A razor company once invited George Bernard Shaw to shave his famous beard. He responded with a postcard:
Gentlemen:
I shall never shave, for the same reason that I started a beard, and for the reason my father started his. I remember standing at his side, when I was five, while he was shaving for the last time. “Father,” I asked, “Why do you shave?” He stood there for a full minute and finally looked down at me. “Why the hell do I?” he said.
— GBS
One may see in the shop-windows of a Fourth avenue confectioner, ‘Pies Open All Night.’ An undertaker in the same thoroughfare advertises, ‘Everything Requisite for a First-class Funeral.’ A Bowery placard reads, ‘Home-made Dining Rooms, Family Oysters.’ A West Broadway restaurateur sells ‘Home-made Pies, Pastry and Oysters.’ A Third avenue ‘dive’ offers for sale ‘Coffee and Cakes off the Griddle,’ and an East Broadway caterer retails ‘Fresh Salt Oysters’ and ‘Larger Beer.’ A Fulton street tobacconist calls himself a ‘Speculator in Smoke,’ and a purveyor of summer drinks has invented a new draught, which he calls by the colicky name of ‘Aeolian Spray.’ A Sixth avenue barber hangs out a sign reading ‘Boots Polished Inside,’ and on Varick street, near Carmine, there are ‘Lessons Given on the Piano, with use for Practice.’ ‘Cloth Cutt and Bastd’ is the cabalistic legend on the front of a millinery shop on Spring street; on another street the following catches the eye: ‘Washin Ironin and Goin Out by the Day Done Here.’
— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882
Sweden holds the modern record for continuous peace.
It has not engaged in war since 1814.
Only ants and men make war on a large scale.
The world’s top 10 consumers of coffee per capita per year, as of 2003:
The average American consumes 4.2 kilograms — more than 9 pounds — of coffee each year.
A man’s likelihood of being gay increases by 33 percent for each older brother he has.
This is magnificent — it’s a document written on birch bark in 12th-century Russia, unearthed in 1951.
A 6-year-old boy named Onfim was learning to write — and doodling on his homework.
Notable authors on the Vatican’s list of prohibited books:
George Bernard Shaw said, “Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.”
In 1946, the inflation rate in Hungary reached 4.19 quintillion percent, a modern record.
By August, all the Hungarian banknotes in circulation would have bought one-thousandth of one U.S. cent.
The smallest post-office in the world is kept in a barrel, which swings from the outermost rock of the mountains overhanging the Straits of Magellan, opposite Terra del Fuego. Every passing ship opens it to place letters in or take them out. Every ship undertakes to forward all letters in it that it is possible for them to transmit. The barrel hangs by its iron chain, beaten and battered by the winds and storms, but no locked and barred office on land is more secure.
— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882