CEDED, DEEDED, MUMMY, MUUMUU, and YUMMY are each typed with one finger.
Author: Greg Ross
Nothing Doing
In July 1979, Horace A. Knowles applied for a patent for a “novelty toy which assists the user in twiddling his thumbs”:
Heretofore no equipment has been available to the thumb twiddler to assist him in the twiddling procedure. To those twiddlers who lack sufficient coordination, not only is the repose and peace of mind which thumb twiddling normally brings not available, but the inability to carry out the twiddling successfully, including the inadvertent bumping of the thumbs against one another during the twiddling motion, causes additional frustration.
Is this satire? I can’t tell, and neither could the Patent Office — they approved Knowles’ application the following year.
Foiled Again
From now on there will be no boxing among Communists in Indiana. The State Athletic Commission announced that henceforth boxers would have to take a non-Communist oath before fighting, and would face the question: ‘Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?’
— Life, Nov. 1, 1954
Blowing in the Wind
A dust storm approaches Spearman, Texas, April 1935. Vance Johnson, a resident of western Kansas in the 1930s, described similar storms there:
The darkness was dust. The windows turned solid pitch; even flower boxes six inches beyond the pane were shut from view. … Dust sifted into houses, through cracks around the doors and windows — so thick even in well-built homes a man in a chair across the room became a blurred outline. Sparks flew between pieces of metal, and men got a shock when they touched the plumbing. It hurt to breath[e], but a damp cloth held over mouth and nose helped for a while. Food on tables freshly set for dinner ruined. Milk turned black. Bed, rugs, furniture, clothes in the closets, and food in the refrigerator were covered with a film of dust. Its acrid odor came out of pillows for days afterward.
During a dust storm in January 1895, J.C. Neal of Oklahoma A&M College reported “flashes of light that apparently started from no particular place, but prevaded [sic] the dust everywhere. As long as the wind blew, till about 2 a.m., January 21, this free lightning was everywhere but there was no noise whatever. It was a silent electrical storm.”
Inside Straight
Draw any two lines, pick three points on each, and lace them all together like so:
The crossings of the laces will always form a straight line.
Short Order
A servant maid was sent by her mistress to Ben Johnson, for an epitaph on her departed husband. She could only afford to pay half-a-guinea, which Ben refused, saying he never wrote one for less than double that sum; but recollecting he was going to dine that day at a tavern, he ran down stairs and called her back. ‘What was your master’s name?’–‘Jonathan Fiddle, sir.’–‘When did he die?’–‘June the 22nd, sir.’ Ben took a small piece of paper, and wrote with his pencil, while standing on the stairs, the following:–
On the twenty-second of June,
Jonathan Fiddle went out of tune.
— Horatio Edward Norfolk, Gleanings in Graveyards, 1861
Do-Gooders
In 1978, as part of an initiative to adopt gender-neutral language, the city council of Woonsocket, R.I., dubbed its manholes “personholes.”
After two weeks of nationwide derision, they changed their minds.
Time reported, “The council members voted to go back to manholes, indicating that it will be a long time before a person-person delivers Woonsocket’s mail.”
The Value of Tardiness
One day in 1939, Berkeley doctoral candidate George Dantzig arrived late for a statistics class taught by Jerzy Neyman. He copied down the two problems on the blackboard and turned them in a few days later, apologizing for the delay — he’d found them unusually difficult. Distracted, Neyman told him to leave his homework on the desk.
On a Sunday morning six weeks later, Neyman knocked on Dantzig’s door. The problems that Dantzig had assumed were homework were actually unproved statistical theorems that Neyman had been discussing with the class — and Dantzig had proved both of them. Both were eventually published, with Dantzig as coauthor.
“When I began to worry about a thesis topic,” he recalled later, “Neyman just shrugged and told me to wrap the two problems in a binder and he would accept them as my thesis.”
Black Humor
Last words of executed murderers:
- George Appel (1928): “Well, folks, you’ll soon see a baked Appel.”
- James W. Rodgers (1960): (asked for a last request) “Why, yes — a bulletproof vest.”
- Frederick Wood (1963): “Gentlemen, you are about to see the effects of electricity upon Wood.”
- James French (1966): “I have a terrific headline for you in the morning: ‘French Fries’.”
- Jimmy Glass (1987): “I’d rather be fishing.”
In 1856, English murderer William Palmer stood on the gallows and asked, “Are you sure it’s safe?”
A Show Horse
From Kirby’s Wonderful and Eccentric Museum (1820), the long-tailed stallion of Augustus II, king of Poland:
The tail and mane of this horse, exhibit an extraordinary rarity, and excite a doubt whether they may not have been the effect of some artificial means: otherwise, how happens it that the hair of no other animal of this species, should have attained such a wonderful length? The stuffed hide of this horse is preserved in the armoury at Dresden; the colour is cream pye-balled, the length of the mane is nine ells, and of the tail twelve. This horse belonged to Augustus II, king of Poland, who rode him only on extraordinary occasions, when the mane was borne by pages, and the tail by grooms; when he stood in the stable, his hair was tied up in bags.