84 + 24 + 04 + 84 = 8208
“Singular Death”
On the 8th of August, 1823, a young man, named Thomas Clements, lost his life in a manner as dreadful as it was extraordinary. He was fishing with a draw net, near Elizabeth Castle, Jersey, and taking a little sole out of the net, he put it between his teeth to kill it, when the fish, with a sudden spring, forced itself into his throat, and choked him. The unfortunate man had just time to call for assistance, but it came too late; he expired soon after in dreadful agony.
— The Cabinet of Curiosities, 1824
10/18/2017 UPDATE: It happened again in 2017, this time with a happy ending. (Thanks, Anatoly.)
Head Case
Albert Einstein’s brain sat in a cardboard box for 43 years. After the physicist’s death in 1955, Princeton pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed the organ and took it with him as he moved around the country. He gave it up only in 1998.
Door Hinge
Unrhymable English words: chimney, depth, month, orange, pint, purple, silver.
Buffon’s Needle
Remarkably, you can estimate π by dropping needles onto a flat surface. If the surface is ruled with lines that are separated by the length of a needle, then:
drops is the number of needles dropped. hits is the number of needles that touch a line. The method combines probability with trigonometry; a needle’s chance of touching a line is related to the angle at which it comes to rest. It was discovered by the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc in 1777.
Snow Rollers
Travelers are sometimes surprised to find hundreds of evenly spaced “barrels” of snow on a field or lake. Are they the work of elves?
In fact they’re created when strong winds arise after a fall of light, sticky snow.
When the conditions are right, they can reach 3 feet in diameter.
Clarke’s Law
Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Benford’s Corollary: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Raymond’s Second Law: Any sufficiently advanced system of magic would be indistinguishable from a technology.
Sterling’s Corollary: Any sufficiently advanced garbage is indistinguishable from magic.
Langford’s application to science fiction: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device.
Lipogram in Verse
A poem without the letter s:
Oh! come to-night; for naught can charm
The weary time when thou’rt away.
Oh! come; the gentle moon hath thrown
O’er bower and hall her quivering ray.
The heather-bell hath mildly flung,
From off her fairy leaf, the bright
And diamond dew-drop that had hung
Upon that leaf — a gem of light.
Then come, love, come!
To-night the liquid wave hath not —
Illumined by the moonlit beam
Playing upon the lake beneath,
Like frolic in an Autumn dream —
The liquid wave hath not, to-night,
In all her moonlilt pride, a fair
Gift like to them that on thy lip
Do breathe and laugh, and home it there.
Then come, love, come!
To-night! to-night! my gentle one,
The flower-bearing Amra tree
Doth long, with fragrant moan, to meet
The love-lip of the honey-bee.
But not the Amra tree can long
To greet the bee, at evening light,
With half the deep, fond love I long
To meet my Nama here to-night.
Then come, love, come!
From George Wakeman, “Tormenting the Alphabet,” Galaxy, 1866.
See also Nevermore.
“Australia’s Titanic”
Engineer Claude Sawyer left the Australian steamer Waratah when it docked in Durban in July 1909. He said he’d seen a vision of a man “with a long sword in a peculiar dress. He was holding the sword in his right hand, and it was covered in blood.”
The Waratah left for Cape Town carrying 211 passengers. It was never seen again.
In a Word
iatronudia
n. a woman’s pretending to be ill in order to disrobe in front of a doctor