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Full names of Portuguese monarchs, 1828-1910:

  • 1828-1834: Miguel Maria do Patrocínio João Carlos Francisco de Assis Xavier de Paula Pedro de Alcântara António Rafael Gabriel Joaquim José Gonzaga Evaristo de Bragança
  • 1834-1853: Maria da Glória Joana Carlota Leopoldina da Cruz Francisca Xavier de Paula Isidora Micaela Gabriela Rafaela Gonzaga de Áustria e Bragança
  • 1853-1861: Pedro de Alcântara Maria Fernando Miguel Rafael Gonzaga Xavier João António Leopoldo Vítor Francisco de Assis Júlio Amélio de Saxe-Coburgo-Gotha e Bragança
  • 1861-1889: Luís Filipe Maria Fernando Pedro de Alcântara António Miguel Rafael Gabriel Gonzaga Xavier Francisco de Assis João Augusto Júlio Valfando de Saxe-Coburgo-Gotha e Bragança
  • 1889-1908: Carlos Fernando Luís Maria Victor Miguel Rafael Gabriel Gonzaga Xavier Francisco de Assis José Simão de Bragança
  • 1908-1910: Manuel Maria Filipe Carlos Amélio Luís Miguel Rafael Gabriel Gonzaga Francisco de Assis Eugénio de Saxe-Coburgo-Gotha e Bragança

In 1910 the monarchy was abolished, perhaps because of a shortage of ink.

| History

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

The Great War, A to Z

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:8th_August_1918_(Will_Longstaff).jpg

An Austrian Archduke, assaulted and assailed,
Broke Belgium’s barriers, by Britain bewailed,
Causing consternation, confused chaotic crises;
Diffusing destructive, death-dealing devices.
England engaged earnestly, eager every ear,
France fought furiously, forsaking foolish fear,
Great German garrisons grappled Gallic guard,
Hohenzollern Hussars hammered, heavy, hard.
Infantry, Imperial, Indian, Irish, intermingling,
Jackets jaunty, joking, jesting, jostling, jingling.
Kinetic, Kruppised Kaiser, kingdom’s killing knight,
Laid Louvain lamenting, London lacking light,
Mobilizing millions, marvellous mobility,
Numberless nonentities, numerous nobility.
Oligarchies olden opposed olive offering,
Prussia pressed Paris, Polish protection proffering,
Quaint Quebec quickly quartered quotidian quota,
Renascent Russia, resonant, reported regal rota.
Scotch soldiers, sterling, songs stalwart sung,
“Tipperary” thundered through titanic tongue.
United States urging unarmament, unwanted,
Visualized victory vociferously vaunted,
Wilson’s warnings wasted, world war wild,
Xenian Xanthochroi Xantippically X-iled.
Yorkshire’s young yeomen yelling youthfully,
“Zigzag Zeppelins, Zuyder Zee.”

— John R. Edwards

| History · Language · Poems

Caveat Emptor

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexander_wrege/3205927163/
Image: Flickr

In 1972, the Procrastinators Club of America sent a letter to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London, complaining that the Liberty Bell was cracked.

After an interval, the foundry responded:

“We would be happy to provide a replacement bell. Kindly return the damaged bell to us in its original packaging.”

| History

The War Ahead

H.G. Wells’ 1914 novel The World Set Free is not his best known, but it’s certainly his most prescient — he predicted nuclear weapons:

She felt torn out of the world. There was nothing else in the world but a crimson-purple glare and sound, deafening, all-embracing, continuing sound. Every other light had gone out about her, and against this glare hung slanting walls, pirouetting pillars, projecting fragments of cornices, and a disorderly flight of huge angular sheets of glass.

The novel imagines an invention that accelerates radioactive decay, producing unthinkably powerful bombs. (Wells even dedicated the novel “to Frederick Soddy’s interpretation of radium.”)

This application was far ahead of the science of the time — physicist Leó Szilárd later said it helped inspire his own conception of a nuclear chain reaction.

If that’s not impressive enough: In Wells’ novel, allies drop an atomic bomb on Germany during a world war in the 1940s!

| History · Literature · Technology

Over and Out

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_House_of_Commons_1834.jpg

Technically, it’s illegal to resign from the British House of Commons. Since 1623 the rules have stated that a member of Parliament cannot renounce the trust of his constituents.

So members use a loophole: An MP who accepts an office of profit under the Crown must leave his post to avoid a conflict of interest. So today when an MP wishes to resign, the chancellor of the exchequer appoints him crown steward of the Chiltern Hundreds or of the Manor of Northstead, and he can legally resign.

But even this workaround gets awkward. Because there are only two available offices, sometimes MPs must wait in line. When 15 Ulster unionists resigned en masse on Dec. 17, 1985, they had to be appointed one after another in quick succession through the day. What will future historians make of this?

| History

Close Call

On Sept. 26, 1983, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Air Defense Forces received a warning that the U.S. had launched an ICBM toward the Soviet Union. He dismissed it as a false alarm. Later four additional missiles were detected, and again Petrov decided they were phantoms.

He was right, but he couldn’t have been certain, and if he’d followed protocol he might have started a full-scale nuclear exchange between the superpowers. Bruce Blair of the World Security Institute said, “I think that this is the closest we’ve come to accidental nuclear war.”

| History

The Colditz Cock

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

The guards at Nazi prisoner-of-war camps were accustomed to looking for tunnels — so they never thought to look in the attic at Colditz Castle, where, astonishingly, British prisoners had constructed a 19-foot glider from scavenged materials.

They planned to launch it from the roof, using a pulley system driven by a falling bathtub full of concrete. They hoped this would send two men soaring across the River Mulde 60 meters below.

The American army liberated the camp before the glider could be launched, and it was subsequently lost, so for 55 years its designers could only wonder whether the “Colditz Cock” would really have flown. But in 1999 a British aviation company built a full-size replica, and the POWs reunited to watch the launch. It worked.

| History · Technology

Vindicated

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Thomas_Stead.jpg"

As a writer, W.T. Stead may have been too prescient.

In 1886 he published an article about the sinking of an ocean liner and the consequent loss of life, warning, “This is exactly what might take place and will take place if liners are sent to sea short of boats.”

Six years later he wrote a novel, From the Old World to the New, in which a ship collides with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sinks; the survivors are picked up by the Majestic, a ship of the White Star Line.

An outspoken newspaper editor, Stead himself embarked for the New World in April 1912 when President Taft invited him to address a peace conference at Carnegie Hall.

Alas, he never arrived — he had booked his passage on the RMS Titanic.

| History · Oddities

Left and Right

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barack_Obama_at_NH.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Three of our last four presidents have been left-handed:

Bush I: Left-handed
Clinton: Left-handed
Bush II: Right-handed
Obama: Left-handed

The same would be true if John McCain had won the last election — he’s a leftie too. Indeed, fully half of American presidents since Truman have been southpaws, though only 10 percent of the general population is left-handed.

What accounts for this? Who knows? But UCLA geneticist Daniel Geschwind says, “Six out of the past 12 presidents is statistically significant, and probably means something.”

| History · Oddities · Trivia