Afoot

In 2004, the world’s foremost scholar on Sherlock Holmes was found garrotted on his bed. Richard Lancelyn Green had been planning a three-volume biography of Arthur Conan Doyle but had had trouble gaining rights to the author’s private papers and manuscripts, which were scheduled to be auctioned at Christie’s. Lancelyn Green believed that Doyle’s daughter had wanted these to go to the British Library instead, but his efforts to stop the auction had been unsuccessful. In the weeks before his death he told friends that an unidentified American was following him and that he’d come to fear that his contention over the papers might have put his life in danger.

The coroner returned an open verdict. Lancelyn Green’s best friends said it was not in his nature to take his own life, but others wondered whether he might have arranged his death to cast suspicion on a rival, mirroring the Sherlock Holmes story “The Problem of Thor Bridge,” in which a jealous wife contrives her suicide to cast doubt on a woman her husband had been flirting with.

The case remains unsolved. “I think he wanted it to look like murder,” said James Gibson, who had edited a Doyle bibliography with Lancelyn Green in 1983. “He must have been planning it for days, giving us false clues. He created the perfect mystery.”

| Crime · Death · Literature · Oddities

Before and After

Why does the slogan ‘Whatever is, always was to be’ seem to imply that nothing can be helped, where the obverse slogan ‘Whatever is, will always have been’ does not seem to imply this? We are not exercised by the notorious fact that when the horse has already escaped it is too late to shut the stable door. We are sometimes exercised by the idea that as the horse is either going to escape or not going to escape, to shut the stable door beforehand is either unavailing or unnecessary.

— Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas, 1954

| Oddities

Long Distance

The Javan cucumber, Alsomitra macrocarpa, broadcasts its seeds on papery wings that can glide long distances. Some have been found on the decks of ships.

The unique design inspired aviation pioneer Igo Etrich to build an artificial flying wing, which he adapted into Germany’s first mass-produced military aeroplane.

| Oddities · Science & Math

The Watercolor Illusion

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Australia_watercolour_illusion.svg

The interior of this map is white, but it appears to be suffused with a pale yellow. In fact the blue and orange coloring is confined to the border.

This “bleeding” effect was discovered by University of Sassari psychologist Baingio Pinna in 1987. It’s still being investigated.

| Oddities

Riding Along

https://www.flickr.com/photos/vanamonde81/15628715671/
Image: Flickr

A striking observation in Far From the Madding Crowd:

To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilised mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars.

“After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame.”

| Literature · Oddities

“The Time-Traveling Hipster”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Time_travelling_cool_dude.png

This photo was taken at the reopening of the South Fork Bridge in Gold Bridge, British Columbia, in 1941. It’s sometimes claimed that the man at the center appears too modern to belong in such a crowd. It’s true that he’s dressed more casually than those around him, but the sunglasses he’s wearing first appeared in the 1920s, and his “T-shirt” appears to be a sweater with an emblem sewn on, possibly that of the Montreal Maroons, a contemporary hockey team. His camera is small for the time, but Kodak had begun offering portable cameras of that size three years earlier.

And no one around him seems to feel he’s out of place.

| Oddities

The Stepping Feet Illusion

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stepping-Feet-Motion-Illusion.gif
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Each of these buses is proceeding smoothly along the striped street. Yet each seems to be varying its speed dramatically.

When the blue bus encounters a white stripe, it becomes easy to see due to the high contrast, so it appears to move faster. When it encounters a black stripe it becomes harder to see, so its movement seems slower. The reverse is true of the yellow bus. When the stripes are removed, the buses stop staggering.

UCSD psychologist Stuart Anstis first demonstrated the illusion in 2003.

| Oddities

An Unsolved Cipher

https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/klaus-schmehs-list-of-encrypted-books/

What does this say? It’s an excerpt from a small bound volume given in 1841 by Harvard law professor Theophilus Parsons Jr. to John Davis of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Davis noted, “It was found in his father’s Library after his decease, its origin and contents unknown. I hoped to find some person of sufficient skill in stenography, to decipher the pages. But it is still, to me & those whom I have consulted, a Sealed Book.”

It seems to be a dated record of some kind. The anonymous writer used Arabic numerals, so we can see that the entries are organized by year, month, and day, with long entries on one side of each page and shorter ones on the other.

But no one has ever determined its meaning. It was conjectured that the volume might be the diary of a clergyman, perhaps Theophilus’ father, the Rev. Moses Parsons of Byfield, but the entries extend to 1799, 16 years after Moses’ death.

For now the diary (if that’s what it is) is kept at the Massachusetts Historical Society. MHS reference librarian Jeremy Dibbell writes about it here.

(Via Klaus Schmeh’s Encrypted Book List.)

| Oddities

Ghost Tint

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neon_Color_Circle.gif
Image: Wikimedia Commons

There’s no blue circle here. The space among the lines is white. In the presence of black lines, the hue of a colored object seems to bleed into the surrounding background.

The phenomenon was first discovered in 1971. It’s known as neon color spreading.

| Oddities · Science & Math