayed this bold and successful inroad upon public credulity, merely stated in his prospectus that the required capital was half a million, in five thousand shares of 100l. each, deposit 2l. per share. Each subscriber, paying his deposit, would be entitled to 100l. per annum per share. How this immense profit was to be obtained, he did not condescend to inform them at that time, but promised that in a month full particulars should be duly announced, and a call made for the remaining 98l. of the subscription. Next morning, at nine o’clock, this great man opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds of people beset his door, and when he shut up at three o’clock, he found that no less than one thousand shares had been subscribed for, and the deposits paid. He was thus, in five hours, the winner of 2000l. He was philosopher enough to be contented with his venture, and set off the same evening for the Continent. He was never heard of again.

— Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1852

| Hoaxes

The Augsburg Book of Miracles

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Augsburger_Wunderzeichenbuch_%E2%80%94_Folio_85.jpg

What is this? A mysterious illuminated manuscript seems to have appeared in Augsburg, Germany, around 1550, but no one knows who created it or for whom. The name of Augsburg printmaker Hans Burgkmair appears on one page, so he’s thought to be a contributor, but the manuscript contains no introduction, title page, table of contents, or dedication; instead it launches directly into a catalog of divine wonders and marvels of nature, each illustrated in full color.

“The manuscript is something of a prodigy in itself, it must be said,” wrote Marina Warner in the New York Review of Books in 2014. “[I]ts existence was hitherto unknown, and silence wraps its discovery; apart from the attribution to Augsburg, little is certain about the possible workshop, or the patron for whom such a splendid sequence of pictures might have been created.” Here it is.

| Art · Literature · Oddities · Religion

Foremost

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“If a man will be sensible and one fine morning, while he is lying in bed, count at the tips of his fingers how many things in this life truly give him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first one.” — Lin Yutang

| Quotations

Viewpoint

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giovanni_Bellini_Portrait_of_a_Young_Man.jpg

Why do people in bygone days wear such gloomy expressions? In the 16th and 17th centuries, smiling wasn’t encouraged in part because of poor dental hygiene. Louis XIV had no teeth, and the Mona Lisa may have been trying to hide gaps or stains in her smile.

Beyond the dental challenge, broad smiles and open laughter were often actively criticized, seen as reflecting a distressing lack of emotional control. Upper-class manners insisted that a boisterous laugh was a sign of poor breeding, really no better than a yawn or a fart. A French Catholic writer argued, in 1703, ‘God would not have given humans lips if He had wanted the teeth to be on open display.’ Children might smile, to be sure, but an adult should have learned to know better.

Fashionable audiences disdained laughing aloud — Molière said that this goal was not to entertain but to “correct the faults of men.” And in Protestant countries people sought to “walk humbly” in the sight of God — one writer commented that in his view, the Almighty “allowed of no joy or pleasure, but of a kind of melancholy demeanor or austerity.” This finally changed with the Enlightenment — John Byrom wrote in 1728, “It was the best thing one could do to be always cheerful.”

(Peter N. Stearns, Happiness in World History, 2020.)

| History · Society

Cistercian Numerals

In the 13th century, Cistercian monks worked out a system of numerals in which a single glyph can represent any integer from 1 to 9,999:

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

Once you’ve mastered the digits in the top row, you can represent tens by flipping them (second row), hundreds by inverting them (third row), and thousands by doing both (fourth row). And now you can combine these symbols to produce any number under 10,000:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cistercian_numerals.svg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The monks eventually dropped the system in favor of Arabic numerals, which reached northwestern Europe at about the same time, but it was being used informally elsewhere as recently as the early 20th century.

| Science & Math

To Have and to Hold

https://archive.org/details/sim_strand-magazine_july-december-1894_8/page/484/mode/2up?view=theater

The brank consisted of a kind of crown or framework of iron, which was locked upon the head of the delinquent. It was armed in front with a gag, plate, point or knife of the same metal, which was fitted in such a manner as to be inserted in the scold’s mouth so as to prevent her moving her tongue; or, more cruel still, it was so placed that if she did move it, or attempt to speak, her tongue was cruelly lacerated, and her sufferings intensified. With this cage upon her head, and with the gag pressed and locked upon the tongue, the poor creature was paraded through the streets, led by the beadle or constable, or else she was chained to the pillory or market cross to be the object of scorn and derision, and to be subjected to all the insults and degradations that local loungers could invent.

— “Muzzles for Ladies,” Strand, November 1894

| Society