The Loneliest Number

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/431646

When Washington’s power elite convene for the president’s annual State of the Union address, there’s always a cabinet member missing:

  • 2007: Alberto Gonzales, attorney general
  • 2006: Jim Nicholson, secretary of veterans affairs
  • 2005: Donald Evans, secretary of commerce
  • 2004: Donald Evans, secretary of commerce
  • 2003: John Ashcroft, attorney general
  • 2002: Gale Norton, secretary of the interior
  • 2001: Anthony Principi, secretary of veterans affairs
  • 2000: Bill Richardson, secretary of energy

That member stays at a remote location in case some catastrophe strikes the Capitol.

He’s called the designated survivor.

| Death · Society

Frost Fairs

1683 Frost Fair

If you’re looking for proof of climate change, consider that Londoners used to hold festivals on the frozen Thames that could go on for weeks. Of the 1683-84 “frost fair,” pictured above, diarist John Evelyn wrote:

Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, and from several other stairs too and fro, as in the streets, sleds, sliding with skates, bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays and interludes, cooks, tippling and other lewd places, so that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water.

Between 1400 and 1814 there are 23 documented cases of the Thames freezing over. The last fair lasted only four days, though; the climate was changing, and the river ran more swiftly as it was embanked during the 19th century.

| History · Society

Skill Sets

Discontinued merit badges:

  • Clerk (1911)
  • Horseman (1911)
  • Seaman (1911)
  • Mining (1937)
  • Airplane Design (1952)
  • Blacksmithing (1952)
  • Cement Work (1952)
  • Foundry Practice (1952)
  • Soil Management (1952)
  • Stalking (!) (1952)
  • Wood Turning (1952)
  • Farm Home and Its Planning (1959)
  • Dairying (1975)
  • Pigeon Raising (1980)
  • Rabbit Raising (1993)
  • Agribusiness (1995)
  • Beekeeping (1995)

What did the Boy Scout say when he’d fixed the pager? “Beep repaired.”

| Society · Trivia

Inferno Etiquette

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chicago-fire1.jpg

Mark Twain’s list of 27 items to be rescued from a boardinghouse fire:

  1. Fiancees
  2. Persons toward whom the operator feels a tender sentiment, but has not yet declared himself
  3. Sisters
  4. Stepsisters
  5. Nieces
  6. First cousins
  7. Cripples
  8. Second cousins
  9. Invalids
  10. Young lady relations by marriage
  11. Third cousins, and young lady friends of the family
  12. The unclassified
  13. Babies
  14. Children under 10 years of age
  15. Young widows
  16. Young married females
  17. Elderly married ditto
  18. Elderly widows
  19. Clergymen
  20. Boarders in general
  21. Female domestics
  22. Male ditto
  23. Landlady
  24. Landlord
  25. Firemen
  26. Furniture
  27. Mothers-in-law

“In either ascending or descending the stairs,” Twain wrote, “the young gentleman shall walk beside the young lady, if the stairs are wide enough to allow it; otherwise he must precede her. In no case must he follow her. This is de rigueur.”

| Humor · Literature · Society

Ahem

How to address your betters:

  • Kings: “Your Majesty”
  • Popes: “Your Holiness”
  • Emperors: “Your Imperial Majesty”
  • Presidents: “Your Excellency” (“Mr. President” in the United States)
  • Dukes: “Your Grace”
  • Magistrates: “Your Worship”
  • Judges: “Your Honor”

In 1732, Alexander Pope gave a greyhound to George II. He engraved a couplet on its collar: “I am his Highness’ dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?”

| Society

So There

http://static.flickr.com/101/317279570_88c6eaea41.jpg

“The greatest smoker in Europe died at Rotterdam, and left behind him the most curious of wills. He expresses the wish in his last testament that all the smokers of the country be invited to attend his obsequies, and that they smoke while following in the funeral cortege. He directs that his body be placed in a coffin, which shall be lined with wood taken from old Havana cigar boxes. At the foot of his bier, tobacco, cigars, and matches are to be placed. And the epitaph which he requests shall be placed upon his tombstone is as follows:

Here Lies
TOM KLAES,
The Greatest Smoker in Europe.
He Broke His Pipe
July 4, 1872.
Mourned by his family and
all tobacco merchants.
STRANGER, SMOKE FOR HIM!

— Charles Bombaugh, Facts and Fancies for the Curious From the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1905

| Death · Society

Nine to Five

Average annual working hours over eight centuries, compiled by Boston College sociologist Juliet Schor:

  • British peasant, adult male, 13th century: 1,620 hours
  • British casual laborer, 14th century: 1,440 hours
  • British worker, Middle Ages, 2,309 hours
  • British farmer-miner, adult male, 1400-1600: 1,980 hours
  • Average British worker, 1840: 3,105-3,588 hours
  • Average American worker, 1850: 3,150-3,650 hours
  • Average American worker, 1987: 1,949 hours
  • British manufacturing workers, 1988: 1,855 hours
  • Average German worker, 2000: 1,362 hours
| Society

Oh Well

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ford_T.JPG

“That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.” — Scientific American, Jan. 2, 1909

| Society · Technology

“A Most Unnatural Bargain”

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/433844

If you’re selling a house in New York, you must disclose the presence of poltergeists. That’s the finding of the New York Supreme Court in Stambovsky v. Ackley, widely known as the “Ghostbusters case of 1991.”

When Jeffrey Stambovsky offered to buy Helen Ackley’s house in Nyack, he didn’t know it was haunted. Stambovsky tried to back out of the deal, but a trial court dismissed his suit.

When he appealed the case, the new court noted that, since the seller had reported the ghosts in Reader’s Digest, she couldn’t claim that they didn’t exist. “As a matter of law, the house is haunted.”

And, it said, a buyer couldn’t be expected to discover ghosts on his own, because “the most meticulous inspection and search would not reveal the presence of poltergeists at the premises or unearth the property’s ghoulish reputation in the community.”

So Stambovsky got no damages but escaped the contract. Moral: caveat emptor.

| Oddities · Society