A marble-cutter, inscribing the words,–‘Lord, she was thine’ upon a tombstone, found that he had not figured his spaces correctly and he reached the end of the stone one letter short. The epitaph therefore read:
‘Lord, she was thin.’
— Frederic William Unger, Epitaphs, 1904
In Macedonian, Listopad means October.
In Polish and Slovenian, Listopad means November.
In Czech, Srpen means August.
In Croatian, Srpanj means July.
In Croatian, Rujan means September.
In Czech, Říjen means October.
In Polish, Lipiec means July.
In Croatian, Lipanj means June.
In Polish, Kwiecień means April.
In Czech, Květen means May.
London faced a surreal emergency on Oct. 17, 1814, when a giant beer vat ruptured in a St. Giles brewery. The resulting wave collapsed the neighboring vats, and 323,000 golden gallons poured into the West End.
“All at once, I found myself borne onward with great velocity by a torrent, which burst upon me so suddenly as almost to deprive me of breath,” wrote a correspondent to the London Knickerbocker. “A roar, as of falling buildings at a distance, and suffocating fumes, were in my ears and nostrils.”
The flood filled neighboring basements and causing several tenements to collapse. In all, eight people were killed — “by drowning, injury, poisoning by porter fumes, or drunkenness.”
American disasters are sweeter but less stimulating.
“Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.” — La Rochefoucauld
Brother Jacques Percher, “a very excellent man of the old time,” had a painting made for his chapel showing that good is the very opposite of evil. At one side was a picture of an angel, with the words “Read the right side and you will be saved.” Under that was this inscription:
Delicias fuge, ne frangaris crimine, verum
Coelica tu quaeras, ne male dispereas,
Respicias tua, non cujusvis quaerito gesta
Carpere, sed laudes, nec preme veridicos.
Judicio fore te praesentem conspice toto
Tempore, nec Christum, te rogo, despicias:
Salvificum pete, nec secteris daemonia; Christum
Dilige, nequaquam tu mala concupito.
Shun pleasures of the flesh, lest you be broken by crime; seek the things of heaven, lest your end be an evil one; consider your own deeds, and do not seek to slander someone else’s, but praise them, and do not suppress those who speak the truth; always realize that you must stand before a judgment; I beg you, do not despise Christ, seek him who gives salvation, and do not follow the devil; love Christ, and do not lust at all after evil.
At the other side was a picture of the devil with the words “Read the wrong side and you will be damned.” Here the first inscription was reversed word for word, producing an entirely different meaning:
Concupito mala tu, nequaquam dilige Christum,
Daemonia secteris, nec pete salvificum;
Despicias, rogo te, Christum, nec tempore toto
Conspice praesentem te fore judicio:
Veridicos preme, nec laudes, sed carpere gesta
Quaerito cujusvis, non tua respicias,
Dispereas male, nec quaeras tu coelica; verum
Crimine frangaris, ne fuge delicias.
Lust after evil, and do not at all love Christ; you follow the devil, do not seek him who gives salvation; despise Christ, I beg you, and realize that never will you stand before a judgment; suppress those who speak the truth, and do not praise the deeds of anyone, but seek to slander them; do not consider your own; let your end be an evil one, do not seek the things of heaven; let yourself be broken by crime, do not shun pleasures of the flesh.
“It must have taken the brother a long time to compose this,” writes George Wakeman, “but he probably did it with a holy purpose, and as a recreation from more onerous duties.”
See also A Bilingual Palindrome.
Cited in Epitaphiana: or, The Curiosities of Churchyard Literature, 1873.
Northland and Southland were happy neighbors until yesterday, when Northland declared that a Southland dollar was to be worth only 90 Northland cents.
Not to be outdone, Southland declared that a Northland dollar would be worth 90 Southland cents.
I live in Centerville, on the border between the two countries. I go into a Northland store and buy a kazoo, which costs 10 cents. I pay for it with a Northland dollar and receive a Southland dollar as change.
Then I go across the street and enter a Southland store. There I buy a lemon, which also costs 10 cents. I pay for it with a Southland dollar and receive a Northland dollar as change.
When I get home I have my kazoo and lemon, for which it appears I’ve paid nothing. And each of the merchants has an additional 10 cents in his receipts.
So who paid for the kazoo and the lemon?
(From Eugene Northrop.)
Between 1834 and 1874, proud New Englander James Johns published the Vermont Autograph and Remarker, an irregular collection of history, essays, verse, and fiction. It was irregular because Johns wrote each issue in pen, in a beautifully lucid newspaper font with no erasures. Johns bought a small hand press in 1857 but rarely used it — he found he was actually faster with the quill.
In January 1890, a tremendous blizzard struck the Sierra Nevada, paralyzing a Southern Pacific Railroad train and trapping its 600 passengers in their cars for three weeks. On Jan. 31 one of them, George T. McCully, began publishing a newspaper, the Snowbound, “issued every week-day afternoon by S. P. Prisoner in Car No. 36, blockaded at Reno, Nevada.” We know that McCully offered to sell copies of the hand-penciled four-page daily for 25 cents each; it’s not clear whether he got past the first issue. Perhaps he ran out of paper.
xenium
n. a gift given to a guest
From Henry Dudeney:
“Place six matches as shown, and then shift one match without touching the others so that the new arrangement shall represent an arithmetical fraction equal to 1. The match forming the horizontal fraction bar must not be the one moved.”
