Turnabout

In 1805, during his return from India, the Duke of Wellington stayed briefly in a house on the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic.

By an odd coincidence, when Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo 10 years later, the deposed emperor was exiled to the very same house — while Wellington occupied his former palace.

“You may tell Bony,” the duke wrote to a friend, “that I find his apartments at the Elisée Bourbon very convenient, and that I hope he likes mine at Mr. Balcom’s. It is a droll sequel enough to the affairs of Europe that we should change places of residence.”

| History · Oddities

Dead Heat

Monument inscription, Whitby churchyard, North Yorkshire:

Here lies the bodies of FRANCIS HUNTRODDS and MARY his Wife who were both born on the same Day of the Week Month and Year (viz) Septr ye 19th 1600 Marry’d on the day of their Birth and after having had 12 Children born to them died Aged 80 Years on the same day of the year they were born September ye 19th 1680 the one not above five hours before ye other.

Husband, and Wife that did twelve Children bear,
Dy’d the same day; alike both aged were,
Bout eighty years they liv’d, five hours did part,
(Ev’n on the marriage day) each tender heart.
So fit a match, surely, could never be
Both, in their lives, and in their deaths agree.

| Death · Oddities

“Reported Capture of the Sea-Serpent”

In February 1852, the New York Tribune published an account by a Charles Seabury, master of the whaleship Monongahela, of a titanic struggle with a sea serpent in the South Pacific. The crew harpooned the 103-foot monster on Jan. 13 and killed it with lances the following morning:

None of the crew who witnessed that terrible scene will ever forget it; the evolutions of the body were rapid as lightning, seeming like the revolving of a thousand enormous black wheels. The tail and head would occasionally appear in the surging bloody foam, and a sound was heard, so dead, unearthly, and expressive of acute agony, that a thrill of horror ran through our veins.

The serpent was too large to get into port, so the crew resolved to save the skin, head, and bones. As they were dissecting the creature they encountered the brig Gipsy, to whom Seabury gave his story. “As soon as I get in I shall be enabled to furnish you a more detailed account.”

That’s the story. But neither Seabury, his serpent, nor his detailed account ever appeared, and the Gipsy later told the Philadelphia Bulletin that it had never met such a ship. By that time the original 2700-word account had run in Galignani’s Messenger, the Illustrated London News, the London Times, and Spenerishe Zeitung.

Zoologist editor Edward Newman concludes, “Very like a hoax, but well drawn up.” You can decide for yourself — the original account is here.

| Hoaxes · Oddities

Showoff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pillsbury2.jpg

American chess grandmaster Harry Nelson Pillsbury was renowned for his memory — he could play whist, chess, and checkers simultaneously, without sight of the boards. In 1896, researchers gave him the following list of words to memorize:

antiphlogistine, periosteum, takadiastase, plasmon, ambrosia, Threlkeld, streptococcus, staphylococcus, micrococcus, plasmodium, Mississippi, Freiheit, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, athletics, no war, Etchenberg, American, Russian, philosophy, Piet Potgelter’s Rost, Salamagundi, Oomisillecootsi, Bangmanvate, Schlechter’s Nek, Manzinyama, theosophy, catechism, Madjesoomalops

Pillsbury looked over the list for a few minutes, returned it, and repeated the words correctly in order.

Then he recited them backward.

| Oddities

Future Tense

When he wasn’t inventing logarithms, John Napier took a keen interest in military affairs. In 1596 he composed a list of war machines that “by the grace of God and worke of expert craftsmen” he hoped to produce “for defence of this Iland.” These included a piece of artillery that could “clear a field of four miles circumference of all living creatures exceeding a foot of height,” a chariot like “a moving mouth of mettle” that would “scatter destruction on all sides,” and “devises of sayling under water, with divers and other strategems for harming of the enemyes.”

No one knows whether Napier built his machines, but by World War I they were certainly realities — he had foreseen the machine gun, the tank, and the submarine.

| Oddities · Science & Math · Technology

The Bronx Calendar Twins

Born in 1939, George and Charles Finn were both retarded, with IQs around 60. But each twin could remember nearly every event that had ever befallen him, including the weather: “On April 15, 1956, Dr. Williams came to visit me and to ask me questions about dates. It was rainy and windy in the morning, but the sun came out in the middle of the afternoon.”

Both could also almost instantly tell the day of the week for every day on a 40,000-year calendar — and could answer such complex questions as “During what years between 1780 and 1795 did the 7th of August fall on a Wednesday?”

Thus they could have calculated the birthday of Daniel McCartney — who was doing the same thing a century earlier.

| Oddities

Peshtigo

The deadliest fire in U.S. history swept through Wisconsin on Oct. 8, 1871, consuming more than a million acres and killing 1,500 people:

Groups of dead bodies were found within a stone’s-throw of the water. Families rushing down for a breathing place, had been blown upon by the rushing blast and struck lifeless. The ghastly throng huddled, shrieking and bewailing, about the flaring embers, and the terrible roll of the missing was soon called from end to end of the ashen waste. … In a great many instances the human remains were distinguished from animals by the teeth alone. One horror-struck relative recognized the relics of his nephew by a pen-knife imbedded in an oblong mound of ashes.

So why haven’t you heard of it? Because, by a bizarre coincidence, the Great Chicago Fire occurred on the same day.

| Oddities

Coincidence

In June 2001, a 10-year-old Staffordshire girl wrote her name on a tag, attached it to a helium balloon, and released it. It floated 140 miles to Wiltshire and came to rest in the garden of another girl.

Both girls were named Laura Buxton, both were 10 years old, both are fair-haired, and each owns a black female Labrador, a guinea pig, and a rabbit.

| Oddities

Charged Words

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

On the night of Sept. 2, 1859, an enormous solar flare produced brilliant auroras around the world. Newspapers and ships’ logs reported striking displays throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia; Bostonians could read by their light at 1 a.m.

At the height of the storm, a curious conversation took place between two New England telegraph operators:

Boston: Please cut off your battery, and let us see if we cannot work with the auroral current alone.

Portland, Maine: I have done so. Will you do the same?

Boston: I have cut my battery off and connected the line with the earth. We are working with the current from the Aurora Borealis alone. How do you receive my writing?

Portland: Very well indeed. Much better than with the batteries on. There is much less variation in the current, and the magnets work steadier. Suppose we continue to work so until the Aurora subsides?

Boston: Agreed. Are you ready for business?

Portland: Yes; go ahead.

They carried on in this way for two hours, the storm inducing enough current in the lines to support their transmissions. It marked the first conclusive link between auroral activity and electricity.

(Thanks, Michael.)

| Oddities · Science & Math