xenium
n. a gift given to a guest
“An Ingenious Match Puzzle”
From Henry Dudeney:
“Place six matches as shown, and then shift one match without touching the others so that the new arrangement shall represent an arithmetical fraction equal to 1. The match forming the horizontal fraction bar must not be the one moved.”
Footwork
This walking hero [Daniel Crisp] on Sept. 21, 1802, walked one mile in seven minutes and fifty seconds, on the City-road, London.—July 16, 1817, commenced walking backwards forty miles daily for seven days, and completed 280 miles by that retrograde motion, on Wormwood Scrubs, near London, one hour and a quarter within the given time, to the surprise of thousands who witnessed the performance. … April 23, 1818, commenced walking from London to Oxford, to and fro by way of Datchet, Windsor, and Henley, the distance of sixty-one miles daily for seventeen successive days, and completed the 1037 miles on the 9th of May at eight minutes after eleven at night, being fifty-two minutes within the given time; during the performance of this arduous undertaking it rained heavily for ten days, which caused the Thames to overflow on the road to the depth of two feet and a half, and a quarter of a mile in length, which he was obliged to walk through for five days.
— Pierce Egan, Sporting Anecdotes, Original and Selected, 1822
Mean Winds
The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 traveled 200 miles through the American Midwest, killing nearly 700 people.
Along the way, it drove a 1×5-inch board through a 2×6-inch plank.
The Chair Trick
If you’re a woman and want to humiliate a man, invite him to watch you do this:
- Stand with your toes touching a wall.
- Placing one foot immediately behind the other, take two steps back.
- Have him place a chair between you and the wall.
- Bend at the waist and place the top of your head against the wall.
- Lift the chair.
- Stand erect.
Now challenge him to do the same. If he’s like most men he’ll get stuck on step 6. The common explanation is that men’s hips are built differently; they also have proportionally bigger feet. Either way, you can easily pick his pocket while he’s struggling there.
Unquote
“It is astonishing that there should still be found today people who do not believe that there are witches.” — Henry Bouget, 1602
Rule of Paw
Canadian cats have their own parliament. In the same precinct of Ottawa where the human legislature meets, Irène Desormeaux erected a feline equivalent in the 1970s. The cats are all spayed or neutered, they get free inoculations and medical care, and the whole thing is run by volunteers using personal donations.
The Happiest Place on Earth
Yes, it’s The Rescuers, and yes, that’s a topless woman in the window.
Disney discovered her in two frames of the film’s 1999 home video release, but apparently she’d been there since the film’s premiere in 1977.
The studio recalled 3.4 million videotapes and released a cleaned-up version two months later. If they know who did it, they’re not saying.
Double-Booked
In 1975, Émile Ajar won the Prix Goncourt for his novel The Life Before Us. The French literary prize is awarded only once to each author, so Ajar could not be recognized again.
Or so you’d think. It turned out that Ajar was a pen name of Romain Gary, who had already won the prize in 1956.
Gary/Ajar remains the only author to win the medal twice.
Hokie Justice
Mark Lindsey had just graduated from the Virginia Tech architecture school in 1982 when his firm was asked to design an addition to the football stadium at VT’s rival, the University of Virginia.
“There was a V-shaped opening at the end of the stadium,” he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “And I had a late-night inspiration that the best thing to put in this V-shaped opening was a T.”
To everyone’s surprise, UVA bought it, and Bryant Hall opened in 1985. In fact, though the VT logo was clearly visible from the air, UVA officials didn’t notice it until it was pointed out. They replaced the building in 1999.
“It’s been a great little story to tell at parties,” Lindsey said.