Zeus Displeased

A manuscript published at Tortona, Italy, in 1677 tells of a Milanese friar who was killed by a meteorite:

All the other monks of the convent of St. Mary hastened up to him who had been struck, as well from curiosity as from pity, and among them was also the Canon Manfredo Settala. They all carefully examined the corpse, to discover the most secret and decisive effects of the shock which had struck him; they found it was on one of the thighs, where they perceived a wound blackened either by the gangrene or by the action of the fire. Impelled by curiosity, they enlarged the aperture to examine the interior of it; they saw that it penetrated to the bone, and were much surprised to find at the bottom of the wound a roundish stone which had made it, and had killed this monk in a manner equally terrible and unexpected.

Take that for what it’s worth. In modern times meteorites have struck an Alabama woman and a Ugandan boy, but neither was seriously injured. (There’s also a dog story.)

Far From Home

http://books.google.com/books?id=lt0sAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Here’s a surprise: The English royal menagerie of the 13th century included a polar bear. From The New American Cyclopædia, 1869:

In the reign of Henry III, of England … it is curious to record that a white bear was among the collection of wild beasts in the tower of London, for which the sheriffs of the city were ordered to provide a muzzle and an iron chain, to secure him when out of the water, and a long and stout cord to hold him when fishing in the Thames.

“The words italicized seem to identify the species beyond the possibility of error; but one would like to know whence the polar bear was brought, at that early day, so long previous to the commencement of arctic exploration.” Probably it was a gift from Haakon IV of Norway.

See Clara and MacFarlane’s Bear.

The Land Speaks

Haiti growls. A strange rumbling sound is heard periodically in the southwestern part of Hispaniola; locals liken it variously to the noise of “a heavy wagon passing over pavement, of thunder rolling in the distance, of dynamite exploding or of cannon being fired off, of water falling on dry leaves, of the wind blowing through high forest trees in a tempest.”

No one knows what causes the sound, known locally as the gouffre. It seems to be heard most commonly near the Chaîne de la Selle, a mountain chain in the south. Possibly it’s caused by small adjustments along a fault there.

From the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, December 1912. See also Brontides and The Yellowstone Lake Whispers.

Paging Mr. Darwin

http://books.google.com/books?id=w61ZAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Unlikely creatures from American folklore:

  • The gillygaloo lays cubical eggs that won’t roll downhill (hard-boiled they make excellent dice).
  • The gyascutus has legs of unequal length so that it can walk easily on hillsides.
  • The Funeral Mountain terrashot is shaped like a casket and explodes in the desert heat, leaving a grave-shaped hole.
  • The squonk weeps continually at its own ugliness, and when surprised dissolves entirely into tears.
  • The tote-road shagamaw has a bear’s front feet and a moose’s hind feet, leaving tracks that change every quarter mile.
  • The slide-rock bolter, above, skids on its own drool across valley paths, scooping up tourists.

“A forest ranger … conceived the bold idea of decoying a slide-rock bolter to its own destruction. A dummy tourist was rigged up with plaid Norfolk jacket, knee breeches, and a guide book to Colorado. It was then filled full of giant powder and fulminate caps and posted in a conspicuous place, where, sure enough, the next day it attracted the attention of a bolter which had been hanging for days on the slope of Lizzard Head. The resulting explosion flattened half the buildings in Rico, which were never rebuilt, and the surrounding hills fattened flocks of buzzards the rest of the summer.” (William Thomas Cox, Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, 1910)

Making Points

The London Medical and Physical Journal records the case of Kate Hudson, a 31-year-old single woman who was admitted to the general hospital at Nottingham on Aug. 4, 1783. “On inspection of the arm two needles were discovered under the skin, a little above the dorsal side of the wrist.” These were removed with forceps, but more needles were discovered farther up the arm.

This continued, on and off, for nine years. Needles were discovered in Hudson’s leg, foot, breast, and stomach; she passed needles in her urine and stool and vomited up still more. Just as abruptly, on June 12, 1792, she was dismissed as cured, and was reported in July to be married with two children and enjoying “better health than for several years past.”

