The International Zetetic Challenge offered a prize of 200,000 euros to “any person who could prove any paranormal phenomenon.” It ran for 15 years, starting in 1987.

Magician James Randi has offered $1 million to anyone who can show evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event, under test conditions agreed to by both parties.

Both prizes have gone unrewarded.

If you wear an analog watch, you can use it as a compass:

Hold it flat in the palm of your hand, with the hour hand pointing in the direction of the sun. The point midway between the hour hand and the figure 12 is due south.

(In the Southern Hemisphere, point the figure 12 toward the sun. The midpoint between the 12 and the hour hand points north.)

Decibel levels:

• 0 – Threshold of human hearing (with good ears)
• 10 – Human breathing at 3 meters
• 30 – Theater, with no talking
• 40 – Residential area at night
• 50 – Quiet restaurant
• 60 – Office or restaurant
• 70 – Busy traffic at 5 meters
• 80 – Vacuum cleaner at 1 meter; curbside of busy street
• 90 – Loud factory, heavy truck at 1 meter
• 100 – Pneumatic hammer at 2 meters; inside a disco
• 110 – Accelerating motorcycle at 5 meters; chainsaw at 1 meter
• 120 – Rock concert; jet aircraft taking off at 100 meters
• 130 – Threshold of pain; train horn at 10 meters
• 140 – Rifle being fired at 1 meter
• 150 – Jet engine at 30 meters
• 180 – Rocket engine at 30 meters
• 250 – Inside a tornado
• 1,000 – Eruption of Krakatoa

Schopenhauer wrote, “The amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity.”

It’s estimated that if you flip a U.S. nickel 6,000 times, it will land once on its edge.

Physicist J.H. Hetherington had already typed up a physics paper in 1975 when he learned of an unfortunate style rule: Physical Review Letters does not accept the pronoun we in single-author papers.

Hetherington didn’t want to retype the paper — this was before word processors had become widespread — so he added his cat as a second author (“F.D.C. Willard,” for “Felis Domesticus Chester Willard.”)

“Why was I willing to do such an irreverent thing? Against it was the fact that most of us are paid partly by how many papers we publish, and there is some dilution of the effect of the paper on one’s reputation when it is shared by another author. On the other hand, I did not ignore completely the publicity value, either. If it eventually proved to be correct, people would remember the paper more if the anomalous authorship were known. In any case I went ahead and did it and have generally not been sorry. Most people are amused by the concept, only editors, for some reason, seem to find little humour in the story.”

Chester is believed to be the only cat who has published research in low-temperature physics. “When reprints arrived, I inked F.D.C. Willard’s paw and he and I signed about 10 reprints which I sent to a few friends,” Hetherington later recalled. “The story has now been told many times and my wife can add that she sleeps with both authors!”

Harvard philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine typed all his work on an old 1927 Remington typewriter. He had customized it by replacing the 1, !, and ? keys with specialized mathematical symbols.

Someone once asked him how he managed to write without using a question mark.

“Well, you see,” he replied, “I deal in certainties.”

Europe hit a bump in 1582 when it switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian: to realign the equinox, Pope Gregory XIII decreed that October 4 would simply be followed by October 15. This didn’t go over well — servants demanded full pay for the missing time, and people objected to “losing” 10 days of their lives.

At least they got it over with. Protestant England and the American colonies put off the switch until 1752, when they had to skip 10 days in September. “Take this for your consolation,” wrote Ben Franklin in his Almanack, “that your expenses will appear lighter and your mind be more at ease. And what an indulgence is here, for those who love their pillow to lie down in Peace on the second of this month and not perhaps awake.”

Russia stayed on the Julian calendar until it became the Soviet Union — according to the Gregorian calendar, the “October Revolution” actually took place in November.