On May 15, 1879, J. Eliot Pringle, commander of the H.M.S. Vulture, saw something odd in the Persian Gulf:

I noticed luminous waves or pulsations in the water, moving at great speed and passing under the ship from the south-south-west. On looking towards the east, the appearance was that of a revolving wheel with centre on that bearing, and whose spokes were illuminated, and looking towards the west a similar wheel appeared to be revolving, but in the opposite direction.

Eight months later and 1,500 miles to the southeast, off the Malabar coast, Cmdr. R.E. Harris of the steamship Shahjehan witnessed glowing waves of “a peculiar but beautiful milky whiteness”:

In a short time the ship was completely surrounded with one great body of undulating light, which soon extended to the horizon on all sides. … If the sea could be converted into a huge mirror, and thousands of powerful electric lights were made to throw their rays across it, it would convey no adequate idea of this strange yet grand phenomenon.

Harris called his vision “the most remarkable phenomenon that I have ever seen at sea”; Pringle called his “beautiful and striking.” What they were, precisely, is not clear.

(From Nature, July 24, 1879, and Charles Frederick Holder, Living Lights: A Popular Account of Phosphorescent Animals and Vegetables, 1887. See also A Phosphorescent Sea.)

Lord [Francis Henry] Egerton [1756-1829] is a man of few acquaintance, and very few of his countrymen have got as far as his dining-hall. His table, however, is constantly set out with a dozen covers, and served by suitable attendants. Who, then, are his privileged guests? No less than a dozen of favourite dogs, who daily partake of milord’s dinner, seated very gravely in arm-chairs, each with a napkin round his neck, and a servant behind to attend to his wants.

— John Timbs, English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, 1875

Someone has piled the stones and boulders of Berks County, Pa., into walls, piles, and cairns.

No one knows who, when, or why.

On Dec. 9, 1873, something strange happened to Thomas B. Cumpston and his wife in Bristol’s Victoria Hotel. From the London Times of Dec. 11:

They were alarmed at about four o’clock in the morning by terrible noises which they could not explain, and which frightened them very much. The bed seemed to open, and did all sorts of strange things. The floor, too, opened, and they heard voices. They were so terrified that they opened their bed-room window and leapt out. Mrs. Cumpston, also, gave her version of the affair. She said they heard terrible noises at about four o’clock in the morning. The floor seemed to be giving way. It certainly opened, and her husband fell down some distance, and she tried to get him up. What they said was repeated every time they spoke. Being very much frightened she asked her husband to fire off his pistol, which he did, into the ceiling.

The two leapt into the yard and ran to a nearby railway station, where police charged them with disorderly conduct and letting off firearms and released them into the custody of a friend. “No explanation can be given of this strange affair, and the belief is that it was an hallucination on the part of the husband.”

One Theodore Reinking, lamenting the diminished glory of his race, wrote a book entitled Dania ad exteros de perfidia Suecorum (1644). It was not a very excellent work, neither was its author a learned or accurate historian, but it aroused the anger of the Swedes, who cast Reinking into prison. There he remained many years, when at length he was offered his freedom on the condition that he should either lose his head or eat his book. Our author preferred the latter alternative, and with admirable cleverness devoured his book when he had converted it into a sauce. For his own sake we trust his work was not a ponderous or bulky volume.

— P.H. Ditchfield, Books Fatal to Their Authors, 1895

Some of us just aren’t cut out for the gentry. Shropshire squire John Mytton hunted naked, rode a horse through the Bedford Hotel, fed his dogs on steak and champagne, overturned gigs, pelted babies with oranges, inebriated his horse, and tried to cure hiccups by setting his shirt on fire. He died in debtor’s prison in 1834.

A biographer notes drily that Mytton once rode a bear into his drawing room in full hunting costume. “The bear carried him very quietly for a time; but on being pricked by the spur he bit his rider through the calf of his leg.”

Proof that age depends on perspective. By Rex Whistler (1905-1944).