apricity
n. the warmth of the sun in winter
“A strange and lovely word.” — Ammon Shea, Reading the OED, 2009
Author: Greg Ross
A Thawing Drawing
In 1917, railroad engineers at Nenana, Alaska, held a contest to guess when the Tanana River would break up. The winner won $800.
That contest has grown into an annual fundraising event. For $2.50 any Alaskan can enter; sometime in April or May a tripod will founder in the melting ice and stop a clock, and the guess that proves most accurate will win a prize. Last year the prize amounted to $279,030; in all, more than $11 million has been paid out during the contest’s 94 years.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center monitors the breakup dates as one measure of climate change in the region.
Party of One
The loneliest animal in the world is George, a 100-year-old Pinta Island tortoise who is thought to be the last of his subspecies. When goats overran their island in the Galápagos, George’s companions died out, and no one has discovered a Pinta female, despite a $10,000 reward. If none is found in time for George to breed, he’ll be the last of his kind.
The second loneliest animal is Khanzir, “the only pig in Afghanistan,” where pork products are illegal. Khanzir, whose name means “pig,” was one of a pair of white pigs that China donated to the Kabul zoo in 2002, but his mate has died.
See Spectacularly Bad Driving.
03/09/2018 UPDATE: George passed away in 2012, marking the extinction of the Pinta species.
Misc
- Canada’s coastline is six times as long as Australia’s.
- Rudyard Kipling invented snow golf.
- ENUMERATION = MOUNTAINEER
- Can you see your eyes move in a mirror?
- 26364 = 263 × 6/4
- “I want death to find me planting my cabbages.” — Montaigne
Higher Things
On a television show, Eddie Fisher complained to George S. Kaufman that women refused to date him because he looked so young. Kaufman considered this and replied:
“Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars up to 24 times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed until the construction of the Mount Palomar telescope, an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope. Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to detect my interest in your problem.”
Coming Through
As railroads were claiming the American West in the 1880s, they ran into a problem — stray cattle and horses kept wandering onto the tracks. What to do?
In 1883 La Fayette Willson Page of Tennessee suggested a spray attachment that would direct a stream of water from the engine’s boiler:
In 1885 Mississippi inventor William Bell proposed a Dr.-Seuss-like set of tongs that would extend a whistle and a spray nozzle closer to the livestock:
And in 1888 Jack William James, also of Tennessee, went full-on crazy and suggested a flatcar mounted with a dummy that would “throw up both hands at each revolution of the wheel and strike [a] gong with a hammer”:
I desperately wish this had caught on. How stubborn are Tennessee cows?
Trivium
Weirton, W.Va., is the only town in the United States that borders two different states on opposite sides.
The town borders Ohio directly on the west and Pennsylvania on the east.
Cleaning House
Upend Congress and pour its members onto Constitution Avenue. Each member has up to three enemies. Prove that it’s possible to pack the 535 members back into the House and Senate in such a way that none of them has more than one enemy in his chamber. (Enmity is always mutual — I am my enemy’s enemy — and the chambers need not retain their former sizes.)
“The Ten Travelers”
Ten weary, footsore travelers,
All in a woeful plight,
Sought shelter at a wayside inn
One dark and stormy night.
“Nine beds — no more,” the landlord said,
“Have I to offer you;
To each of eight a single room,
But the ninth must serve for two.”
A din arose. The troubled host
Could only scratch his head,
For of those tired men, not two
Could occupy one bed.
The puzzled host was soon at ease —
He was a clever man —
And so to please his guests devised
This most ingenious plan.
In room marked A, two men were placed,
The third he lodged in B,
The fourth to C was then assigned —
The fifth retired to D.
In E the sixth he tucked away,
In F the seventh man;
The eighth and ninth in G and H,
And then to A he ran,
Wherein the host, as I have said,
Had laid two travelers by;
Then taking one, the tenth and last,
He lodged him safe in I.
Nine single rooms — a room for each —
Were made to serve for ten.
And this it is that puzzles me
And many wiser men.
— S.R. Ford, Ford’s Christian Repository & Home Circle, May 1888
Unquote
“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance.” — John Ruskin