— Louis Phillips, Academe, February 1979

Vienna’s Café Central was crowded with intellectuals at the turn of the 20th century, including Freud, Lenin, the Vienna Circle of logical positivists, and endless chessplayers.

When Victor Adler made the argument that war would provoke a revolution in Russia, Leopold Berchtold replied, “And who will lead this revolution? Perhaps Mr. Bronstein sitting over there at the Café Central?”

Mr. Bronstein was Leon Trotsky.

From Benoni Lanctot’s Chinese and English Phrase Book (1867), phrases for English-speaking employers of Chinese-Americans:

• Can you get me a good boy?
• He wants $8.00 per month.
• He ought to be satisfied with $6.00.
• When I find him useful, I will give him more.
• I think he is very stupid.
• Do you know how to count?
• If you want to go out, you must ask me.
• Come at seven every morning.
• Go home at eight every night.
• This lamp is not clean.
• See that the money is weighed.
• If there is any thing short, I will make him pay the difference.
• Take this plate away.
• Change this napkin.
• Did you prepare any toast?
• The tea is too strong.
• Make me a pigeon pie.
• Get a bottle of beer.
• Please carve that capon.
• Tell the cook to roast it better next time.
• This wine glass is not clean.
• The cook is very strange.
• Sometimes he spoils the dishes.
• Tell the cook to fry some pancakes.
• Don’t burn them.
• He did very bad last time.
• I want to cut his wages.
• This tea is very bad.
• Get out of the way.
• Don’t speak with me.
• Who gives you permission?
• Don’t be lazy.
• You ought not to do so.
• Pick this up.
• This is nothing to you.
• He is fit for nothing.
• That belongs to me.
• Carry it up stairs.
• You ought to be contented.

Phrases for Chinese speakers:

• Good morning sir.
• When shall I begin?
• I beg your pardon.
• Lunch is on the table, sir.
• I beg you to consider again.
• It is my duty.
• Sir, what will you have for dinner to-day?
• You must excuse me.
• You must not strike me.

After observing security measures at a number of organizations, University of California psychologist Robert Sommer reflected that a person’s status seems to be tied to his keyring:

S is a person’s status within the organization, D is the number of doors he must open to perform his job, and K is the number of keys he carries. A janitor who can open 20 doors but must carry 20 keys has a status of 1; he’s outranked by a secretary who can open only two doors but can do it with a single key. A staff scientist who can open six doors or cupboards using two keys has status 3, and the lab director might open 15 doors with three keys, giving him a status score of 5.

They’re all outranked by the president of the company, who never has to carry keys at all, since there’s always someone around to open doors for him. “With a K of zero and a high D,” Sommer concluded wryly, “his status rank in the company reaches infinity.”

(“Keys, Kings and Kompanies,” from The Worm Runner’s Digest 3:1 [March 1961], 52-54)

As skywatchers prepared for the return of Halley’s comet in 1910, their excitement turned to trepidation when astronomer Camille Flammarion warned that cyanogen gas in the comet’s tail could poison the atmosphere. The New York Times reported growing alarm among astronomers and warned, “Prof. Flammarion is of the opinion that the cyanogen gas would impregnate the atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet.” The Washington Post quoted astronomer Henri Deslandres that the comet might cause torrential rains; his colleague D.J. McAdam warned that “Disease and death have frequently been ascribed to the admixture of cometary gases with the air.”

As the fateful date approached, an ad appeared in a South African newspaper: “Gentleman having secured several cylinders of oxygen and having bricked up a capacious room wishes to meet others who would share the expense for Wednesday night. Numbers strictly limited.” In Texas, salesmen went door to door selling “comet pills” and leather inhalers. In Germany, anxious residents began wearing comet hats and carrying comet umbrellas.

On the evening of May 18, as Earth passed into the comet’s tail, hundreds marched in a candlelight parade in San Juan, and prayer vigils were held in St. Petersburg churches and on the hilltops around Mexico City. In Lexington, Ky., excited citizens held all-night services, “praying and singing to prepare … [to] meet their doom.”

Nothing happened. Well, nearly nothing: In Towaco, N.J., two men had offered to pay $10 for the best description of the event as viewed from Walkman Mountain. When the town’s weary residents returned from their vigil, they found their chicken coops empty.

Ben Franklin considered dueling a senseless practice, as “whichever is killed the point in dispute remains unsettled”:

To this purpose they have a pleasant little story here. A gentleman in a coffee-house desired another to sit further from him. ‘Why so?’ ‘Because, sir, you stink.’ ‘That is an affront, and you must fight me.’ ‘I will fight you if you insist upon it; but I do not see how that will mend the matter. For if you kill me, I shall stink too; and if I kill you, you will stink, if possible, worse than you do at present.’

(From a letter to Thomas Percival, July 17, 1784.)