Off the Books

The British merchant cruiser Hilary was patrolling the North Sea in 1917 when commander F.W. Dean was called to the bridge to witness a “living thing” on the starboard quarter.

“The head was about the shape of, but somewhat larger than that of, a cow,” Dean recalled three years later in Herbert Strang’s Annual, “though with no observable protrusions such as horns or ears, and was black, except for the front of the face, which could be clearly seen to have a strip of whitish flesh, very like a cow has, between its nostrils. As we passed, the head raised itself two or three times, apparently to get a good look at the ship.”

Dean estimated that the creature was 60 feet long and ordered his men to use it for target practice. The first two crews missed it, but the third hit “and produced at once a furious commotion, which reminded me more than anything else of a bather lying on his back in smooth water and kicking out with all his force to splash the water.” The creature disappeared.

All this was noted in the log, over the objections of a superstitious crewman who insisted it was bad luck to record such encounters. Two days later, Hilary was torpedoed and sank. “If you ask me ‘Am I superstitious about seeing a sea-serpent?'” Dean wrote, “I only reply, ‘Well, if ever I found myself again at sea in command of a ship, and anything of the sort was sighted, I should leave it alone and make no entry in the log!'”

| Oddities

The Thatcher Effect

thatcher effect

When we look at another person’s face, her eyes and mouth convey the most information about her mood.

Indeed, when a face is inverted we can have trouble recognizing it because we can’t read its expression.

So in 1980 University of York psychologist Peter Thompson tried inverting everything but the eyes and mouth.

Most people can recognize the face at left and assign a mood to it, but they’re often surprised to see it right side up.

“Further research into this illusion might help determine whether face recognition is a serial or parallel process,” Thompson wrote in Perception that summer. “It might even tell us something about Margaret Thatcher.”

| Oddities · Science & Math

Domestic Harmony

The Musical World of London, Nov. 28, 1874, reports a surprising project — apparently a Massachusetts composer set the entire American constitution to music:

The authors of the Constitution of the Union thought more of reason than of rhyme, and their prose is not too well adapted to harmony, but the patriotic inspiration of Mr. Greeler, the Boston composer, overcomes every difficulty. He has made his score a genuine musical epopœia, and had it performed before a numerous public. The performance did not last less than six hours. The preamble of the Constitution forms a broad and majestic recitative, well sustained by altos and double basses. The first clause is written for a tenor; the other choruses are given to the bass, soprano, and baritone. The music of the clause treating of state’s rights is written in a minor key for bass and tenor. At the end of every clause, the recitative of the preamble is re-introduced and then repeated by the chorus. The constitutional amendments are treated as fugues and serve to introduce a formidable finale, in which the big drum and the gong play an important part. The general instrumentation is very scholarly, and the harmony surprising.

The music has been lost, but it would be out of date now anyway — we’ve added 12 amendments since then.

| Art · History · Oddities

Light Headed

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

With Benjamin Oppenheimer’s “improvement in fire-escapes,” patented in 1879, you can jump safely from the window of a burning building and land “without injury and without the least damage” thanks to a 5-foot parachute and shock-absorbing shoes.

Samuel Mott patented a similar idea in 1920: an aviators’ helmet that contains a folded parachute that can be “readily released in case of emergency.”

But what if you bail out of an airplane that’s over a burning building?

| Technology

Scholars and Sense

O Cleinias, are those who learn the wise or the ignorant?

He answered that those who learned were the wise.

Euthydemus proceeded: There are some whom you would call teachers, are there not?

The boy assented.

And they are the teachers of those who learn — the grammar-master and the lyre master used to teach you and other boys; and you were the learners?

Yes.

And when you were learners you did not as yet know the things which you were learning?

No, he said.

And were you wise then?

No, indeed, he said.

But if you were not wise you were unlearned?

Certainly.

You then, learning what you did not know, were unlearned when you were learning?

The youth nodded assent.

Then the unlearned learn, and not the wise, Cleinias, as you imagine.

— Plato, Euthydemus

| Science & Math

“A Most Determined Suicide”

A gentleman passing through the United States, on the Union and Pacific Railroad, was one morning telling the guard about a relative of his lately committing suicide. ‘Very sad, indeed,’ replied the guard, ‘but the most determined attempt at suicide happened the other day down Sacramento (California) way. A young man went down to the beach when the tide was out, with a long pole, sharpened at one end, and a hook in the other; he had also a rope with a noose in it, a phial of poison, a pistol, and a box of matches. He drove the pole into the sand, and climbed up it until the tide had risen high enough to drown him, when he swallowed the poison, set his trousers on fire, put the noose round his neck, and then fired his pistol. The bullet, instead of entering his forehead, grazed the top of his head and went through the rope; the rope, being weakened, snapped, and dropped the unfortunate man into the sea, which, of course, put the fire out, and swallowing some sea water made him vomit the poison, and in two or three minutes he was washed ashore alive, and only suffering slightly from the effects of his immersion.’

— Tit-Bits From All the Most Interesting Books, Periodicals and Newspapers in the World, Dec. 3, 1881

| Death · Humor

Small World

http://books.google.com/books?id=lNQDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA81&dq=%22victor+martin%22+british+railroad&ei=0mVGSYX7J4SqkAT0h6TDDg&client=firefox-a#PPA82,M1

This one’s been tricky to write up because I can find so few sources. In a shed behind his farmhouse in Kent, electrical engineer Victor Martin apparently spent 50 years building a working replica of the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway as it existed in 1938. He started the project with his first wife in 1923 and continued it after retirement with his second wife, Louise, the daughter of a railroad stationmaster at St. Pancras. He arranged 500 engines and cars and nearly a mile of track; she added scenery, livestock, and people.

That’s just the beginning. For 30 years the Martins ran the railroad on a daily schedule, following the actual timetable used in St. Pancras in the 1930s. At Christmas they ran extra coaches to accommodate the holiday mail, and when the queen was traveling they included a royal coach on the line. During a national dock strike they added more freight trains, and during the Suez crisis of 1956 they stayed up all night running troop trains. (“Had to do it at night, you see,” Martin told a reporter, “for the secrecy.”)

How real must a model be before you’re a god? The denizens of Victor’s little world enjoyed perfect order until 1986, when Louise died and he cut back to a weekly schedule. Whether this was felt in 1938 is unknown.

| Oddities