The French newspaper La Bougie du Sapeur is published only on leap day, Feb. 29 — which means a new issue appears only once every four years.

You can buy a century’s subscription for 100 euros.

The following account of unusual phenomena was received March 10, at the Hydrographic office, Washington, from the branch office in San Francisco. The bark Innerwich, Capt. Waters, has just arrived at Victoria from Yokohama. At midnight of Feb. 24, in latitude 37° north, longitude 17° 15′ east, the captain was aroused by the mate, and went on deck to find the sky changing to a fiery red. All at once a large mass of fire appeared over the vessel, completely blinding the spectators; and, as it fell into the sea some fifty yards to leeward, it caused a hissing sound, which was heard above the blast, and made the vessel quiver from stem to stern. Hardly had this disappeared, when a lowering mass of white foam was seen rapidly approaching the vessel. The noise from the advancing volume of water is described as deafening. The bark was struck flat aback; but, before there was time to touch a brace, the sails had filled again, and the roaring white sea had passed ahead.

— Science, March 20, 1885

A narrow escape from destruction by an immense meteor was reported this morning by officers of the steamer Cambrian, which arrived from London. The huge fiery mass struck the water within fifty yards of the Cambrian’s starboard bow last Friday evening when the ship’s position was longitude 51.10 west, latitude 42.05 north, several hundred miles south of Cape Race.

[Third officer Daniel Vittery:] ‘The air was filled with a deafening din such as a thousand railroad trains in a tunnel might create. The hiss of dropping fragments gave me the fleeting impression of the ship’s boilers leaking in every plate. … With a crash that shook the ship the monster struck the sea not fifty yards away, and the upheaval was terrific. Not a rope nor a spar was scathed when the meteor, big as a fair-sized house, went squarely over us and struck the sea.’

— The Friend, Sept. 21, 1907

The gold medal for canine endurance goes to Petey, the junkyard dog who guarded Al’s Auto Salvage in New Bern, N.C., in 1996. Petey was only 10 inches tall, and when Hurricane Fran roared up the North Carolina coast on Sept. 5, he was locked in a building that flooded with 16 inches of water.

Owner Skip Crayton feared the worst, but when he opened the shop the following morning, out came Petey, covered up to his neck in oil and mud. Apparently the dog had swum continuously for six to eight hours in the flooded building, keeping his head just above water to stay alive.

Petey couldn’t tell of the experience, of course, but when Crayton got him home he slept for two days.

See also The Dog of Pompeii.

In 1984, philosopher William Lycan published a paper with this statement:

The probability of the title of this paper, given itself (and the fact of its being a generalization), is less than 1/2. Yet the probability of any contingent statement given itself is 1. So 1 is less than 1/2.

The title of the paper was “Most Generalizations Are False.”

In other words, the chance that any statement is true, given itself, is 1. But the chance that Lycan’s title is true, given itself, is less than 1/2. Thus 1 is less than 1/2.

What is it with poets and doppelgängers? From a letter from Lord Byron to John Murray, Oct. 6, 1820:

In the latter end of 1811, I met one evening at Alfred my old school and form-fellow, … Peel, the Irish secretary. He told me, that, in 1810, he met me, as he thought, in St. James’-street, but we passed without speaking. He mentioned this, and it was denied as impossible; I being then in Turkey. A day or two afterwards, he pointed out to his brother a person on the opposite side of the way: ‘There,’ said he ‘is the man whom I took for Byron.’ His brother instantly answered, ‘Why it is Byron, and no one else.’ But this is not all:– I was seen by somebody to write down my name among the inquirers after the king’s health, then attacked by insanity. Now, at this very period, as nearly as I could make out, I was ill of a strong fever at Patras, caught in the marshes near Olympia, from the malaria. If I had died there, this would have been a new ghost story for you.

Similar experiences befell Shelley, Goethe, John Donne, and Wilfred Owen.

On Aug. 10, 1741, explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller reported spotting “a very unusual and new animal” in the waters off southern Alaska. It was about 5 feet long, he said, with the head of a dog and the tail of a shark, and was covered with gray hair. It had long whiskers, large eyes, and erect ears. When it rose out the water to observe his ship, Steller saw that it had no flippers.

