“Oh no! Not another fucking elf!” — Oxford English professor Hugo Dyson, interrupting J.R.R. Tolkien during an early reading from The Lord of the Rings
Trivium
The Hoover Dam spans two time zones.
AWOL
Around 6 p.m on Jan. 14, 1950, a second-year cadet at West Point named Richard Calvin Cox received a visit from a mysterious friend named George who had a German accent.
Shortly afterward, Cox left his dormitory and vanished. His disappearance is still unexplained; he’s the only cadet ever to go missing from West Point. After a fruitless investigation, he was declared legally dead in 1957.
“Horse-Shoe Embedded in a Tree”
As some workmen were cutting down an elm-tree belonging to Mr. Jopson, of Conisbrough, they discovered in the heart of the tree a horse-shoe with a nail in it, in excellent preservation; it is supposed, it must have been lying there for fifty years and upwards: the tree measures five feet in circumference. Mr. Green, of Sheffield, has the shoe now in his possession, where it may be seen by the curious.
— La Belle Assemblée, January 1810
“Self-Locating” Strings
In the decimal expansion for pi, the digits 16470 appear in position 16,470.
And the digits 44899 appear in position 44,899.
Ahoy!
Play your cards right in Nebraska and you could be named an admiral. The landlocked state proudly created its own navy in 1931, and it’s named about 100,000 honorary admirals since then:
And I [the Governor of Nebraska] do strictly charge and require all officers, seamen, tadpoles and goldfish under your command to be obedient to your orders as Admiral—and you are to observe and follow, from time to time, such directions you shall receive, according to the rules and discipline of the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska.
There’s no pay, but you’d be in rare company: Bill Murray, Douglas MacArthur, Jack Nicklaus, and Elizabeth II have all been inducted.
Unquiet Slumbers
Pity Lal Bihari: In 1976 the Indian farmer applied for a bank loan and learned he was dead. His uncle had arranged it in order to get control of his land.
This is fairly common in the crowded northern state of Uttar Pradesh, and it creates an odd predicament: If you complain too much about being dead, your enemies might kill you for real.
The struggle led Bihari to make some strangely existential demonstrations. He added the word “dead” to his name, signed his letters as the “late” Lal Bihari, organized his own funeral, and demanded a widow’s compensation for his wife.
Finally he was recalled to life in 1994, after 18 years in the grave. But the “association of the dead” that he founded has now grown to 20,000 members.
In a Word
dasypygal
adj. having hairy buttocks
“The Fatal Effects of Fear”
One of the officers of Haslar Hospital being dangerously ill, a medical gentleman who was attending him, had occasion, about two o’clock on Saturday morning, the 25th of December, 1814, to send the nurse from the officer’s house to the dispensary; the weather being bad, the nurse wrapped herself round with a piece of red baize, with which she covered, in part, a candle and lantern, to prevent the light from being blown out, as the wind was very high. The rays of light issuing from the red covering, to the imagination of a sentry at a distance, she appeared a terrific spectre; and as she approached him his fear so increased, that he ran from his post with haste to the guard-house, where, in about half an hour, he expired!
— Courier, Dec. 28, 1814
Look, Children
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.