Think of a number greater than 1. Double it.
Between these two values is at least one prime number.
Shocking
A remarkable instance of the salutary effects of atmospheric electricity on the human body is told by the Wolverhampton correspondent of the London ‘Times.’ He states that during a thunder-storm a collier named Bates, who had lost his sight through an accident, was being led home, when a flash of lightning was reflected on the spectacles he was wearing to conceal his disfigurement. After the peal of thunder which followed he complained of pain in his head. The next moment, to his surprise, he found that he had regained possession of his eye-sight. The occurrence caused considerable excitement in the locality.
— Popular Science Monthly, 1889
Boo!
That’s Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her husband, as captured by “spirit photographer” William H. Mumler.
The story goes that Mary sat for the photo in the early 1870s, when she had taken the name Lindall, and that the photographer didn’t know her identity until the exposure revealed the martyred president.
That’s the story. Skeptics immediately accused Mumler of fakery, and he didn’t win any friends with his new career, “revealing” the ghosts of Civil War dead for their grieving families.
That practice was too low even for P.T. Barnum (!), who testified against Mumler in a fraud trial in 1869. He was acquitted, but he died penniless in 1884.
Perhaps Mumler really had discovered an astonishing new technique … but it seems telling that his own ghost has never been photographed.
Let This Be a Lesson
The market square in the Wiltshire town of Devizes contains the following inscription:
On Thursday, 25th January, 1753,
RUTH PEARCE
of Potterne, in this County,
Agreed with Three other Women to buy a Sack of Wheat
in the Market, each paying her due proportion
towards the same.
One of these Women, in collecting the several quotas of
Money, discovered a deficiency, and demanded of
RUTH PEARCE the sum which was wanting
to make good the Amount.
RUTH PEARCE protested that she had paid her Share,
and said she wished she might drop dead if she
had not. — She rashly repeated this awful wish; —
when, to the consternation and terror of the surrounding
multitude, she instantly fell down and expired,
having the money concealed in her hand.
Who’s in Charge Here?
“A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.” — Samuel Butler
“A zygote is a gamete’s way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe.” — Robert Heinlein
“The nucleic acids invented human beings in order to be able to reproduce themselves even on the moon.” — Sol Spiegelman
The Colter Stone
In the early 1930s, a farmer turned up a rock while clearing a field in Idaho. It had been carved into the shape of a man’s head, and it bore the inscription JOHN COLTER on one side and 1808 on the other.
John Colter had left the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1806 to venture alone into the northwest. He returned two years later with stories of strange geysers, hot springs, and bubbling pools of mud. Few believed him.
If the stone is authentic, then Colter did indeed explore Wyoming, cross the Grand Tetons in the dead of winter, and descend alone into Idaho — the first white man to do so.
A Prodigy
A remarkable instance of rapid growth in the human species was noticed in France, in 1729, by the Academy of Sciences. It was a lad, then only seven years old, who measured four feet eight inches and four lines high, without his shoes. His mother observed his extraordinary growth and strength at two years old, which continued to increase with such rapidity, that he soon arrived at the usual standard. At four years old he was able to lift and throw the common bundles of hay in stables into the horses’ racks; and at six years old, he could lift as much as a sturdy fellow of twenty. But although he thus increased in bodily strength, his understanding was no greater than is usual with children of his age; and their playthings were also his favourite amusements.
— John Platts, Encyclopedia of Natural and Artificial Wonders and Curiosities, 1876
High-Flown
“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” “revised by a committee of eminent preceptors and scholars”:
Shine with irregular, intermitted light, sparkle at intervals, diminutive, luminous, heavenly body.
How I conjecture, with surprise, not unmixed with uncertainty, what you are,
Located, apparently, at such a remote distance from, and at a height so vastly superior to this earth, the planet we inhabit,
Similar in general appearance and refractory powers to the precious primitive octahedron crystal of pure carbon, set in the aerial region surrounding the earth.
— William T. Dobson, Poetical Ingenuities and Eccentricities, 1882
Exit
Unusual methods adopted by suicide victims, compiled by George Kennan for a report in McClure’s Magazine, 1908:
- Hanging themselves, or taking poison, in the tops of high trees
- Throwing themselves upon swiftly revolving circular saws
- Exploding dynamite in their mouths
- Thrusting red-hot pokers down their throats
- Hugging red-hot stoves
- Stripping themselves naked and allowing themselves to freeze to death on winter snowdrifts out of doors, or on piles of ice in refrigerator-cars
- Lacerating their throats on barbed-wire fences
- Drowning themselves head downward in barrels
- Suffocating themselves head downward in chimneys
- Diving into white-hot coke-ovens
- Throwing themselves into craters of volcanoes
- Shooting themselves with ingenious combinations of a rifle with a sewing-machine
- Strangling themselves with their hair
- Swallowing poisonous spiders
- Piercing their hearts with corkscrews and darning-needles
- Cutting their throats with handsaws and sheep-shears
- Hanging themselves with grape vines
- Swallowing strips of underclothing and buckles of suspenders
- Forcing teams of horses to tear their heads off
- Drowning themselves in vats of soft soap
- Plunging into retorts of molten glass
- Jumping into slaughter-house tanks of blood
- Decapitation with home-made guillotines
- Self-crucifixion
“One would naturally suppose that a person who had made up his mind to commit suicide would do so in the easiest, most convenient, and least painful way,” Kennan concludes, “but the literature of the subject proves conclusively that hundreds of suicides, every year, take their lives in the most difficult, agonizing, and extraordinary ways; and that there is hardly a possible or conceivable method of self-destruction that has not been tried.”
Unquote
“It is annoying to be honest to no purpose.” — Ovid