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In 1860, Abraham Lincoln received this letter from a Pete Muggins in Fillmore, La.:

God damn your god damned old Hellfired god damned soul to hell god damn you and goddam your god damned family’s god dammed hellfired god damned soul to hell and god damnnation god damn them and god damn your god damn friends to hell god damn their god damned souls to damnation.

“Quarrel not at all,” Lincoln wrote on another occasion. “No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.”

January 24, 2009 | History · Society

Ole!

In 1958, Canada held a bullfight. The Lindsay, Ontario, chamber of commerce approved $12,500 to arrange the event, apparently to promote cultural enrichment, but the transplant was shaky from the start.

Four Mexican matadors showed up on July 21, but the six bulls were delayed at the Texas border and the fight was delayed for three weeks. It finally went ahead, with three matadors, on August 22 and 23, over the objections of the Ontario SPCA, though organizers promised it would be “bloodless.”

Apparently the event itself went well, but when it was over the bulls were retired anyway, and Ontario never tried bullfighting again. Matador Jorge Luis Bernal told the Peterborough Examiner, “If a bull lives, he will be too wise for anyone to fight again. He will know the ways of the bull ring.”

Bacon Testimony

Among trials of individual animals for special acts of turpitude, one of the most amusing was that of a sow and her six young ones, at Lavegny, in 1457, on a charge of their having murdered and partly eaten a child. … The sow was found guilty and condemned to death; but the pigs were acquitted on account of their youth, the bad example of their mother, and the absence of direct proof as to their having been concerned in the eating of the child.

— Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1864

January 19, 2009September 15, 2010 | Oddities · Society

Stress Rehearsal

In 1983, Monya Scully invented a “sound muffling cup into which an enraged person can shout to release tension while avoiding disturbing other persons.”

We don’t know much about Scully, but the patent abstract seems to tell a story: “It is a fact of life that many people in a state of anger shout, often at children, a spouse, a dog, etc. with the motivation being not to communicate, but rather mere anger. … The use of the cup may result in avoidance of embarrassment as is experienced by many after having disturbed others by shouting in a fit of anger.”

January 12, 2009September 15, 2010 | Society · Technology

Divine Mystery

The sermons of London theologian Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872) were always received with rapt concentration. Alas, there was a reason:

“I suppose I must have heard him, first and last, some thirty or forty times, and never carried away one clear idea, or even the impression that he had more than the faintest conception of what he himself meant.” — Sir M.E. Grant Duff
“I do not remember that a word ever came from him betokening clear recognition or healthy free sympathy with anything.” — Thomas Carlyle
“I am never in his company without being attacked with a sort of paroxysm of mental cramp.” — Carlyle’s wife, Jane
“Well! All that I could make out was that today was yesterday, and this world the same as the next.” — Benjamin Jowett
“Frederick Maurice has philosophical powers of the highest order, but he spoils them all by torturing everything into Thirty-nine Articles.” — John Stuart Mill

“Listening to him,” wrote Aubrey de Vere, “was like eating pea soup with a fork.”

January 11, 2009January 12, 2009 | Religion · Society

Teach Your Children Well

Safety lessons for young people, from The Book of Accidents (1831):

“Horses are very dangerous, but most useful animals. To be kicked by them is almost certain death.”

“Careless children, in spite of warning, often run across the street when carts and carriages are near, and are knocked down and run over.”

“Many children delight in teazing dogs, and without caution go too near them, by which they get miserably torn and mangled.”

(More to come.)

January 5, 2009September 15, 2010 | Society

All Relative

The world’s largest family tree belongs to Confucius — his descendants have been carefully cataloged through 2,500 years and more than 80 generations.

This year will see the first published update since 1937. It contains more than 2 million people.

January 4, 2009 | Society

A Delicate Matter

In 1926 an English probate court accepted a will written on an empty eggshell.

A Manchester widow had found the shell on her husband’s wardrobe. On it was written, “17-1925. Mag. Everything i possess. — J. B.”

The dead man had been dieting and used to bring eggs with him to work. His initials had been J.B., the message was in his handwriting, and he had always called his wife “Mag.” The court accepted the shell as a valid will (Hodson v. Barnes, 1926).

One Solution

The Professor brightened up again. ‘The Emperor started the thing,’ he said. ‘He wanted to make everybody in Outland twice as rich as he was before — just to make the new Government popular. Only there wasn’t nearly enough money in the Treasury to do it. So I suggested that he might do it by doubling the value of every coin and bank-note in Outland. It’s the simplest thing possible. I wonder nobody ever thought of it before! And you never saw such universal joy. The shops are full from morning to night. Everybody’s buying everything!’

— Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno

December 28, 2008 | Science & Math · Society

Couch Logic

Your vote will make a difference only if it breaks a tie or creates one.

This is very unlikely to be the case.

So why vote?

December 27, 2008 | Science & Math · Society