Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, contains a group of towns whose names seem to tell a story:
Blue Ball, Bird-in-Hand, Bareville, Mount Joy, Intercourse, Paradise
In 1962, Eros magazine approached the postmasters of Blue Ball and Intercourse, saying “we have decided that it may be advantageous for our direct mail to bear the postmark of your city.” They were turned down — so they used Middlesex, N.J., instead.
A few days ago a little girl about twelve years of age walked deliberately into the sea near Sunderland pier, and attempted to drown herself. A pilot observing her, rushed into the watery element, and brought her safe on shore. On questioning the child as to the cause of her attempt at suicide, she declared that it was in consequence of her mother insisting upon her learning to write, and obliging her to provide money to pay for her instruction, by gathering and selling sticks!
— The Morning Chronicle, Jan. 31, 1815
Caltech number theorist Tom Apostol devised this elegant proof of the irrationality of 
Suppose the number is rational. Then there must be an isosceles right triangle with minimum integer sides (here, triangle ABC with sides n and hypotenuse m).
By drawing two arcs as shown, we can immediately establish triangle FDC — a smaller isosceles right triangle with integer sides.
This leads to an infinite descent. Hence n and m can’t both be integers, and
More unusual personal names:
From John Train’s Remarkable Names of Real People (1988):
From Barbara Fletcher’s Don’t Blame the Stork (1981):
The most impressive specimens come from H.L. Mencken’s magisterial American Language. In 1901 Loyal Lodge No. 296 Knights of Pythias Ponca City Oklahoma Territory Smith was baptized in Ponca City, and in 1949 John Hodge Opera House Centennial Gargling Oil Samuel J. Tilden Ten Brink was interviewed for the Linguistic Atlas in upstate New York. I don’t know what he said.
COMMON PLEAS — Yesterday Barton, an attorney, was brought from the Fleet prison. It was stated that the prisoner had written a very violent and voluminous libel on himself. This he procured to be printed, and then brought his action against the printer for defamation; but in this he was non-suited, and sent to prison for costs attending to the prosecution.
— Observer, Nov. 11, 1798
Enterprise, Ala., has the world’s only monument to an agricultural pest.
In the 1890s the Mexican boll weevil arrived in the American South and began ravaging Alabama’s cotton crop. By 1916 the insects had infested the whole state, inflicting $20 to $40 million each year in economic damages. Insecticides, controlled burning, and innovative planting schedules were tried, but nothing worked.
So local businessman H.M. Sessions convinced indebted farmer C.W. Bastion to try planting peanuts instead of cotton. When Bastion produced 8,000 bushels that year, neighboring farmers followed suit, and in 1917 Coffee County brought forth the largest peanut harvest in the nation.
Because the new, diversified crops proved more profitable than cotton, in 1919 local businessman Roscoe Fleming proposed dedicating a statue to the pest that had proven a “herald of prosperity,” and an $1,800 classical statue was commissioned from an Italian sculptor. Thirty years later, one Luther Baker fashioned a large weevil to place atop her outstretched arms. Might as well be explicit.
Eddie Cantor and George Jessel played on the same bill on the vaudeville circuit.
In one town Jessel noticed that the billing read EDDIE CANTOR WITH GEORGIE JESSEL.
“What kind of conjunction is that?” he asked manager Irving Mansfield. “Eddie Cantor with Georgie Jessel?” Mansfield promised to fix it.
The next day the marquee read EDDIE CANTOR BUT GEORGIE JESSEL.
When Iowa attorney T.M. Zink died in 1930, his will disinherited his wife and daughter and left a sum to be invested for 75 years, when Zink calculated it would total about $4 million. This would be used to endow a rather unique library:
Evidently this was a considered decision. “My intense hatred of women is not of recent origin or development nor based upon any personal differences I ever had with them but is the result of my experiences with women, observations of them, and study of all literatures and philosophical works within my limited knowledge relating thereto.”
If Zink’s plan had gone through, the library would be opening its doors just about now. Unfortunately for him, his daughter Margretta had him declared of unsound mind — and the court gave everything to her.
Changing apartments in New York City is an ordeal today, but it’s a great improvement over the old system, when every lease in the city expired at 9 a.m. on May 1 and thousands of people moved to new lodgings simultaneously. Davy Crockett witnessed the spectacle during a visit in 1834:
By the time we returned down Broadway, it seemed to me that the city was flying before some awful calamity. ‘Why,’ said I, ‘Colonel, what under heaven is the matter? Everyone appears to be pitching out their furniture, and packing it off.’ He laughed, and said this was the general ‘moving day.’ Such a sight nobody ever saw unless it was in this same city. It seemed a kind of frolic, as if they were changing houses just for fun. Every street was crowded with carts, drays, and people. So the world goes. It would take a good deal to get me out of my log-house; but here, I understand, many persons ‘move’ every year.
The tradition ran from colonial times until World War II, when a shortage of men finally ended it. That’s more than a century, an oddly long run for such an unpopular practice. “There may be some doubt as to whether landlords make out leases to suit the habits of the people, or whether the habits are a result of the leases,” journalist Luke Grant wrote in 1909, “but there is no doubt that the custom imposes hardships on every one concerned.”
overslaugh
n. to pass over in favor of another
