Dog Days

On Aug. 24, 1867, solicitor’s clerk Frederick Baker took a tea break and strolled into the meadows near the hop fields of Alton in Hampshire. There he found three little girls. He played with them, running races and picking blackberries, then dismissed two of them with three halfpence. They watched him carry 9-year-old Fanny Adams up the hollow, telling her, “Come with me, and I will give you twopence more.”

Searchers found Fanny’s head on a hop pole. Both eyes had been gouged out and one ear torn off. Her arms were found in two locations, one hand still holding two halfpennies. Her heart had been scooped out of the upper torso, one foot was found in a field of clover, and her legs were assumed to have been taken by River Wey. There was no evidence of sexual assault because her lower torso was never found.

Baker couldn’t explain the bloodstains on his cuffs and argued only that his knife was too small to have done the work. He was found guilty of wilful murder and hanged on Christmas Eve.

His diary entry for Aug. 24 read, “Killed a young girl. It was fine and hot.”

| Crime

“Spanish Etiquette”

Philip the Third was gravely seated by the fireside: the fire-maker of the court had kindled so great a quantity of wood, that the monarch was nearly suffocated with heat, and his grandeur would not suffer him to rise from the chair; the domestics could not presume to enter the apartment, because it was against the etiquette. At length the Marquis de Potat appeared, and king ordered him to damp the fires; but he excused himself; alleging that he was forbidden by the etiquette to perform such a function, for which the Duke D’Usseda ought to be called upon, as it was his business. The duke was gone out; the fire burnt fiercer; and the king endured it, rather than derogate from his dignity. But his blood was heated to such a degree, that erysipelas of the head appeared the next day, which, succeeded by a violent fever, carried him off in 1625, in the twenty-fourth year of his age.

— Isaac Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature, 1824

William Shepard Walsh tells of “two Englishmen who, after being shipwrecked on a desert island, refuse to speak to each other because they have not been introduced.”

| Society

Baggage

After a day at the races in England, a friend told Mark Twain, “I wish you’d buy me a ticket back to London. I’m broke.”

Twain told him he couldn’t afford two tickets but proposed that his friend sneak aboard the train and hide under Twain’s seat. Then he bought two tickets anyway.

When the train had got under way, the inspector appeared to collect Twain’s ticket. When Twain gave him two, he looked about the compartment and said, “Where’s the other one?”

Twain pointed under his seat, smiled, and said, “My friend is a little eccentric.”

| Literature

Mr. October

America’s favorite film monsters, according to a 2005 study by California State University:

  1. Vampires (Dracula)
  2. Freddy Krueger
  3. Godzilla
  4. Frankenstein
  5. Chucky
  6. Michael Myers
  7. King Kong
  8. Hannibal Lecter
  9. Jason Voorhees
  10. Alien

“Younger people were the more likely to prefer recent and more violent and murderous slasher monsters, and to like them for their killing prowess. Older people were more attracted to non-slashers and attracted for reasons concerned with a monster’s torment, sensitivity, and alienation from normal society. … Overall, … monsters were liked for their intelligence, superhuman powers and their ability to show us the dark side of human nature.”

| Entertainment

Looking Up

http://www.google.com/patents?id=TvlRAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

This is charming — in 1925, William Huffman patented a “jumping balloon” that could carry its operator hundreds of feet into the air. He foresaw a whole new world:

The balloon is particularly useful in jumping over natural or artificial barriers, such as buildings, trees, rivers, chasms and the like; as a convenient means for quickly obtaining considerable altitude for photographic and observation purposes; as a convenient and safe way to practice parachute landings and give preliminary instructions in lighter-than-air craft to students; as a convenient means of quickly and easily ascending to the tops of trees, houses and the like for inspection; and other purposes.

With that in view, the sport became a fad of sorts in the 1920s. Time magazine wrote, “Walk along the ground with a breeze at your back, approach a fence, bend your knees, spring lightly into the air when you feel the tug of the balloon. You will sail over the fence so easily and land so gently that you will be surprised.”

“All the legislatures will be busily engaged in passing laws prohibiting people from leaving the earth too freely, or rules for the right of way up and down and sideways,” predicted enthusiast Frederick S. Hoppin. “And then there will be all the new rules of etiquette: should you pass over or around a lady?”

| Technology

“The Goddess in the Car”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dorothy_Levitt_Frontspiece_to_The_Woman_and_the_Car.jpg

Dorothy Levitt started as a secretary at the Napier Car Company, but when the publicity-minded boss offered her a chance to race for him, she revealed a soul of pure fire:

  • In 1903 she became the first woman driver to win an automobile race.
  • Also in 1903 she also won Britain’s first international powerboat race, at a cool 19.53 mph.
  • In 1905 she drove from London to Liverpool and back, establishing a women’s distance record (205 miles in 11 hours).
  • In 1906 she broke the ladies’ land speed record, becoming “the fastest girl on earth” at 90.88 mph.
  • In 1909 she started flight training in France.

The “chauffeuse” also wrote a newspaper column and in 1909 published The Woman in the Car, “a guide for women motorists” with “simple and understandable instructions and hints” (including “If you are driving alone a dog is great company” and “It might be advisable to carry a small revolver.”)

Unfortunately, the Western Field reported in 1904, “She is also famous as being the first motorist to obtain substantial damages, amounting to thirty-five pounds sterling, or $175, from the owner of a horse-drawn vehicle which collided with her car.” But she made her own repairs.

| History

Unquote

“Of all the illusions that beset mankind none is quite so curious as that tendency to suppose that we are mentally and morally superior to those who differ from us in opinion.” — Elbert Hubbard

| Quotations

The Crossing

A family of four has to cross a river. The father and mother each weigh 150 pounds, and each of the two sons weighs 75 pounds. Unfortunately, the boat will carry only 150 pounds maximum. How can they get across?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles