“The Boy Jones”

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buckingham_Palace_ILN_1842.jpg

Curious doings at Buckingham Palace, 1838-1841:

  • In December 1838, a porter discovered 15-year-old Edward Jones in the marble hall. He had stolen linen and a regimental sword, but a jury acquitted him.
  • In November 1840, the same boy scaled the wall and entered the palace again, this time leaving undetected.
  • The following day a nurse found him under a sofa in the queen’s dressing room. “He said that he had sat upon the throne, that he saw the queen, and heard the princess royal cry.”
  • After three months in prison he returned immediately — in March 1841 he was found eating in one of the royal apartments.

This last earned him three more months’ correction, this time with hard labor, and this apparently cured him. But others would follow: In July 1982 Elizabeth II awoke to find 32-year-old Michael Fagan in her bedchamber. “He thinks so much of the Queen,” Fagan’s mother explained. “I can imagine him just wanting to simply talk and say hello and discuss his problems.”

| Oddities

Benardete’s Paradox

Prometheus angers Zeus, who dispatches an army of demons with these instructions:

  • Demon 1: If Prometheus is not dead in one hour, kill him.
  • Demon 2: If Prometheus is not dead in half an hour, kill him.
  • Demon 3: If Prometheus is not dead in quarter of an hour, kill him.

And so on. When Prometheus is found dead, the council of gods is displeased, but they find it impossible to identify the guilty demon — any suspect can point to an infinity of demons who must have acted before him. Must Zeus go free?

| Science & Math

“Prevalent Poetry”

A wandering tribe, called the Siouxs,
Wear moccasins, having no shiouxs.
They are made of buckskin,
With the fleshy side in,
Embroidered with beads of bright hyiouxs.

When out on the war-path, the Siouxs
March single file–never by tiouxs–
And by “blazing” the trees
Can return at their ease,
And their way through the forests ne’er liouxs.

All new-fashioned boats he eschiouxs,
And uses the birch-bark caniouxs;
These are handy and light,
And, inverted at night,
Give shelter from storms and from dyiouxs.

The principal food of the Siouxs
Is Indian maize, which they briouxs,
And hominy make,
Or mix in a cake,
And eat it with pork, as they chiouxs.

Now, doesn’t this spelling look cyiouxrious?
‘Tis enough to make any one fyiouxrious!
So a word to the wise!
Pray our language revise
With orthography not so injiouxrious.

— Charles Follen Adams

| Language · Poems

Happy Crabbing!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mk15.jpg

On Feb. 5, 1958, during a simulated combat mission near Savannah, Ga., a B-47 bomber collided with an F-86 fighter. The fighter crashed; the bomber, barely airworthy, needed to reduce weight to avoid an emergency landing.

So it dropped a 7,600-pound nuclear bomb.

The bomb contained 400 pounds of conventional explosives and highly enriched uranium. There’s some disagreement as to whether it included the plutonium capsule needed to start a nuclear reaction.

That’s rather important, because in 50 years of searching the Air Force still hasn’t found the bomb. It hit the water near Tybee Island off the Georgia coast and is presumably buried in 10 feet of silt somewhere in Wassaw Sound. But exactly where it is, and how dangerous it is, remain unknown.

| History · Oddities

Why Can’t I Find Amanda Hugginkiss?

Imaginary patrons of Jersey City’s Tube Bar paged by owner Louis “Red” Deutsch at the request of telephone pranksters John Elmo and Jim Davidson in the mid-1970s:

  • Al Coholic
  • Al Kaseltzer
  • Al Kykyoras
  • Ben Dover
  • Butchie Pantsdown
  • Frank Enstein
  • Holden McGroin
  • Imov Irgin
  • Jim Nasium
  • Joe Mama
  • Mike Ocksmall
  • Moe Ronn
  • Oliver Closeoff
  • Rufus Leakin

Elmo and Davidson recorded Deutsch’s earnest pages and the wild, vituperative threats that followed when he realized he’d been had. In the 1980s the tapes began to circulate among professional sports leagues and eventually found their way to animator Matt Groening … who turned them into a running gag on The Simpsons.

| Entertainment

In a Word

mytacism
n. excessive use of the letter M

My Madeline! my Madeline!
Mark my melodious midnight moans,
Much may my melting music mean,
My modulated monotones.

My mandolin’s mild minstrelsy,
My mental music magazine,
My mouth, my mind, my memory,
Must mingling murmur “Madeline.”

Muster ‘mid midnight masquerade,
Mark Moorish maidens, matrons’ mien;
‘Mongst Murcia’s most majestic maids,
Match me my matchless Madeline.

Mankind’s malevolence may make
Much melancholy musing mine;
Many my motives may mistake,
My modest merits much malign.

My Madeline’s most mirthful mood
Much mollifies my mind’s machine;
My mournfulness’s magnitude
Melts–make me merry, Madeline!

Match-making ma’s may machinate,
Manoeuvring misses me misween;
Mere money may make many mate,
My magic motto’s “Madeline.”

Melt, most mellifluous melody,
‘Midst Murcia’s misty mounts marine;
Meet me ‘mid moonlight–marry me,
Madonna mia! My Madeline!

— Walter Parke, “A Mellifluous Madrigal,” Ballou’s Monthly Magazine, January 1888

| Language · Poems

Sucker Punch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1963_World_Octopus_Wrestling_Championships.jpg

Man’s greatest curse, it seems, is that he is easily bored. In the 1960s, a novelty-starved Washington state televised the World Octopus Wrestling Championships, in which each contestant would dive into Puget Sound, grab a North Pacific giant octopus, and try to haul it to the surface.

This would be difficult even for a real wrestler; H. Allen Smith pointed out that “it is impossible for a man with two arms to apply a full nelson on an octopus,” much less to apply a crotch hold on an opponent with eight crotches. Plus the giant octopus can grow to 90 pounds.

But nothing can stop a fad. In April 1963, 5,000 spectators watched 111 divers draw 25 surprised octopuses pointlessly out of the sound, after which the creatures were released, eaten, or donated to a local aquarium. The octopuses had no comment; perhaps they’re planning a comeback match.

| Oddities

“Impromptu Ball on the Stump of a Sequoia”

sequoia cotillion -- anonymous

In 1853, workmen felled the Mammoth Tree in the North Calaveras Grove of giant sequoias in California’s Gold Country. The stump measured 24 feet wide at its base, and a ring count showed it was 1,244 years old.

James M. Hutchings writes in Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California (1862):

“Upon this stump, however incredible it may seem, on the 4th of July, thirty-two persons were engaged in dancing four sets of cotillions at one time, without suffering any inconvenience whatever; and besides these, there were musicians and lookers-on.”

I’ve found three independent accounts of this, but no record of who proposed the dance. The stump’s still there, in what is now Calaveras Big Trees State Park — it’s now known as the Discovery Tree.

http://books.google.com/books?rview=1&pg=PA238&id=nmQIAAAAQAAJ

| Oddities