There was a young lady named Psyche
Who was heard to ejaculate, “Pcryche!”
For, riding her pbych,
She ran over a ptych,
And fell on some rails that were pspyche.
Math Notes
Good Enough
The 1933 a thoroughbred stallion named Brokers Tip won the Kentucky Derby.
It was the only win of his career.
“The Famous ‘Wheel Question'”
This question was proposed in the Scientific American, in 1868: ‘How many revolutions upon its own axis, will a wheel make in rolling once around a fixed wheel of the same size?’
The question brought to the editor of that paper many replies all claiming to have solved it. Yet the replies were about equally divided as to the number of revolutions, one part claiming one revolution and the other two revolutions. So much interest was manifested in it that Munn & Co. published The Wheel, June, 1868. It contains 72 pages, giving many of the solutions, illustrated by many diagrams.
— Miscellaneous Notes and Queries, August 1889
So who’s right?
Colossus
New York’s Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is the largest suspension bridge in the United States.
Its towers are 1-5/8 inches farther apart at their tops than at their bases — to accommodate the curvature of the earth.
In a Word
nihilarian
n. a person with a meaningless job
Science Fiction
In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift describes two fictional moons of Mars:
They [the Laputan astronomers] have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or ‘satellites,’ which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the centre of Mars, which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation, that influences the other heavenly bodies …
That was in 1726. A century and a half later, two Martian moons were discovered. Phobos and Deimos were in fact about 1.4 and 3.5 diameters from Mars’ center, and they revolved in 7.7 and 30.3 hours, respectively. Voltaire had made a similarly prescient guess in his romance Micromegas of 1752.
Fittingly, two craters on Deimos have been named Swift and Voltaire.
“Hatching Partridges”
In the year 1819, as a cat belonging to Mr. W. Allwork of Goudhurst, was prowling through the meadows, it was observed to kill a partridge, and, on examining the spot, a nest was found, containing eighteen eggs, which were taken up and that evening deposited in an oven that had been recently used. On the following morning, when the oven was opened, the whole of the eggs were found hatched, and the young ones running about, but in catching them three were unfortunately killed; the remaining fifteen were put into the nest, and placed in the meadow where it was taken from on the preceding evening. In a short time the old cock partridge was attracted to the spot, and in a few minutes it departed with the whole brood, in the presence of several persons; since that time they have been freqently seen by the gamekeeper of T. Wallis, Esq.
— “Edinburgh Paper,” cited in The Cabinet of Curiosities, 1824
Low Profile
If you were an early Christian fleeing Roman persecution, Turkey offered more than 200 underground cities, 40 of which contain three levels or more. The largest found so far, in Derinkuyu, has eight floors and extends to a depth of 85 meters, covering as much as 7,000 square feet (some floors haven’t yet been excavated).
It wasn’t a bad life: The larger complexes had rooms for food storage, kitchens, churches, stables, wine and oil presses, and shafts for ventilation. At its height, the city at Derinkuyu could accommodate 50,000 people.
Just Deserts
The image of a man playing chess with the devil for possession of his soul has appeared in many pieces of fiction, notably Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal (and later Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey). In one interesting twist that appears in some folk stories, the devil takes black (naturally), and play goes like this:
1. … Nd4+ 2. Kd6 Qxd7+ 3. Nxd7 Rxd5+ 4. Nxd5 Re6
“Mate!” cries the fiend — but then he takes a second look at the board and disappears with a scream:
