In the year 1796, died at Wordley Workhouse, Berks, Mary Pitts, aged 70; on being accused of having rummaged the box of another pauper, she wished God might strike her dead if she had; and instantly expired.
— Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum, 1803
27 × 81 = 2187
35 × 41 = 1435
On Dec. 7, 1905, British naturalists J. Nicoll and E.G.B. Meade-Waldo spotted “a creature of most extraordinary form and proportions” during a research cruise off the coast of Brazil. Nicoll described a head “shaped somewhat like that of a turtle” above a 6-foot “eel-like” neck that “lashed up the water with a curious wriggling movement.” Below the water “we could indistinctly see a very large brownish-black patch, but could not make out the shape of the creature.”
They later spied it doing about 8.5 knots, slightly faster than the ship: “From the commotion in the water it looked as if a submarine was going along just below the surface.” The witnesses insisted it was not a whale, though Nicoll felt it was a mammal. That’s all we know.
A curious episode from Goethe’s autobiography:
I rode along the footpath towards Drusenheim, and here one of the most singular forebodings took possession of me. I saw, not with the eyes of the body, but with those of the mind, my own figure coming towards me, on horseback, and on the same road, attired in a dress which I had never worn ; — it was pike-grey with some gold about it. But as I shook myself out of this dream, the figure had entirely disappeared. It is strange, however, that eight years afterwards, I found myself on that very road, on my way to pay one more visit to Frederica, wearing the dress of which I had dreamed, and that, not from choice, but by accident.
“Whatever one may think on such matters in general,” he wrote, “in this instance my strange illusion helped to calm me in this farewell hour.” So there’s that.
As a teenager, George Washington copied out “110 rules of civility and decent behavior in company and conversation,” probably as an exercise in penmanship. Samples:
Washington didn’t compose these — they were originally devised by French Jesuits in 1595 — but both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin later wrote their own rules of good conduct.
exsibilation
n. the action of hissing off the stage
A certain gentleman of Worcester (Mass.) sent a very fine French clock to a well-known jeweler to be repaired, saying that he wished each item of repairing specified. The following is a copy of the bill as rendered:
To removing the alluvial deposit and oleaginous conglomerate from clock a la French, … $0.50
To replacing in appropriate juxtaposition the constituent components of said clock, … .50
To lubricating with oleaginous solution the apex of pinions of said clock, … .50
To adjusting horologically the isochronal mechanism of said clock, … .50
To equalizing the acoustic resultant of escape wheel percussion upon the verge pallets of said clock, … .50
To adjusting the distance between the centre of gravity of the pendulum and its point of suspension, so that the vibrations of the pendulum shall cause the index hand to indicate approximately the daily arrival of the sun at its meridian height, … .50
Total: $3.00
— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882
A traveler reaches a river at the point A and wishes to know the width across to B. As he has no means of crossing the river, what is the easiest way of finding its width?
From Henry Dudeney.
“It is impossible to love and to be wise.” — Francis Bacon
On May 25, 2003, someone stole a Boeing 727 from an airport in Luanda, Angola. The plane, which had been sitting idle for 14 months, took off without communicating with the tower.
An American mechanic, Ben Charles Padilla, was on board at the time. He has not been seen since.
