Undesirables

A famous councilor of Zurich … relates that Guillaume de Saluces, who was Bishop of Lausanne from 1221 to 1229, ordered the eels of Lake Leman to confine themselves to a certain part, from which they were not to go out. …

The summonses against offending animals were served by an officer of the criminal court, who read these citations at the places frequented by them. Though judgment was given by default on the non-appearance of the animals summoned, yet it was considered necessary that some of them should be present when the citation was delivered; thus, in the case of the leeches tried at Lausanne, a number of them were brought into court to hear the document read, which admonished them to leave the district in three days.

— William Jones, “Legal Prosecutions of Animals,” The Popular Science Monthly, September 1880

| Oddities · Society

Overdue

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1908_New_York_to_Paris_Race,_grid.jpg

On Feb. 12, 1908, mechanic George Schuster joined five other motorists in Times Square to undertake an insanely ambitious race to Paris — by driving west to Alaska, across the Bering Strait, and then all the way through Siberia and Europe, a total of 20,000 miles.

“The drivers would surely have to make their own roads in many districts, and for many days most of the driving would be done on the low gear,” consultant Joe Tracy told the New York Times, which co-sponsored the contest. Tracy recommended that each team carry a windlass and block and tackle “to pull the car up steep grades and prevent it from dashing over cliffs in going down the mountains.”

One team got stuck in Hudson Valley snow, a second got lost in Iowa, a third was caught loading its car onto a train, and a fourth dropped out in Russia. Schuster finally arrived in Paris on July 30 to take first place, 170 days after leaving New York.

The prize was $1,000, but appallingly Schuster didn’t collect it until 60 years after the race, when he was 95 years old and nearly blind. After realizing its oversight the Times presented the payment at a 1968 dinner in Buffalo, acknowledging “what is probably the slowest payoff in racing history.”

| Oddities

In Memoriam

Speaking of unfortunate names …

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=191393367591432&set=a.169986843065418.49102.166551566742279&type=1

From Cedar Grove Cemetery, Patchogue, N.Y.

“People always grow up like their names,” wrote George Orwell. “It took me nearly thirty years to work off the effects of being called Eric.”

(Thanks, Neil.)

| Death · Language

Reaper Madness

Suppose we find some coherent way to formulate the view that a person’s death is a misfortune for him because it deprives him of goods. Then we face another Epicurean question: when is it a misfortune for him? It seems wrong to say that it is a misfortune for him while he is still alive — for at such times he is not yet dead and death has not yet deprived him of anything. It seems equally wrong to say that it is a misfortune for him after he is dead — for at such times he does not exist. How can he suffer misfortunes then?

— Fred Feldman, “Some Puzzles About the Evil of Death,” The Philosophical Review, April 1991

| Death

Signature Style

In the 1940s, newspaper columnist E.V. Durling founded the My-Name-Is-A-Poem Club. Members included:

  • Hugh Blue, president
  • Jesse Lesse, Boston
  • Merry Berry, Chicago
  • Max Wax, Chicago
  • Hollie Jolley, San Bernardino, Calif.
  • Della Stella Serritella, Chicago
  • Jane Cane, Wheaton, Ill.
  • Newton Hooton, Cambridge, Mass.
  • Kenny Tenny and his daughter Penny, San Francisco
  • Dick Vick and his son Dick Jr., San Diego
  • Trudy Moody, Newburgh, N.Y.

Durling said his favorites were Nancy Clancy and Truly Dooley.

Here are a few more odd personal names, these from Elsdon Coles Smith’s Treasury of Name Lore (1967), “all names of real persons”:

  • Original Bug
  • Ephraim Very Ott
  • Gladys Whysoglad
  • Park A. Carr
  • Fairy Duck
  • Vito d’Incognito
  • North Western
  • Napoleon N. Waterloo
  • Tressanela Noosepickle
  • Osbel Irizarry
  • Athelstan Spilhaus
  • Weikko Tinklepaugh
  • Twilladeen Hubkapiller

According to Smith, Canadian broadcaster Clyde Gilmour founded the Society for the Verification and Enjoyment of Fascinating Names of Actual Persons (SVEFNAP) while working for the Toronto Telegraph. Gilmour died in 1997, though, I think, and I can’t find any record that the society survived. If you know otherwise, please let me know.

| Language

Good Boy

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=oNs6AAAAEBAJ

Rita A. Della Vecchia’s 1988 invention pets your dog while you’re at the office:

One of the primary elements of this relationship of man with domestic pets seems to be the scratching, stroking and petting of a pet that can be accomplished by its human symbiont by reason of his greater dexterity. … The instant invention provides a mechanical device to simulate this activity for pets without requiring human attention, with the thought that, by reason of the learned behavior of such animals, the animal will associate this activity, as to its source of origin, with its human symbiont.

Thanks to other inventors, you can offer the same treatment to your baby and even to yourself.

| Technology

Three Puzzles

1. You are midway through dealing a bridge hand when a nuclear apocalypse destroys civilization. The bridge table is still upright, and your friends are willing to keep playing, but you can’t remember where you left off dealing. How can you finish dealing this hand without having to start over?

2. Can I stand behind you while you stand behind me?

3. My bed is 10 feet from the light switch. But last week I turned off the light, dashed across the room, and was in bed before the room got dark. How did I manage this?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Crackpot Apocalypse

Various writers throughout the 19th century confidently reported that they’d found the true and exact value of π. Unfortunately, they all gave different answers. In 1977 DePauw University mathematician Underwood Dudley tried to make sense of this by compiling 50 of their pronouncements:

pi estimates - underwood dudley

He concluded that π is decreasing. The best fit is πt = 4.59183 – 0.000773t, where t is the year A.D. — it turns out we passed 3.1415926535 back in 1876 and have been heading downward ever since.

And that means trouble: “When πt is 1, the circumference of a circle will coincide with its diameter,” Dudley writes, “and thus all circles will collapse, as will all spheres (since they have circular cross-sections), in particular the earth and the sun. It will be, in fact, the end of the world, and … it will occur in 4646 A.D., on August 9, at 4 minutes and 27 seconds before 9 p.m.”

There is some good news, though: “Circumferences of circles will be particularly easy to calculate in 2059, when πt = 3.”

(Underwood Dudley, “πt,” Journal of Recreational Mathematics 9:3, March 1977, p. 178)

| Science & Math

Name Deals

In the 19th century an eccentric Frenchman willed his estate to his 12 nephews and nieces on the condition that “every one of my nephews marries a woman named Antonie and that every one of my nieces marries a man named Anton.” They had also to name each firstborn child Antonie or Anton, and each nephew must celebrate his marriage on one of St. Anthony’s days. “If, in any instance, this last provision was not complied with before July 1896, one-half of the legacy was in that case to be forfeited.” (The Irish Law Times and Solicitors’ Journal, July 8, 1905)

William Stanislaus Murphy left his entire estate to Harvard University to fund a scholarship for students named Murphy. By a will dated April 28, 1717, John Nicholson of London left the residue of his estate to poor English Protestants named Nicholson.

When Elias Warner Leavenworth died in 1887 he funded a scholarship of $900 a year for a student named Leavenworth to attend Yale. Hamilton College of Clinton, N.Y., has its own Leavenworth scholarship; it hasn’t been awarded since 1994, but, a spokeswoman told told the New York Times, “there will always be Leavenworths out there.”

(From Elsdon Smith’s Treasury of Name Lore, 1967.)

| Oddities · Society