John von Neumann suggested a way to flip a suspect coin and produce fair results: Flip it twice.
Tails-heads decides in favor of one party, heads-tails the other. The two results are equally likely, even with a biased coin. (If it comes up heads-heads or tails-tails, flip it twice again.)
The 14th Lord Berners, Gerald Tyrwhitt-Wilson (1883-1950), was either eccentric or poetic-minded — he used to dye the pigeons at his Faringdon manor house so that when released they became, in Nancy Mitford’s phrase, “a cloud of confetti in the sky.”
Berners also kept a giraffe, installed a piano in his Rolls Royce, and once received Penelope Betjeman’s horse into his drawing room for tea. When a Miss Lobb complained that a tower erected on his Oxfordshire estate would invite suicides, he nailed up a notice: “Members of the Public committing suicide from this tower do so at their own risk.”
Puritans in the 1600s gave their kids some memorably pious names — here’s a sample from a Sussex jury roll circa 1650:
Taken to extremes these could get unwieldy. Charles Bombaugh (1890) claims that “A Puritan maiden, who was asked for her baptismal name, replied, ‘Through-Much-Tribulation-We-Enter-The-Kingdom-Of-Heaven, but for short they call me Tribby.'”
In the late 17th century a member of the British parliament was named Praise-God Barebone, with brothers and sons named Fear-God Barebone, Jesus-Christ-Came-Into-The-World-To-Save Barebone, and If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebone.
The last changed his name to Nicholas.
In the Massachusetts House of Representatives hangs a 5-foot pine cod, a historic symbol of the fishing industry. It’s known as the Sacred Cod of Massachusetts.
The Senate, not to be outdone, has a brass fish surmounting its chandelier.
It’s known as the Holy Mackerel.
lethologica
n. the inability to remember a word
In her 1989 textbook Cognition, psychologist Margaret Matlin notes that most people who read the definitions below find it hard to summon the words they refer to. How many can you name? I’ll give the answers tomorrow.
James Garfield, when not proving the Pythagorean theorem, could write simultaneously in Latin with one hand and in ancient Greek with the other.
Thea Alba (left), “the woman with 10 brains,” toured Europe in 1920 displaying her ability to write in French, German, and English at the same time and to draw a landscape in colored chalk using both hands at once.
You can produce mirror writing by holding a pencil in each hand, writing normally with your dominant hand, and willing the other hand to match it.
“That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.” — Emerson
Place a glass of wine upon a table, put a hat over it, and offer to lay a wager with any of the company that you will empty the glass without lifting the hat. When your proposition is accepted, desire the company not to touch the hat; and then get under the table, and commence making a sucking noise, smacking your lips at intervals, as though you were swallowing the wine with infinite satisfaction to yourself. After a minute or two, come from under the table, and address the person who took your wager with, ‘Now, sir.’ His curiosity being, of course, excited, he will lift up the hat, in order to see whether you have really performed what you promised; and the instant he does so, take up the glass, and after having swallowed its contents, say, ‘You have lost, sir, for you see I have drunk the wine without raising up the hat.’
— Samuel Williams, The Boy’s Treasury of Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations, 1847
LAWN TENNIS COURT contains all the vowels, in order.
Presumably you’ll find some on the Arabian Peninsula.
As he lay dying in 1635, Lope de Vega asked whether the end was at hand. Assured that it was, he murmured, “All right, then, I’ll say it. Dante makes me sick.”
