“Geographical Fact”

The shortest line that can be drawn on the earth’s surface, one end of said line being at the mouth of the Rio Grande river in the Gulf of Mexico, and the other end at Pekin, in China, will cross Behring’s Strait. If you doubt it, take a large terrestrial globe and some thread and convince yourself. This truth may be of far greater value than we now know. What say you, gentlemen? Shall we begin the Pekin and Denver road at its Asiatic terminus, and so let the road bring along the labor that is to build it?

— Bizarre Notes & Queries, April 1886

| Trivia

Encore!

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/538633

One candidate for the world’s shortest play is The Exile, by Tristan Bernard.

The curtain rises on a mountaineer in a remote cabin. An exile knocks on the door.

EXILE: Whoever you are, have pity on a hunted man. There is a price on my head.

MOUNTAINEER: How much?

The curtain falls.

But shorter still may be Samuel Beckett’s 1969 play Breath, which lasts 35 seconds. As we view a bare, litter-strewn stage, we hear a baby’s cry, a person inhaling once and then exhaling, and then another cry. At the play’s West End debut, one audience member said, “I just want to put on record that I thought the whole evening was completely bogus and pretentious.”

(Thanks, Adam.)

| Art · Trivia

Angry Planet

History’s 10 deadliest natural disasters:

  1. Yellow River flood, China, summer 1931: 1 million to 2 million dead
  2. Yellow River flood, China, September-October 1887: 900,000 to 2 million dead
  3. Bhola cyclone, East Pakistan, Nov. 13, 1970: 500,000 to 1 million dead
  4. Shaanxi earthquake, China, Jan. 23, 1556: 830,000 dead
  5. Cyclone, Coringa, India, Nov. 25, 1839: 300,000 dead
  6. Kaifeng flood, China, 1642: 300,000 dead
  7. Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami, Dec. 26, 2004: 283,100 dead
  8. Tangshan earthquake, China, July 28, 1976: 242,000 dead
  9. Banqiao Dam failure, China, August 1975: 231,000 dead
  10. Aleppo earthquake, Syria, 1138: 230,000 dead

Six of the 10 occurred in China. See also Death Tolls.

| Death · History · Trivia

Zoo Cliques

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wilderbeest.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

More nouns of assemblage:

  • a business of ferrets
  • a cartload of chimpanzees
  • a coalition of cheetahs
  • a congress of baboons
  • a gang of elk
  • a huddle of penguins
  • a kaleidoscope of butterflies
  • a labour of moles
  • a prickle of porcupines
  • a quarrel of sparrows
  • a romp of otters
  • a tiding of magpies
  • a tower of giraffes
  • a ubiquity of sparrows
  • a whiteness of swans
  • a zeal of zebras

My sources insist that a group of gnus is called an implausibility. Should I believe them?

| Language · Trivia

Flat Lands

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Male-total.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Countries with the lowest high points:

  1. Maldives: 2 meters
  2. Tuvalu: 5 meters
  3. Tokelau: 5 meters
  4. Cocos (Keeling) Islands: 5 meters
  5. Marshall Islands: 10 meters
  6. Cayman Islands: 43 meters
  7. Turks and Caicos Islands: 49 meters
  8. The Gambia: 53 meters
  9. The Bahamas: 63 meters
  10. Anguilla: 65 meters

The Maldives may eventually disappear altogether — sea levels have risen about 20 centimeters in the last century.

| Trivia

Small World

“Formosa” is both a province in Argentina and the former name of Taiwan.

Curiously, those locations are on precisely opposite sides of the earth. Noon at one is midnight at the other, and midwinter at one is midsummer at the other.

| Oddities · Trivia