In a 1999 quiz, the Washington Post asked its readers, “What automobile is referred to in a license plate that reads 1 DIV 0?”
The winning answer came from Supreme Court chief justice William Rehnquist, of all people. What was it?
Author: Greg Ross
Oops
In Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicus, his 1791 disquisition on Irish antiquities, Charles Vallancey describes a group of sepulchral stones on the Hill of Tara, one of which is inscribed BELI DIVOSE, “To Belus, God of Fire.”
Vallancey goes into some detail interpreting this as an altar to Baal. It turned out later that a wanderer had lain upon the stone and idly carved his name and the date upside down: E. CONID 1731.
Vallancey’s reaction is not recorded.
Skyward
In 1907, Massachusetts physician Duncan MacDougall conceived a singular experiment. When he observed that a patient at his Haverhill hospital was nearing death, he installed him in a specially constructed bed in his office and measured his weight both before and after death. With six such weighings he determined that humans lose between 0.5 and 1.5 ounces at death.
“Is the soul substance?” he wrote. “It would seem to me to be so. … Here we have experimental demonstration that a substance capable of being weighed does leave the human body at death.”
Similar experiments with 15 dogs showed no change in mass, proving, he decided, that dogs have no souls. MacDougall’s findings were written up briefly in the New York Times and occasioned a flurry of correspondence in American Medicine, but after that they were largely forgotten. But who knows? Perhaps he was right.
Unquote
“If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.” — Aristotle Onassis
Showoff
German illusionist Matthias Buchinger (1674-1740) was born without hands or legs — but he scarcely missed them. Besides being an expert artist, musician, and marksman, Buchinger excelled as a card player and conjuror:
“He used to perform before company, to whom he was exhibited, various tricks with cups and balls, corn, and living birds; and could play at skittles and nine-pins with great dexterity; shave himself with perfect ease, and do many other things equally surprising in a person so deficient, and mutilated by Nature.” (Great and Eccentric Characters, 1877)
Almost unbelievably, in the self-portrait above, engraved with his finlike hands, Buchinger hid seven biblical psalms and the Lord’s Prayer in the curls of his wig.
Dark Horse
Fifty-one voters of Milton, Wash. (Tacoma suburb) last week marked their ballots for one Boston Curtis, Republican candidate for precinct committeeman. Boston Curtis was elected. Milton’s Mayor Kenneth Simmons, a Democrat, chortled hugely. He, who had sponsored Candidate Curtis and filed his papers, had proved his point that voters ‘have no idea whom they support.’ Boston Curtis is a large brown mule.
— Time, Sept. 26, 1938
Math Notes
In a Word
ostreophagist
n. an eater of oysters
(Such as James I.)
Map Twist
Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota meet at one point. Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia meet at two — at Washington’s westernmost and southermost points along the Potomac River.
Name three U.S. states all three of which meet at three different points.
A Grave Summons
Humphrey Bogart was buried, creepily, with a whistle.
He had given it to Lauren Bacall after their first film together, To Have and Have Not, and she deposited it with his remains at Forest Lawn.
It’s inscribed “If you want anything, just whistle.”