102 + 112 + 122 = 132 + 142
Hugh Williams
In the year 1664, on the 5th of December, a boat on the Menai, crossing that strait, with eighty-one passengers, was upset, and only one passenger, named Hugh Williams, was saved. On the same day, in the year 1785, was upset another boat, containing about sixty persons, and every soul perished, with the exception of one, whose name also was Hugh Williams. And on the 5th of August, 1820, a third boat met the same disaster; but the passengers of this were no more than twenty-five, and, singular to relate, the whole perished with the exception of one, whose name was Hugh Williams.
— Bristol Mercury, cited in The Lives and Portraits of Curious and Odd Characters, 1852
Overtime
3,400 workers built the Empire State Building.
Five died.
In a Word
gargalesis
n. forceful tickling
Flowers Would Have Done
Noël Coward was never one for simple congratulations. He sent this telegram to actress Gertrude Lawrence on her debut:
A WARM HAND ON YOUR OPENING
He sent another when she married Richard Aldrich:
DEAR MRS. A HOORAY HOORAY
AT LAST YOU ARE DEFLOWERED
ON THIS AS EVERY OTHER DAY
I LOVE YOU – NOEL COWARD
Ahoy!
1817 saw a rash of sea-monster sightings off the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts. So strong was the craze that in August the New England Linnaean Society announced it had acquired a young sea serpent, which it dubbed Scoliophis atlanticus.
As it turned out, the specimen was a deformed terrestrial snake. Skeptics say this proves that the Gloucester monster didn’t exist. In fact, it only confirms that snakes aren’t sea serpents.
More Magic
If this magic square worked upside down, this one works when reversed, “mirrorwise”:
| 96 | 64 | 37 | 45 |
| 39 | 43 | 98 | 62 |
| 84 | 76 | 25 | 57 |
| 23 | 59 | 82 | 78 |
| 54 | 73 | 46 | 69 |
| 26 | 89 | 34 | 93 |
| 75 | 52 | 67 | 48 |
| 87 | 28 | 95 | 32 |
Here’s Looking At …
In 1982, writer Chuck Ross transcribed the screenplay of Casablanca. He changed the title to Everybody Comes to Rick’s, and he changed the piano player’s name to Dooley Wilson. Then he submitted it to 217 Hollywood agencies.
Only 85 read it. Of those, 38 rejected it outright, 33 recognized it (but only eight specifically as Casablanca), and only three declared it commercially viable.
One suggested turning it into a novel.
See also The Steps Experiment.
Turnabout
Protagoras, an Athenian rhetorician, had agreed to instruct Evalthus in rhetoric, on condition that the latter should pay him a certain sum of money if he gained his first cause. Evalthus when instructed in all the precepts of the art, refused to pay Protagoras, who consequently brought him before the Areopagus, and said to the Judges — ‘Any verdict that you may give is in my favour: if it is on my side, it carries the condemnation of Evalthus; if against me, he must pay me, because he gains his first cause.’ ‘I confess,’ replied Evalthus, ‘that the verdict will be pronounced either for or against me; in either case I shall be equally acquitted: if the Judges pronounce in my favour, you are condemned; if they pronounce for you, according to our agreement, I owe you nothing, for I lose my first cause.’ The Judges being unable to reconcile the pleaders, ordered them to re-appear before the Court a hundred years afterwards.
— Edmund Fillingham King, Ten Thousand Wonderful Things, 1860
A New Observatory
Tourists marvel at the architects of Stonehenge, which apparently was built to align with the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset.
Many then innocently return to New York — where on Dec. 5 and Jan. 8 each year the setting sun aligns perfectly with the east-west streets in Manhattan’s main grid.