Fire Alarm

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

On July 21, 1759, Emanuel Swedenborg attended a dinner party after returning to Gothenburg from England. He went out for a short interval and returned pale and agitated. He told the party that a fire had broken out in Stockholm, 250 miles away, and that it was spreading quickly. He said it had already destroyed the house of one of his friends, whom he named, and that his own house was in danger. Two hours later he exclaimed, “Thank God! The fire is extinguished the third door from my house.”

The following morning the governor questioned Swedenborg, who provided a description of the fire, including how it had begun and ended, and word spread throughout the city. Two days later a messenger arrived from Stockholm bearing letters that confirmed Swedenborg’s account, and a royal courier brought news reporting the extent of the fire, the houses it had damaged and destroyed, and the time it was put out. All confirmed Swedenborg’s description.

“What can be brought forward against the authenticity of this occurrence?” wrote Immanuel Kant, who elsewhere criticized Swedenborg’s mysticism. “My friend who wrote this to me, has not only examined the circumstances of this extraordinary case at Stockholm, but also, about two months ago, at Gottenburg, where he is acquainted with the most respectable houses, and where he could obtain the most authentic and complete information, as the greatest part of the inhabitants, who are still alive, were witnesses to the memorable occurrence.”

| Oddities

Sitzfleisch

In the days before chess clocks, a player might wait for hours while his opponent decided on a move.

Morphy’s companion Frederick Milnes Edge remarked that “[József] Szén was so frightfully slow, even in ordinary games, that he would have worn out 200 francs’ worth of his opponent’s pantaloons before the match was half through.”

The most notorious slowpoke in England was Elijah “The Bristol Sloth” Williams: In the fourth game of his London match against Henry Thomas Buckle in 1851, Williams lavished such exquisite care on his 25th move that Buckle had time to write two chapters of his History of Civilization.

Buckle won. “The slowness of genius is hard to bear,” he said, “but the slowness of mediocrity is intolerable.”

| Entertainment

Whole Lotta Nothing

hole (gimp)

Do holes exist? That is, if a hole is merely a void or vacancy in a surrounding substance, then properly speaking is the hole a thing in itself? Philosopher Roberto Casati writes, “Ask any person to tell you what holes are — ‘real,’ everyday holes, not the abstract holes of geometry – and he will likely elaborate upon absences, nonentities, nothingnesses, things that are not there. Are there such things?”

A hole story from John Timbs’ 1873 A Century of Anecdote:

A gentleman, one Sunday morning, was attracted to watch a young country girl on the high road from the village to the church, by observing that she looked hither and thither, this way and that upon the road, as if she had lost her thimble. The bells were settling for prayers, and there was no one visible on the road except the girl and the gentleman, who recognised in her the errand-maid of a neighbouring farmer. ‘What are you looking for, my girl?’ asked the gentleman, as the damsel continued to pore along the dusty road. She answered, gravely: ‘Sir, I’m looking to see if my master be gone to church.’ Now, her master had a wooden leg.

In number theory, a Holey prime is a prime number made up exclusively of the digits 4, 6, 8, 9, and 0 — digits whose Arabic numerals contain “holes.” Ironically, these get pretty substantial: The largest known specimen is a 4 followed by 16,131 9s.

| Science & Math

Supplanted

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It has been recorded by reliable authority that near the graves of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, and his wife, there stood a venerable apple-tree which had sent two of its roots into the graves of Mr. and Mrs. Williams. The larger root had pushed its way through the earth till it reached the precise spot occupied by the skull of Roger Williams. There, making a turn, as if going round the skull, it followed the direction of the backbone to the hips. Here it divided into two branches, sending one of them along each leg to the heel, where both turned upward to the toes. One of these roots formed a slight crook at the knee, which made the whole bear close resemblance to a human form. There were the graves, emptied of every particle of human dust. Not a trace of any thing was left. There stood the guilty ‘apple-tree,’ as it was said at the time, caught in the very act of ‘robbing the grave.’ The fact proved conclusively that bones, even of human beings, are an excellent fertilizer for fruit-trees; and the fact must be admitted that the organic matter of Roger Williams had been transmitted into the apple-tree; it had passed into the woody fibre, and was capable of propelling a steam-engine; it had bloomed in the apple-blossoms, and had become pleasant to the eye; and more, it had gone into the fruit from year to year, so that the question might be asked, Who ate Roger Williams?

— Sereno Edwards Todd, The Apple Culturist, 1871

| Oddities

“Significant Figures”

A touring lecturer started off his favorite lecture: ‘A million years ago this earth was trod by dinosaurs.’ He was immediately interrupted by a well-meaning old lady in the audience, who said, ‘You mean a million and eight years ago, don’t you?’ ‘Why do you say that?’ queried the lecturer. ‘Because I heard you give this same lecture eight years ago,’ explained the old lady.

— Howard Eves, Mathematical Circles Revisited, 1971

| Humor

Village Poetry

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

On Aug. 21, 1974, the London Times announced the reassignment of a Church of England cleric:

Diocese of Salisbury. The Rev J.E.B. Cattell, Vicar of Piddletrenthide with Alton Pancras and Plush, to be priest-in-charge of Buckhorn Weston and Kington Magna.

This drew a flood of responses. Excerpts:

Is there really a parish of Piddletrenthide with Lanton Pancras and Plush? If so, I will have to retire there; it certainly is an improvement on ‘Maidstone.’

It’s in West Dorset and is as delightful as its name implies. We also have Toller Pocorum, Sydling St Nicholas, Whitchurch Canonicorum, and Ryme Intrinseca, to name but four others.

For sheer pleasure to the ear the redeployment of ecclesiastical strength in Yorkshire which appeared in your columns some 14 years ago remains supreme: ‘the Rev G.D. Beaglehole, Vicar of Kexby with Wilberfoss to be Vicar of Bossall with Buttercrambe.’

In 1960 you also announced: ‘The Rev G. Christie, Rector of Roos with Tunstall-in-Holderness, Vicar of Garton with Grimston and Hilston and Rural Dean of South Holderness to be Vicar of Pocklington with Yapham-cum-Meltonby and Owsthorpe with Kilnwick Percy, and Millington with Great Givendale, and Rural Dean of Pocklington.’

We in Hampshire can surely beat them all with our three hearty Wallops — Over, Middle and Nether.

One signpost in Shropshire reads simply: Homer 1, Wigwig 2. How’s that for brevity and wit?

May I on behalf of Scotland offer a brief contribution to this correspondence and draw attention to the tiny but ancient fishing village on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, which proudly bears the name ‘Society’?

The first place listed in Part Two of the 1961 Census Index of Place Names aptly describes the efforts of your readers in this silly correspondence: Labour-in-Vain.

A final letter read, “Sir, as a foreigner, may I say how enjoyable has been your correspondence on this subject, for in my country we do not have such quaint place-names.” It was signed “K.J. Wyatt, Turramurra, Kur-ring-gai, New South Wales.”

| Language

Long Range

A puzzler from Willis Ernest Johnson, Mathematical Geography, 1907:

“A man was forty rods due east of a bear, his gun would carry only thirty rods, yet with no change of position he shot and killed the bear. Where on earth were they?”

Click for Answer
| Puzzles