The Human Bullseye

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

Hughie Jennings was a baseball magnet. In five seasons with the Baltimore Orioles, Jennings was hit by pitches 202 times, sometimes thrice in a single game. In 1896 alone he was hit 51 times, a record that has stood for a century.

Getting hit can be a deliberate tactic, but Jennings did it regardless of the game situation. The Sporting Life wrote, “He seemed unable to convey the sense of danger from his brain to his limbs.” He wore crude pads under his uniform, but the repeated blows — 287 in his major-league career — left him black and blue; after one game he collapsed and remained unconscious for three days.

Curiously, the beatings continued off the field. At Cornell, where he earned a law degree, Jennings dove into a swimming pool one night only to discover it was empty. And in a 1911 auto accident he broke three limbs and suffered a concussion.

All this damage took its toll. At the end of the 1925 season Jennings had a nervous breakdown, and three years later he was dead. But he seemed philosophical about his bruises. “Life is full of trials,” he said, “which is a good thing for lawyers.”

| Oddities

In a Word

acephalist
n. one who acknowledges no superior

“In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.” — Bertrand Russell

| Language · Society

A Capture En Passant

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

He does look evil, doesn’t he?

Hawley Harvey Crippen had fled for America by the time Scotland Yard discovered his wife’s torso under the brick floor of his London house.

But they sent out a warning, and the captain of the SS Montrose thought he recognized the fugitive aboard his ship. He asked his wireless telegraphist to send a message to the British authorities: “Have strong suspicions that Crippen London cellar murderer and accomplice are among saloon passengers. Mustache taken off growing beard. Accomplice dressed as boy. Manner and build undoubtedly a girl.”

Chief Inspector Walter Dew overtook the Montrose in a faster liner and boarded her in the St. Lawrence River disguised as a pilot. When introduced to Crippen, he said (resoundingly, one hopes), “Good morning, Dr. Crippen. Do you know me? I’m Chief Inspector Dew from Scotland Yard.”

Crippen hesitated, then said, “Thank God it’s over. The suspense has been too great. I couldn’t stand it any longer.”

Crippen’s mistress was acquitted, but he was hanged in 1910, the first criminal in history captured by the aid of wireless.

See STOP.

| Crime · Technology

Head Nor Tail

The antiquarian has always been the object of hoaxes. At a convention of the tribe in Banbury, on one occasion, a worn and ancient looking block of stone was sent in with the information that it had been the corner stone of an old building recently torn down. The finders prayed the learned body to interpret the inscription upon it, which read:

SEOGEH SREV EREH WCISUME VAHL LAH SEHS SE OTREH NOS LLEBD NAS REGNI FREH NOS GNIRES ROHYAR GANOED IRYD ALE NIFAE ESOTS SORCY RUB NABOT ES ROHK CO CAED IR.

It took the venerable society several days to discover that the sentiment was ‘Ride a cock horse’ inverted.

— William S. Bridgman, “Famous Hoaxes,” Munsey’s Magazine, August 1903

| Hoaxes

Homework

One day while teaching a class at Yale, Shizuo Kakutani wrote a lemma on the blackboard and remarked that the proof was obvious. A student timidly raised his hand and said that it wasn’t obvious to him. Kakutani stared at the lemma for some moments and realized that he couldn’t prove it himself. He apologized and said he would report back at the next class meeting.

After class he went straight to his office and worked for some time further on the proof. Still unsuccessful, he skipped lunch, went to the library, and tracked down the original paper. It stated the lemma clearly but left the proof as an “exercise for the reader.”

The author was Shizuo Kakutani.

| Science & Math

“Alleged Ancient Ruins in the United States”

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/157961

In 1860, the Times of Fort Smith, Ark., published a long account of a discovery said to have been made 90 miles northeast of Fort Stanton, N.M. This condensed version appeared in the Eclectic Magazine that November:

The plain upon which lie the massive relics of gorgeous temples and magnificent halls, slopes gradually towards the river Pecos, and is very fertile, crossed by a gurgling stream of purest water that not only sustains a rich vegetation, but perhaps furnishes with this necessary element the thousands who once inhabited this present wilderness. The city was probably built by a warlike race, as it is quadrangular and arranged with skill to afford the highest protection against an exterior foe, many of the buildings on the outer line being pierced with loopholes, as though calculated for the use of weapons. Several of the buildings are of vast size, and built of massive blocks of a dark granite rock which could only have been wrought to their present condition by a vast amount of labor. There are the ruins of three noble edifices, each presenting a front of three hundred feet, made of ponderous blocks of stone, and the dilapidated walls are even now thirty-five feet high. There are no partitions in the area of the middle (supposed) temple, so that the room must have been vast; and there are also carvings in bass relief and fresco work. Appearances justify the conclusion that these silent ruins could once boast of halls as gorgeously decorated by the artist’s hand as those of Thebes and Palmyra. The buildings are all loopholed on each side, much resembling that found in the old feudal castles of Europe, designed for the use of archers. The blocks of which these edifices are composed, are cemented together by a species of mortar of a bituminous character, which has such tenacity that vast masses of wall have fallen down without the blocks being detached by the shock.

No one has ever found such ruins … but there’s a ship out there too if you want to go looking.

| Hoaxes