I send you a photograph of the empty shell of an ostrich’s egg, with the necessary Customs declaration attached by means of a string tied to a match, and inserted in one of the holes. The shell bears the addresses of the sender and receiver written in ink, and also has the postage-stamps affixed. The novelty lies in the fact that it came by the ordinary post from Port Elizabeth (S. Africa) to Whitstable, nearly seven thousand miles, exactly as seen in the photo — that is to say, with no packing whatever — and arrived in a perfectly undamaged condition.
When you view a pendulum swinging laterally before your eyes, your brain understands correctly that the bob is moving in a straight line perpendicular to your line of sight. But if you put a dark filter over one eye, the bob seems to move in an ellipse, swinging somewhat closer to the screened eye.
Apparently the visual system responds more quickly to bright objects than to dim ones, so when the clear eye correctly sees the bob’s position at A, B, and C, the obscured eye sees it at A’, B’, and C’, and the brain reconciles these reports by supposing it’s at A*, B*, and C*. German physicist Carl Pulfrich first described the effect in 1922.
On April 8, 1959, when keepers arrived at the Spectacle Reef lighthouse in Lake Huron to prepare it for a new season, they discovered a note:
To Whom It May Concern:
At 1705 hours my plane went down 400 kilometers out at 035 to 050 degrees. I was one mile northeast of here at 5000 feet when my engine went quite dead. I tried to make it in but landed in the water. At that time there were large open areas of water. I did not try to land on the ice as it did not look thick enough. Also I wanted to get as close to this light as possible.
The plane went down in about two minutes after it landed. Before it did it floated close enough to a floe for me to jump. The ice was not over two inches thick. Another large body of water separated me from the light so I waited.
Suddenly the wind shifted to the northeast. The ice I was on started to move. At the very last moment one quarter of the ice ground against the ice packed around the light. My ice floe broke up fast so I ran for the light. I got ashore but was wet from falling in. My clothes froze before I could get the door open.
Once inside I used your towels and overshoes to keep from freezing.
About 2100 I got your stove lit. I hooked up the batteries and lit your warning lamp. The radio receiver worked but the transmitter was dead. I didn’t know enough about it to make it work. I have used the batteries until they are going dead. I sat up last night sending out SOS calls by blinking the main light.
Right now I am deliberating whether to stay here or cross the ice. From the chart I will have eleven miles to travel. There are large water holes, thin ice which had been broken into pieces by the wind yesterday. There is hardly any wind today. We have had two freezing nights, so I ought to make it in about four hours. I want to go now because it is nice weather.
Also I did not file a flight plan so no one will look for me another two or three days. The weather may be bad again.
I have made a mess of your building. I hope you will forgive me. I am going to take some equipment with me, binoculars, coat, hat, blankets, etc. I will turn them into the United States Coast Guard as soon as I get ashore.
Signed,
M.Sgt. William J. Wyman
USAF
The note bore no date. Wyman had departed Saginaw in a Piper Super Cruiser on Feb. 22, headed for the former Kinross Air Force Base near Sault Ste. Marie. He had never arrived. No trace of him was ever found.
A striking oddity from Matthew Luckiesh’s Visual Illusions, 1922. The height of this silk hat appears much greater than its width, but the two are the same.
“A pole or a tree is generally appraised as of greater length when it is standing than when it lies on the ground. This illusion may be demonstrated by placing a black dot an inch or so above another on a white paper. Now, at right angles to the original dot place another at a horizontal distance which appears equal to the vertical distance of the first dot above the original. On turning the paper through ninety degrees or by actual measurement, the extent of the illusion will become apparent.”
At Nuremburg a wolf’s tooth was shown to travellers … on which an Abbé is represented lying dead in a meadow, with three lilies growing out of his posteriors. This is not only the worst pun that ever was carved upon a wolf’s tooth, but the worst that ever was or will be made. The Abbé is designed to express the Latin word Habe. He is lying dead in a meadow, … mort en pré; this is for mortem præ; and the three lilies in his posteriors are to be read oculis, … au cu lis. Thus, according to the annexed explanation, the whole pun, rebus, or hieroglyphic, is Habe mortem præ oculis.
In other words, the French phrase Abbé mort en pré au cul lys (“Abbot died in a meadow with lilies in his rump”) sounds like the Latin phrase Habe mortem præ oculis (“Keep death before your eyes”). This joke appears to be referenced in Hieronymus Bosch’s 1504 triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights:
In May 1884, a group of schoolboys on a beach in Zanzibar came upon a large mass of pumice stone that had washed up at the tidemark. Evidently it had been floating in the sea for some time, as its bottom was crusted with barnacles and weed. Welded to its upper surface, they discovered, were dozens of skeletons, including humans, monkeys, and two big cats, probably Sumatran tigers.
It was a relic of the eruption of Krakatoa, which had taken place nine months earlier in the Dutch East Indies. The rock had floated 4,000 miles across the Indian Ocean to the east coast of Africa.
This is a familiar variation on the Müller-Lyer optical illusion. The horizontal segments on the left appear longer than those on the right, but in fact they’re all the same length.
Italian researcher Gianni A. Sarcone devised the dynamic demonstration below — the blue and black segments are all the same length and do not change; only the “fins” are moving:
The peculiar circumstances of life aboard the International Space Station both advanced and retarded astronaut Scott Kelly’s age relative to that of his identical twin brother Mark, who remained on the ground.
Radiation, weightlessness, and changes in diet shortened Scott’s telomeres more quickly than his brother’s, effectively causing him to age more quickly.
At the same time, due to relativistic effects, Scott aged about 8.6 milliseconds less than Mark during his year in space.
In 1907, historian Reginald Hine, photographer Thomas Latchmore, and artist F.L. Griggs took a camera to Hertfordshire’s Minsden Chapel hoping to photograph the ghost of a murdered monk whose spirit was said to haunt the place. Hine published this photo in his 1929 History of Hitchin, pointing out “the cowled apparition whose form can faintly be discerned” in the image:
In 1930 Latchmore admitted that the image had been a hoax, created with a double exposure; the ghostly figure may be Hine himself.
While we’re at it: In 1963 by the Rev. Kenneth Lord took this photo in the Church of Christ the Consoler on the grounds of Newby Hall in North Yorkshire:
Ostensibly the figure is another ghostly monk, this one wearing a shroud over its face. If it’s not a double exposure then the figure stands as much as 9 feet tall; make your own judgment.
And a reader sent this image in to the Strand in July 1897:
Taken at Scale Force, the Lake District’s highest waterfall, “It is a perfect representation of a stately, long-bearded old man, clothed in a flowing robe, with a crown and sceptre. … The form is perfect natural. I did not notice it until after the photo was developed.”
Interestingly, as recently as 2006 the old man was still there:
