When Warren Harding invited sportswriter Grantland Rice to play golf, Ring Lardner tagged along.
“This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Lardner,” said the president as they began. “I only knew Granny was coming. How did you happen to make it, too?”
Lardner said, “I want to be ambassador to Greece.”
“Greece?” asked the president. “Why Greece?”
“Because my wife doesn’t like Great Neck.”
Though not having a single written word upon it, this envelope reached me from London without delay. The address reads: Miss Polly Colyer (Collier)-Fergusson (Fir-goose-sun), Ightham Mote, Ivy Hatch, Sevenoaks, Kent. Ightham Mote is indicated by a small sketch of the house itself, which is well known in the county. — Miss Colyer-Fergusson
— Strand, September 1908
A correspondent, name unknown, has sent us the curiously-addressed envelope which we reproduce here. The strange words, we are informed by the Post Office authorities, represent the sounds as made by the key of the modern Morse instrument. ‘Idely iddy’ stand for ‘dots’ and ‘umpty’ for a dash. The envelope reached us as easily as if it had been addressed in the orthodox way.
— Strand, January 1907
So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.
— Epicurus
Groucho Marx hated Harry Cohn, a producer for Columbia.
At one showing, when the words “Columbia Pictures Presents” appeared on the screen, he turned to Chico and said, “Drags, doesn’t it?”
Button Gwinnett was a relatively obscure member of the Continental Congress when he signed the Declaration of Independence in August 1776. Nine months later he was killed in a duel.
That makes his signature one of the most valuable in the world, comparable to those of Julius Caesar and William Shakespeare. Only 51 examples exist. This January it was discovered that he’d signed a Wolverhampton marriage register in 1757, five years before departing England for America. That autograph was valued at £500,000.
‘It wasn’t so very late, only a quarter of twelve.’
‘How dare you sit there and and tell me that lie? I was awake when you came in, and looked at my watch, it was three o’clock.’
‘Well, arn’t three a quarter of twelve?’
— James Baird McClure, ed., Entertaining Anecdotes From Every Available Source, 1879
English historian Robert Blake called Henry James Pye “the worst poet laureate in English history with the possible exception of Alfred Austin.” That’s low praise indeed: Austin’s Randolph: A Tale of Polish Grief purportedly sold 17 copies; he is remembered for the stirringly titled “Go Away, Death” and for a breast fixation in which poetic mammaries open doors and plough the brine.
Elevated probably as a political favor, Pye was roundly criticized for his birthday odes, which were set to music by the court composer. “It is said that the words were often drowned by the instruments,” noted William Forbes Gray. “Certainly, it was a consummation to be devoutly wished”:
God of our fathers rise,
And through the thund’ring skies
Thy vengeance urge
In awful justice red,
By thy dread arrows sped,
But guard our Monarch’s head,
God save great George.
To the loud trumpet’s throat
To the shrill clarion’s note,
Now jocund sing.
From every open foe,
From every traitor’s blow,
Virtue defend his brow,
God guard our King!
Pye once said he would “rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet or the greatest scholar that ever wrote.” In The Joy of Bad Verse, Nicholas Parsons observes that Pye’s epic Alfred was then “a credit to his sense of patriotism.”
On Oct. 25, 1944, during battle in the Philippine Sea, Chester Nimitz sent this message to William Halsey, asking for his location:
TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS
The language before GG and after RR is nonsense added to discourage cryptanalysis. Unfortunately, Halsey’s radio officer neglected to remove the trailing phrase, and Halsey read:
Where is, repeat, where is Task Force Thirty Four? The world wonders.
“I was stunned as if I had been struck in the face,” Halsey wrote later. “The paper rattled in my hands, I snatched off my cap, threw it on the deck, and shouted something I am ashamed to remember.” Furious at Nimitz’ “gratuitous insult,” he delayed an hour before rejoining the battle. He learned the truth only weeks later.
(Thanks, Ankit.)
A perpetual-motion scheme by William Congreve. A, B, and C are three horizontal rollers fixed in a frame. They’re surrounded by a continuous band of sponge, a, and that’s surrounded by a chain of weights, b. Immerse the whole thing partially in a cistern. The sponge on the left will absorb water by capillary action, say from x to y; the sponge on the right will not (because the weights squeeze it out!). “The band will begin to move in the direction A B; and as it moves downwards, the accumulation of water will continue to rise, and thereby carry on a constant motion.”
From Henry Dircks, Perpetuum Mobile; or, Search for Self-Motive Power, 1861.
quiritation
n. a cry for help
