At 120 feet, the Wright Brothers’ first flight would fit inside a modern Boeing 747.
In the economy section.
A Little Culture
In 1959, Ed Zern reviewed Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Field & Stream:
This fictional account of the day-by-day life of the English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoor-minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour these sidelights on the management of a Midlands shooting estate, and in this reviewer’s opinion this book cannot take the place of J.R. Miller’s Practical Gamekeeping.
He wasn’t serious. On another occasion, a reader complained that his wife wanted him to give up outdoor sports: “If this keeps on I’m going to blow my brains out. Please give me whatever advice you can.” Zern responded: “Since trajectory isn’t important here, our recommendation would be a .35 Remington with 200-grain soft-nose bullet.”
Fire Escape
You’re new to hell, and you’re given a choice: You can go directly to the fourth circle, or you can play simultaneous chess games against Alexander Alekhine and Aron Nimzowitsch. Alekhine always plays black and smokes a pipe of brimstone. Nimzowitsch plays white and wears cufflinks made of human teeth. Neither has ever lost.
If you can manage even a draw against either player, you’ll be set free. But if they both beat you, you’ll go to the eighth circle for eternity.
What should you do?
Math Made Easy
142857 is a cyclic number — you can find its multiples simply by rotating its digits:
- 142857 × 1 = 142857
- 142857 × 2 = 285714
- 142857 × 3 = 428571
- 142857 × 4 = 571428
- 142857 × 5 = 714285
- 142857 × 6 = 857142
Also: 1428572 = 20408122499, and 20408 + 122449 = 142857.
A Sidelong Glance
“Kilt Curiosity,” caricature, continental Europe, circa 1815.
Spike Milligan was wearing traditional Scottish garb when a curious onlooker asked, “So, is there anything worn under the kilt?”
“No,” he answered, “it’s all in perfect working order.”
“The Salamander”
Make of this what you will — it’s a certificate signed in the 1750s by 11 witnesses, including two representatives of the Sorbonne and a counselor to the French parliament:
We, the undersigned, … certify that we have this day, between the hours of eight and ten o’clock in the evening, seen Marie Sonet while in convulsion, her head on one stool and her feet on another, the said stools being entirely within a large fire-place and under the mantel-piece, so that her body was in the air above the fire, which burned with extreme violence, remaining in that position for thirty-six minutes in four different times, (nine minutes each time) without the cloth in which she was wrapped (she was without other clothes) being burned, although the flames sometimes extended above her—the which appears to us to be quite supernatural.
And: “Again, we certify that while we were signing the present certificate, the said Sonet placed herself over the fire in the manner previously described, and remained there nine minutes, appearing to sleep above the brazier, which was very hot, having been replenished with fifteen large logs, and a faggot of kindling wood, during the last two hours and a quarter.”
(Cited in William Hammond, On Certain Conditions of Nervous Derangement, 1881.)
A Devil’s Distinction
Terror and horror, from Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
Ann Radcliffe wrote: “Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them.”
Or, in Devendra Varma’s words, “The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference … between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.”
“I Say”
A gentleman who was in the habit of interlarding his discourse with the expression ‘I say,’ having been informed by a friend that a certain individual had made some ill-natured remarks upon this peculiarity, took the opportunity of addressing him in the following amusing style of rebuke:–‘I say, sir, I hear say you say I say “I say” at every word I say. Now, sir, although I know I say “I say” at every word I say, still I say, sir, it is not for you to say I say “I say” at every word I say.’
— Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1890
Trivium
What’s the most remote capital city in the world?
It’s a tie: Canberra, Australia, and Wellington, New Zealand, are 1,448 miles … from each other.
Fraser Illusion
The horizontal lines are parallel.