The Teapot Dome scandal rocked the presidency of Warren G. Harding and sent his interior secretary to prison.
And what better way to commemorate it than with this oddly cheery building, which served as a full-service gas station in 1922?
Ask the government — it’s now on the National Register of Historic Places.
This ain’t quite a mystery, but it ain’t normal either. “The Leather Man” traveled in a 365-mile circuit through Connecticut and southern New York between 1858 and 1889. Everything he wore, from hat to shoes, was hand-made of leather.
The strange vagabond orbited through 32 New England towns, stopping at each at intervals of a little more than a month. That would mean he covered 10 miles a day, on average. He slept in rock shelters and caves, building fires to keep warm, and would accept food from local townspeople, often eating on their doorsteps.
His origins and identity are unknown. It’s said that he was fluent in French, but he communicated mostly in grunts and broken English and would abruptly stop a conversation if asked about his past. He had money, and he wasn’t crazy — the Humane Society detained him briefly in 1888, but they had to let him go, declaring him “sane except for an emotional affliction.” In the end, it’s possible he chose this life.
As a newcomer to the NBA in 1974, Atlanta Hawks shooting guard Pete Maravich told a Pennsylvania reporter, “I don’t want to play 10 years and then die of a heart attack when I’m 40.”
After a pickup game in 1988, Maravich suffered a heart attack and died. He was 40 years old.
In The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical (1882), Frank H. Stauffer describes a letter with the following puzzling address:
Wood,
John,
Mass.
It was delivered to John Underwood, Andover, Massachusetts.
Stauffer also tells of a letter arriving in London addressed to “Sromfridevi, Angleterre.” After some thinking, the postmaster sent it on to Sir Humphrey Davy.
“It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.” — Thomas Edison, 1895
There have been travelling wagers, and one of the least singular of such was that of Mr. Whalley, an Irish gentleman (and who we believe edited Ben Johnson’s works), who, for a very considerable wager (twenty thousand pounds, it was said,) set out on Monday the 22nd of September, 1788, to walk to Constantinople and back again in one year. This wager, however whimsical, is not without a precedent. Some years ago a baronet of good fortune (Sir Henry Liddel) laid a considerable wager that he would go to Lapland, bring home two females of that country, and two rein-deer, in a given time. He performed the journey, and effected his purpose in every respect. The Lapland women lived with him about a year, but desiring to go back to their own country, the baronet furnished them with means and money.
— Edmund Fillingham King, Ten Thousand Wonderful Things, 1860
On Dec. 1, 1948, a bather discovered a body on the beach near Adelaide, Australia. The man appeared to be European, about 45 years old, well dressed, and in excellent physical condition. Indeed, the coroner could not determine a cause of death. Still more strangely, it seemed the man had carried no money, and all identifying marks had been removed from his clothes. Apparently he had left a suitcase at the Adelaide railway station, but it contained no useful clues. Photos and fingerprints were circulated throughout the English-speaking world, but no one identified him.
And the body bore one last strange clue: In a trouser fob pocket, one of the investigators found a tiny piece of paper bearing the words “Taman Shud.” Those are the final words in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; they mean “The End.” A local doctor came forward with a copy of that book, from which the words had been clipped. He had found it tossed on the front seat of his car the day before the body was found.
But even that clue went nowhere. To this day, no one knows who the man was or how he died. He’s known only as the Somerton man.
37 = 32 + 72 – 3 × 7 = (33 + 73)/(3 + 7)
Nothing is better than eternal happiness.
Eating a hamburger is better than nothing.
Therefore, eating a hamburger is better than eternal happiness.
In 1961, astronaut Gus Grissom nearly drowned after a splashdown when his Mercury capsule opened prematurely. He recommended making the hatch more secure.
Eight years later he died when Apollo 1 caught fire. The hatch had prevented his escape.