The Price of Beauty

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

Ignatius Nathaniel Scares’ nose shaper, patented in 1907, offers new hope to “those with upturned, one-sided, or flat noses or those with distended nostrils.”

The noses of a great many persons are slightly deformed, and therefore because of the prominence of this feature the appearance of the face is more or less disfigured. Such deformity can frequently be remedied by a gentle but continuous pressure, and it is the object of this invention to bring about this result in a way that shall be painless to the individual.

Apply the cup to your nose, then cinch the strap to your head to produce a steady pressure. “It will usually be found preferable to wear the device at night, but it can be worn any time, and a continuous use will soon be found to re-form or reshape the nose into its normal lines.” For all I know it works.

| Technology

False Fealty

Written in prison by Arthur Connor, a prominent figure in the Irish Rebellion of 1798:

The pomps of Courts and pride of kings
I prize above all earthly things;
I love my country, but the King,
Above all men, his praise I sing.
The Royal banners are displayed,
And may success the standard aid.

I fain would banish far from hence
The “Rights of Man” and “Common Sense.”
Confusion to his odious reign,
That foe to princes, Thomas Paine.
Defeat and ruin seize the cause
Of France, its liberties and laws.

Connor escaped in 1807 and made his way to France, where he became a general in the army. “These two apparently loyal verses, if properly read, bear a very different meaning,” writes Henry Dudeney. “Can you discover it?”

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| History · Puzzles

De Profundis

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscar_Wilde_frock_coat.jpg

Woman: What terrible weather we’re having.

Oscar Wilde: Yes, but if it wasn’t for the snow, how could we believe in the immortality of the soul?

Woman: What an interesting question, Mr. Wilde! But tell me exactly what you mean.

Oscar Wilde: I haven’t the slightest idea.

(Quoted in Hesketh Pearson, Oscar Wilde, His Life and Wit, 1946)

| Literature

Jailbreak

Plowden states a case that if a woman is warden of a prison and marries one of the prisoners, the prisoner has escaped and is at large; for he cannot be lawfully imprisoned but under a keeper, and he cannot be under the custody of his wife, she having no separate legal existence. Therefore the law necessarily adjudges him to be at large.

— H.C. Shurtleff, “The Grotesque in Law,” American Law Review, January-February 1920

| Society

The Unexpected Guest

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Naughty_Grandson.jpg

“Sometimes the name chosen for the baby betrays only too clearly that it was not wanted,” reports onomastician Elsdon C. Smith in The Story of Our Names (1950). “The English General Registrar Office for the years 1861, 1870 and 1886 disclose the following un-Christian names: Not-Wanted-James, One-Too-Many and That’s-It-Who’d-Have-Thought-It. A woman once named her baby Alpha Omega with the explanation that it was her first and she fervently hoped that it would be her last.”

When one is asked to praise a homely infant, Lewis Carroll recommends saying, “That is a baby!” Presented with a squirming 6-month-old, William James said helplessly, “It seems a very competent baby.” “Might not Falconbridge have condoned such an evasion in an extreme case as being, at worst, a virtuous sin?” writes Lionel Tollemache. “To be frank would be a mortal offence; and to avert a mother’s wrath, one might be tempted to invoke a principle of limited application, ‘Salus amicitiae suprema lex [Let the good of the people be the supreme law].’ Better this than to set up the more widely applicable and therefore more abusable plea, ‘De minimis non curat moralitas [Morality does not concern itself with trifles].'”

| Society

Time and Motion

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Earth_Eastern_Hemisphere.jpg

If a second is defined by reference to the rotation of the earth on its axis, i.e. as 1/60 of 1/60 of 1/24 of the time between 2 identical positions of the Greenwich meridian relatively to the fixed stars, then, if the earth rotated 10 times more slowly than it does now, it would be possible to run 10 yds. in a second, instead of only a yard as now, and a second would be 10 times longer than it is now; but if cinema machines still moved as fast as they do now, it would still be quite impossible for any one to see a succession of static pictures instead of a moving one. Don’t we mean by a second the length of time which is now 1/60 of 1/60 of 1/24 of the time between etc.?

— G.E. Moore, Commonplace Book, 1962

| Science & Math

Icy Hot

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Death_Valley,19820816,Desert,incoming_near_Shoshones.jpg

Feeling mischievous in 1874, Nevada journalist Dan De Quille invented the story of Jonathan Newhouse, “a man of considerable inventive genius” who waded into Death Valley wearing “solar armor,” essentially a suit made of sponge that was wetted continually from an india-rubber sack. “Thus, by the evaporation of the moisture in the armor, it was calculated might be produced almost any degree of cold.”

De Quille published a deadpan report of the tragic outcome in the Territorial Enterprise of July 2: Newhouse’s corpse was found 20 miles inside the desert, “dead and frozen stiff.” “His beard was covered with frost and — though the noonday sun poured down its fiercest rays — an icicle over a foot in length hung from his nose. There he had perished miserably, because his armor had worked but too well, and because it was laced up behind where he could not reach the fastenings.”

Amazingly, even in the heyday of newspaper hoaxes this was largely taken seriously. Scientific American reported it without comment, and London’s Daily Telegraph wrote only that “we should require some additional confirmation before we unhesitatingly accept it.”

De Quille obliged, reporting that Newhouse’s carpet-sack had been found to contain a collection of chemicals that the inventor had apparently combined into “some frigorific mixture.” Apparently he had been wetting the suit with this, not with water, and had inadvertently drenched himself with it while trying to unlace the suit. Whether this satisfied the Telegraph is unclear — they never responded.

| Hoaxes