For two hours Steller and the animal watched each other. It passed some 30 times under the ship, he said, apparently in order to view it from both sides. At one point it juggled a bit of kelp in its mouth, occasionally biting off and swallowing pieces. An assistant finally shot at it twice with a musket, missing both times, and the animal disappeared.

In 250 years, no one has ever seen another “sea ape.” The consensus among biologists is that Steller saw a young northern fur seal, but he had observed these creatures on the same voyage and presumably would have recognized one. So what was it?

Peculiar effect of a thunderstorm near Leadhills, Lanarkshire, on June 7, 1817, reported by surgeon James Braid before the Wernerian Society and later reprinted in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine:

… [T]he master of the house told me that he was very much alarmed as he was going home on Saturday evening, between six and seven o’clock, ‘from,’ as he expressed himself, ‘his horse’s ears being the same as two burning candles, and the edges of his hat being all in a flame.’ …

On Thursday 20th, I was gratified for a few minutes with the luminous appearance described above. It was about nine o’clock, P.M. I had no sooner got on horseback than I observed the tips of both the horse’s ears to be quite luminous: the edges of my hat had the same appearance.

The horse’s ears stopped glowing after a shower of moist snow, Braid reported, “but the edges of my hat, being longer of getting wet, continued to give the luminous appearance somewhat longer.”

“I could observe an immense number of minute sparks darting towards the horse’s ears and the margin of my hat, which produced a very beautiful appearance, and I was sorry to be so soon deprived of it.”

Mike is overweight. His wife has just baked a cake. Happily, Mike has a box that will quiet his desire for cake. Unhappily, its battery is dead. Mike pushes the button, nothing happens, and he eats the cake.

Now, the fact that he pushed the button shows that his desire to avoid cake was greater than his desire to eat cake. So why did he push the button?

Statements of the family and associates of H. Rider Haggard regarding the events of July 9, 1904:

Mrs. M.L. Haggard:

On the night [of] July 9th I was awakened by most distressing sounds proceeding from my husband, resembling the moans of an animal, no distinct words. After listening for a few moments, I woke him up, whereupon he said that he had had a nightmare, in which he was engaged in some struggle connected with our retriever dog “Bob,” and that “Bob” was trying to talk to him and explain that he wanted help. It was quite dark at the time, so I conclude it must have been about 2 a.m.

Angela Rider Haggard:

On Sunday morning, July 10th, my father mentioned at the breakfast table that he had had a horrid nightmare about my black retriever dog “Bob.” He said that he dreamt the dog was dying in a wood and trying to make some communication to him. My mother corroborated this statement, saying he had made such a noise that he had even awakened her, and she aroused him as he seemed so disturbed. Of course we all laughed at it at the time, for we did not know then that anything had happened to the dog, for I had seen him myself at 8 o’clock on the preceding evening.

Lilias R. Haggard:

On the evening of Sunday, July 10th, I, who am in the habit of feeding the dogs, told Daddy that “Bob” had not come to his breakfast or his supper that day, so I thought he must be lost. Daddy had said at breakfast on Sunday that he had dreamt that “Bob” was dying in a wood, and that he, Daddy, was trying to extract something from “Bob,” and that “Bob” was trying to speak.

Harry Alger, railway platelayer:

I was at my business on the line between Bungay and Ditchingham at 7 o’clock on the morning of Monday, the 11th July … and found the broken collar of a dog lying there, which I produce, and had to scrape off the dried blood and some bits of flesh from the line. … Under all the circumstances I think that the dog must have been killed by the late excursion train on Saturday night which left Ditchingham for Harleston at 10.25. … The marks of blood upon the piles showed where the dog had fallen from the bridge into the reeds. These reeds grow in deepish water.

C. Bedingfield, groom:

My master and I found the dog in the Waveney near the Falcon Bridge on the morning of July 14th. It is the retriever dog, Bob, which I have known ever since it has been at Ditchingham House.

“I seem therefore to come to this conclusion,” Haggard wrote later, after relating the story in the Times. “Either the whole thing is a mere coincidence and just means nothing more than indigestion and a nightmare, or it was the spirit of the dog on its passage to its own place or into another form, that moved my spirit, thereby causing this revelation, for it seems to be nothing less.”