“At present, I shall make no Comment on the Case,” writes physician Hugh Moises. “I feel it, however, a duty I owe to myself, (and to anticipate the attacks of puny Criticism) that I should here observe, that the language of the Case throughout, is strictly that of the minutes preserved in the Case Books of the Hospital, as taken thence by myself upwards of ten years ago.”

“Sailing on Skates”

http://books.google.com/books?rview=1&pg=PA370&id=nmQIAAAAQAAJ#PPA396,M1

In the winter time, when northern ports, such as the Baltic, are closed by ice, it is a very common thing for the sailors to pass the time in skating, or rather sailing upon skates. This pastime has a charm of its own unknown to the ordinary skater, and when practice has engendered confidence and dexterity in directing the sail, the proficient may bend backwards and, as it were, sleep upon the wind.

This exercise is very agreeable, and not very dangerous; the falls made by a learner in practising at the beginning are not serious, as they generally take place backwards, and are thus modified by the sail.

“Singular Phenomenon”

A short time ago, I was pricking out some annuals on a flower-bed, on which some geraniums were already planted, when I was surprised to see flashes of light coming from a truss of geranium flowers. At first I thought it was imagination, but my wife and a friend who were present also saw them. Time was about 9 p.m., and the atmosphere clear. There were other geraniums a different colour on the same bed, but there was no effect on them. The particular geranium was a Tom Thumb. Is this at all common? I have never seen or read of it before. — S. Ingham

Knowledge, July 27, 1883

A Look Around

http://books.google.com/books?id=_g8wAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false

In September 1893, London doctor Farquhar Matheson was sailing with his wife on Scotland’s Loch Alsh, between the isle of Skye and the mainland. “Our sail was up and we were going gaily along when suddenly I saw something rise out of the loch in front of us–a long, straight, necklike thing as tall as my mast.”

The thing was 200 yards away; it was not until it began to submerge that Matheson saw “it was a large sea-monster–of the saurian type, I should think.”

He likened the head and neck to those of a giraffe. He watched the creature surface again three times, at intervals or two or three minutes, as he followed it for perhaps a mile. “It was not a sea-serpent, but a much larger and more substantial beast–something of the nature of a gigantic lizard, I should think.”

He denied emphatically that he had seen only an optical illusion, noting that he had watched the creature’s head gradually descend and ascend several times, and saw the light glisten on its smooth skin.

That evening he described the event to some gentlemen, including Sir James Farrar. They laughed at first, but “when I showed them that none of their theories would fit the case, they admitted that the sea-serpent, or sea-monster, could not be altogether a myth.”

“Turks Flee From a Mirage at Shaiba”

On April 12th, a three days’ battle opened at Shaiba with an attack by a motley army of 22,000 Turks, Kurds, and Arabs commanded by German officers. During the thick of the fighting, and when success was well within their grasp, the Turkish forces ceased firing and fled in wild panic from field.

A Turkish prisoner subsequently explained the cause of the Turkish withdrawal. It appears that a pack train, approaching the British line from the rear, had been so distorted by a mirage that it appeared to the Turks as a great body of reinforcements. Believing themselves to be fighting against enormous odds, they had yielded up a victory almost won.

– William C. King, King’s Complete History of the World War, 1922

Ishi

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ishi_1914.jpg

In August 1911, a group of butchers discovered a 50-year-old “wild man” in their corral in Oroville, Calif. The local sheriff gave him into the keeping of a San Francisco anthropology museum, where he remained until his death five years later.

It’s believed that “Ishi” was the very last of his kind — the last of his group, the last of his people, and the last Native American in Northern California to have lived free of the encroaching European-American civilization.

The rest had been killed in encounters with the white man.

Even “Ishi” means only “man” in Yana, Ishi’s native language. When asked his actual name, Ishi had said, “I have none, because there were no people to name me.”