Croesus asked the oracle at Delphi whether he should attack the Persians. She replied that if he went to war, he would destroy a great empire.
Croesus attacked, but the Persians beat him back, invaded his kingdom, and threw him into chains. He sent another message to the oracle: “Why did you deceive me?”
She replied that she had not deceived him — he had indeed destroyed a great empire.
Arriving home late one summer night in 1692, Ebenezer Babson surprised two men leaving his house in Cape Ann, Mass. As they fled, he heard one say to the other, “The man of the house is now come, else we might have taken the house.”
Babson removed his family to a nearby garrison, which by several bizarre accounts was then besieged for two weeks by phantoms dressed as gentlemen, in white waistcoats and breeches. Appearing in groups as large as 11, the “unaccountable troublers” reportedly spoke in a strange tongue, performed incantations, threw stones, beat upon barns with clubs, and made their way through a nearby swamp without leaving tracks. On each sortie from the garrison, they melted into the wilderness, sometimes arising after felled by gunfire.
The siege ended after a fortnight, apparently when the demons tired of their sport. This was the year of the Salem witch hysteria, and it’s likely that pranksters were involved in the later events. But Babson’s curiously specific account does leave questions about his own experience.
The last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll, lived long enough to lay a cornerstone for the B&O Railroad.
The lectures of 19th-century seer Andrew Jackson Davis weren’t well attended, but perhaps they should have been. His 1856 book Penetralia predicted both the automobile and the typewriter:
Look out about these days for carriages and travelling-saloons on country-roads–sans horses, sans steam, sans any visible motive-power–moving with greater speed and far more safety than at present. Carriages will be moved by a strange, and beautiful, and simple admixture of aqueous and atmospheric gases–so easily condensed, so simply ignited, and so imparted by a machine somewhat resembling our engines, as to be entirely concealed and manageable between the forward wheels. …
I am almost moved to invent an automatic psychographer; that is, an artificial soul-writer. It may be constructed something like a piano; one brace or scale of keys to represent the elementary sounds; another and lower tier, to represent a combination; and still another, for a rapid recombination; so that a person, instead of playing a piece of music, may touch off a sermon or a poem!
In Vertumnus, Giuseppe Arcimboldo portrayed his patron Rudolf II as the Roman god of growth and change. Fortunately, Rudolf appreciated the metaphor and awarded Arcimboldo one of his highest orders.
See also Renaissance Surrealism and The Librarian.
Clement Atlee was using the urinal in the House of Commons one day when Winston Churchill took up a position at the opposite end.
“Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?” Atlee asked.
“That’s right,” Churchill said. “Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it.”
In 1860, a party of Texas Rangers killed a camp of Comanche Indians near Pease River. Afterward, they noted that one of the women they had captured had blue eyes. She spoke no English, but when Col. Isaac Parker mentioned that his 9-year-old niece Cynthia Ann had been abducted by Comanches 24 years earlier, the woman slapped her chest and said, “Me Cincee Ann!”
As it turned out, Cynthia Ann Parker had been kidnapped twice. In 1836, when she was 9, the raiding Comanches had slaughtered her parents and taken her with them. She adopted their ways, grew to womanhood, married a native man, and bore three children. Then in 1860 the raiding Rangers killed her husband and abducted her back into white society.
She would be transplanted a third time: Forty years after her death in 1870, her son had her disinterred and buried on an Oklahoma reservation, reuniting her finally with her native family.
A combination plow and cannon, patented in 1862 by C.M. French and W.H. Fancher:
As a piece of light ordnance its capacity may vary from a projectile of one to three pounds weight without rendering it cumbersome as a plow. Its utility as an implement of the twofold capacity described is unquestionable, especially when used in border localities, subject to savage feuds and guerrilla warfare.
“As a means of defense in repelling surprises and skirmishing attacks on those engaged in a peaceful avocation it is unrivaled.”
History’s 10 deadliest natural disasters:
Six of the 10 occurred in China. See also Death Tolls.
Confined in Colchester Castle during the English civil war, the royalist officer Sir John Trevanion was awaiting execution when he received this letter:
Worthie Sir John:- Hope, that is ye beste comfort of ye afflicted, cannot much, I fear me, help you now. That I would saye to you, is this only: if ever I may be able to requite that I do owe you, stand not upon asking me. ‘Tis not much that I can do: but what I can do, bee ye verie sure I wille. I knowe that, if dethe comes, if ordinary men fear it, it frights not you, accounting it for a high honor, to have such a rewarde of your loyalty. Pray yet that you may be spared this soe bitter, cup. I fear not that you will grudge any sufferings; only if bie submission you can turn them away, ’tis the part of a wise man. Tell me, an if you can, to do for you anythinge that you wolde have done. The general goes back on Wednesday. Restinge your servant to command. — R.T.
Sir John studied the message for several hours, and then, apparently despairing, asked to spend some time alone in prayer. His captors agreed — and never saw him again.
Read the third letter after each punctuation mark.