In 1891, Hermann Reiche patented a platform “to enable an elephant to climb up a tree.”
“Doubt,” wrote Galileo, “is the father of invention.”
Oddities
The Salt Man
In winter 1993 workers in a salt mine in western Iran uncovered the body of a man with long hair and a beard. He had been buried in the middle of a 45-meter tunnel.
Carbon dating showed he had been lying there for 1700 years. It appears he was of high rank and had been struck in the head, but no one knows who he was or how he came to be there.
See also Bog Bodies.
Four-Watt Methuselah
The world’s longest-lived light bulb is in a fire station in Livermore, Calif.
It’s been burning continuously since 1901.
U.S.S. Saratoga
In March 1781, the Continental Navy sloop Saratoga was escorting a convoy of merchant ships off Haiti when it spotted two British sails to the west. It overtook and captured the first ship, put an American crew aboard, and set out after the second.
Midshipman Penfield, commander of that crew, was watching the chase when a strong wind arose, requiring his attention. When he raised his eyes again, the Saratoga had vanished. No trace of her was ever found.
Tommy Jones
On the evening of Aug. 4, 1900, 5-year-old Tommy Jones went missing near his grandfather’s farm in Brecon, South Wales. A 29-day search of the surrounding country found no trace of him.
His body was finally discovered on Pen y Fan, the highest mountain in South Wales, at an altitude of 1,300 feet. He had died of exhaustion and exposure. No one knows what led him there.
Strangely, almost the same thing had happened 10 years earlier in Virginia.
The Snail Telegraph
In the early 19th century, French occultist Jacques Toussaint Benoit became convinced that when two snails touch they form a “sympathetic bond” so that, ever afterward, when one is touched the other will respond.
He got financing to build a “snail telegraph,” a dish in which 24 lettered snails were glued in place. Messages could be sent by touching snails in sequence; their partners, glued to an identical dish elsewhere, would then wriggle, conveying the message.
After a demonstration in October 1851, La Presse hailed the invention as a revolution. Benoit’s backers, however, demanded a stricter test — and found that the inventor had disappeared.
“Value of a Long Psalm”
In old times a culprit, when at the gallows, was allowed to select a Psalm, which was then sung, thereby lengthening the chances of the arrival of a reprieve. It is reported of one of the chaplains to the famous Montrose, that being condemned in Scotland to die for attending his master in some of his exploits, he selected the 119th Psalm. It was well for him that he did so, for they had sung it half through before the reprieve came. A shorter Psalm, and he would have been hung.
— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882
One Mean Plane
In 1943, after a mission in Italy, the American bomber Lady Be Good failed to return to its Libyan base. Apparently lost, the crew had called in for a bearing, but they never arrived. Eventually they were presumed to have crashed in the Mediterranean.
Almost 16 years later, in 1958, a team of British geologists found the plane’s wreckage hundreds of miles away in the Sahara, broken in two but mysteriously well preserved. That created a second mystery: Where were the crew?
Seven bodies were eventually found, far to the north. Low on fuel and thinking themselves over the sea, they had bailed out, landed in the desert, and watched as the unmanned bomber flew out of sight carrying supplies, water, and a working radio. Amazingly, they had stayed alive for eight days in the desert; one walked 109 miles before succumbing.
The plane’s mischief continued even after its destruction. When salvaged parts from the Lady Be Good were installed in other aircraft, they seemed to convey an odd curse. Some transmitters went into a C-54; it encountered propeller trouble and the crew saved themselves only by throwing cargo overboard. A radio receiver went into a C-47; it ditched in the Mediterranean. And an armrest went into a U.S. Army “Otter” airplane; it crashed into the Gulf of Sidra. The crew were never found, but the armrest washed quietly ashore.
No-Show
“In July 1751, were interred, the coffin and remains of a Farmer Stevenage, in Hertfordshire, who died Feb. 1, 1720, and ordered by will, that his estate, which was 400 [pounds] a year, should be enjoyed by his brothers, who were clergymen, and if they should die, by his nephew, till the expiration of thirty years, when he supposed he should return to life, and then it was to revert to him: He also ordered his coffin to be affixed on a beam in his barn, locked, and the key enclosed, that he might let himself out. They staid four days more than the time limited, and then interred him.”
— Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum, 1820
“Oysters Growing on Trees”
Mr. C.H. Williams, of the Geographical Society of England, tells us how oysters inhabit the Mangrove woods in Cuba: ‘For several years I resided in that island, and have several times come across scenes and objects which many people would consider great curiosities — one in particular. Oysters grow on trees, in immense quantities, especially in the southern part of the island. I have seen miles of trees, the lower stems and branches of which were literally covered with them, and many a good meal have I enjoyed with very little trouble in procuring it. I simply placed the branches over the fire, and, when opened, I picked out the oysters with a fork or a pointed stick. These peculiar shell-fish are indigenous in lagoons and swamps on the coast, and as far as the tide will rise and the spray fly so will they cling to the lower parts of the Mangrove trees, sometimes four or five deep, the Mangrove being one of the very few trees that flourish in salt water.’
— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882