In a film’s opening credits, the director always comes last.
“Horses Feeding One Another”
M. de Bossanelle, captain of cavalry in the regiment of Beauvilliers, relates in his ‘Military Observations,’ printed in Paris in 1760, ‘that in the year 1757 an old horse of his company, that was very fine and full of mettle, had his teeth suddenly so worn down that he could not chew his hay and corn, and that he was fed for two months, and would still have been so fed had he been kept, by two horses on each side of him that ate in the same manger. These two horses drew hay from the rack, which they chewed, and afterward threw before the old horse; that they did the same with the oats, which they ground very small and also put before him. This was observed and witnessed by a whole company of cavalry, officers and men.’
— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882
The “Boy in the Box”
On Feb. 25, 1957, a pedestrian came upon a cardboard box in the Fox Chase section of Philadelphia. Inside was the naked, battered body of a young boy between 4 and 6 years old.
A media sensation ensued throughout the Delaware Valley, and pictures of the boy were inserted in every gas bill in Philadelphia. But the boy’s identity has never been established, and the case has never been solved.
Money to Burn
During the German hyperinflation of the early 1920s, prices doubled every 49 hours.
That meant that paper currency notes were cheaper than firewood.
Inverted Sightseeing
In 1900, Johann Hurlinger walked on his hands from Paris to Vienna. He covered 870 miles in 55 days, averaging 10 hours a day. That’s about 1.5 miles per hour.
See also The Stilt-Walkers of Landes.
Slow News Day
Orville Wright over Huffman Prairie, Ohio, October 1905.
The media didn’t make much of the Wright brothers’ early flights, in part because of their secretiveness. Scientific American turned down a story, and the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune ran a 1906 feature called FLYERS OR LIARS?
In a Word
anaxiphilia
n. the act of falling in love with the wrong person
Math Notes
73939133
7393913
739391
73939
7393
739
73
7
… are all prime. So are:
357686312646216567629137
57686312646216567629137
7686312646216567629137
686312646216567629137
86312646216567629137
6312646216567629137
312646216567629137
12646216567629137
2646216567629137
646216567629137
46216567629137
6216567629137
216567629137
16567629137
6567629137
567629137
67629137
7629137
629137
29137
9137
137
37
7
But see Not So Fast.
A Cautionary Tale
John Christian Frommann, doctor of medicine, and professor of philosophy at the college of Coburg, in Franconia, mentions a poor widow woman, aged twenty-six years, who lived out of the town in an unhealthy house, frequented by a great quantity of reptiles. This woman being accustomed to sleep with her mouth open, a snake half a yard long, and of proportionate thickness, crept into her stomach. She was attacked with different complaints, which the author describes at length; but by means of various medicines which he administered, he at length succeeded in making her bring it up, and ridding her of such a disagreeable inmate.
— Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum, 1820
The Rohonc Codex
What is this? No one seems to know. In 1838 a local nobleman donated a 448-page illustrated manuscript to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences as part of a larger library. It’s written in an unknown system of symbols, apparently from right to left, and illustrated with religious, secular, and military scenes. The paper was made in Venice in the 1530s, but the book may have been composed later.
Hungarian, German, and French scholars have been unable to decipher the text, despite more than a century of work. Possibly the whole thing was a hoax by Sámuel Literáti Nemes (1796–1842), a known historical forger. But no one really knows.