What’s special about this 1882 Danish birth record?
Its owner, Christian Mortensen, was still alive in 1997.
He was looking forward to being declared the world’s most ancient person when he was told that a slightly older woman had been discovered in Canada.
“They just did that to spoil my birthday,” he said.
E. Douglas Fawcett’s 1893 story “Hartmann the Anarchist” described an aerial bombardment of London — 47 years before World War II:
With eyes riveted now to the massacre, I saw frantic women trodden down by men; huge clearings made by the shells and instantly filled up; house-fronts crushing horses and vehicles as they fell; fires bursting out on all sides, to devour what they listed, and terrified police struggling wildly and helplessly in the heart of the press.
Hartmann rains dynamite bombs, shells, and blazing petroleum from his airship before a mutiny brings him down. “It has not been my aim to write history,” writes the narrator. “I have sought to throw light only on one of its more romantic corners.”
See also Wreck of the Titan and A Blindfold Bullseye.
In 1957 ornithologists marked a Manx shearwater, a migrating seabird, on Bardsey Island off Wales.
In April 2002 they discovered the same bird was still alive and still gamely flying to South America each winter.
In the intervening 45 years, they calculated, it had covered 5 million miles.
See also Longest Migration.
A tied football match in southern Congo came to an unexpected conclusion on Oct. 28, 1998, when a lightning bolt struck and killed all 11 members of the visiting team.
“The athletes from [home team] Basanga curiously came out of this catastrophe unscathed,” reported the Kinshasa newspaper L’Avenir.
“The exact nature of the lightning has divided the population in this region, which is known for its use of fetishes in football.”
Thomas Tresham spent 15 years in prison for his Catholicism, and when he got out in 1593 he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Rather than convert to Protestantism, he designed the Rushton Triangular Lodge to reflect his belief in the Holy Trinity.
Each of the three-sided building’s three walls is 33 feet long and sports three gables, three-sided windows, a trio of gargoyles, and a 33-letter Latin inscription. Even the chimney is triangular.
Lest anyone miss the point, Tresham had the front door inscribed Tres testimonium dant. It means “The number three bears witness.”
Prospector William Schmidt was overjoyed when he struck gold on California’s Copper Mountain, but he faced one problem: He was on the north side of the mountain, and the road to the smelter was on the south side.
So he dug a tunnel.
He started in 1906, at age 35, working with a pick, a 4-pound hammer, a hand drill, and dynamite. When he finally broke into daylight on the mountain’s south side, it was 1938 and he was 66 years old. He had single-handedly dug a tunnel 1,872 feet long, displacing 2,600 cubic yards of granite.
Alas, success had to be its own reward. While Schmidt had been digging, rail and road links had been built around the mountain — so the tunnel was unnecessary.
The world’s longest handwritten poem is nearly 1 kilometer long. Unveiled by French notary Patrick Huet in 2006, Pieces of Hope to the Echo of the World comprises 7,547 verses.
All that length is necessary — the poem is one long acrostic. The initial letters of its lines spell out the complete Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The largest city in human history is modern Tokyo, with a population of around 35 million. That’s a pretty big mammal colony, but it’s nowhere near the record.
In 1901 scientists discovered a “town” of 400 million prairie dogs in Texas. It covered more than 23,000 square miles — an area larger than Costa Rica.
Seeing so many meteorological phenomena in your excellent paper, Knowledge, I am tempted to ask for an explanation of the following, which I saw when on board the British India Company’s steamer Patna while on a voyage up the Persian Gulf. In May, 1880, on a dark, calm night, about 11.30 p.m., there suddenly appeared on each side of the ship an enormous luminous wheel whirling round, the spokes of which seemed to brush the ship along. The spokes would be 200 or 300 yards long, and resembled the birch rods of the dames’ schools. Each wheel contained about sixteen spokes, and made the revolution in about twelve seconds. One could almost fancy one heard the swish as the spokes whizzed past the ship, and, although the wheels must have been some 500 or 600 yards in diameter, the spokes could be distinctly seen all the way round. The phosphorescent gleam seemed to glide along flat on the surface of the sea, no light being visible in the air above the water. The appearance of the spokes could be almost exactly represented by standing in a boat and flashing a bull’s-eye lantern horizontally along the surface of the water round and round. I may mention that the phenomenon was also seen by Captain Avern, commander of the Patna, and Mr. Manning, third officer. Lee Fore Brace.
— Knowledge, Dec. 28, 1883
See Light Show for a remarkably similar account.
British sailors had some furry help during World War II. Tiddles (left) spent his whole life aboard Royal Navy aircraft carriers, traveling some 30,000 miles with them. He was born at sea on HMS Argus and was later promoted to captain’s cat on HMS Victorious. He’s pictured in July 1942 at his favorite station, on the after capstan, where he could play with the bellrope.
Convoy, the ship’s cat on HMS Hermione, was so named because he often accompanied the ship on convoy escort duties. He was listed in the ship’s book and given a full kit, including his own hammock. He went down with 87 of his shipmates when the Hermione was torpedoed in 1942.
“In a cat’s eyes,” runs an English proverb, “all things belong to cats.”