These sentences read the same backward as forward:
In the 1920s, American painter and eccentric Waldo Peirce gave a turtle to the concierge of the building in which he lived. She was delighted with the gift and took great care of her new pet, and she did not notice when Peirce secretly replaced it with a slightly larger turtle. This continued for some time, with Peirce sneaking successively larger turtles into her apartment while she praised her miraculous pet to the neighbors.
Then, after a suitable pause, he began using smaller turtles.
Sarah Bernhardt slept in a coffin. “I found it quite natural to sleep every night in this little bed of white satin which was to be my last couch,” she said — until her sister’s death led to a “tragic-comic incident”:
When the undertaker’s men came to the room to take away the body they found themselves confronted with two coffins, and losing his wits, the master of ceremonies sent in haste for a second hearse. I was at that moment with my mother, who had lost consciousness, and I got back just in time to prevent the black-clothed men taking away my coffin.
“The second hearse was sent back, but the papers got hold of this incident,” she adds wearily. “I was blamed, criticised, etc.”
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Begin on one hand, and count the ten fingers throughout. Begin next time at the finger last counted in the first round, counting this time backwards — ten, nine, eight, seven, six — then holding up the other hand, say ‘And five are eleven.’
— Cassell’s Complete Book of Sports and Pastimes, 1896
Anagrams on Dickens titles:
“We talk about the tyranny of words,” writes David Copperfield, “but we like to tyrannize over them too.”
What’s the difference between six dozen dozen and half a dozen dozen?
If you answered “nothing,” reconsider.
Syllogisms offered in Lewis Carroll’s 1896 textbook in symbolic logic:
1. Babies are illogical.
2. Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile.
3. Illogical persons are despised.
Therefore babies cannot manage crocodiles.
1. No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste.
2. No modern poetry is free from affectation.
3. All your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles.
4. No affected poetry is popular among people of taste.
5. Only a modern poem would be on the subject of soap bubbles.
Therefore all your poems are uninteresting.
Mr. E.N. Sponce, of Windhouse, in the island of Yell, relates, that about the beginning of the present century, during a violent thunderstorm off the Shetland Islands, a fishing-boat belonging to Mr. Midyell was struck by lightning, which came down the mast, tearing it in shivers, and melted into a mass a watch in the pocket of a man (the skipper) who was sitting close by the mast, and considerably scorched him, as well as materially injured the boat, and, more or less, the other five men in it. This account of the occurrence was received by Mr. Spence from the skipper himself.
— John Timbs, Things Not Generally Known, Familiarly Explained, 1859
A baby-patting machine patented by Thomas Zelenka in 1968.
Mark Twain wrote, “A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.”