Times are hard everywhere, but shed a tear for the Kongo Gumi Company of Osaka, Japan. When it closed its doors in January, the construction firm had been operating continuously for 1,400 years. The family business built its first temple in the year 578 and could trace its leadership through 39 generations.
No Man’s Land
Stereocard of no man’s land near Lens, France, during World War I.
Just as I was beginning to forget there were such things as trenches and shrapnel and snipers, they told me a horrible story of two Camerons who got stuck in the mud and sucked down to their shoulders. They took an hour and a half getting one out, and just as they said to the other, “All right, Jock, we’ll have you out in a minute,” he threw back his head and laughed, and in doing so got sucked right under, and is there still. They said there was no sort of possibility of getting him out; it was like a quicksand. …
They told me another story of a man in the Royal Scots who was sunk in mud up to his shoulders, and the officer offered a canteen of rum and a sovereign to the first man who could get him out. For five hours thirteen men were digging for him, but it filled up always as they dug, and when they got him out he died.
— Anonymous, Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915
Writer’s Block
A limerick fan from Australia
Regarded his work as a failure:
His verses were fine
Until the fourth line.
International Board of Hygiene
In 1926 the League of Nations recognized a new medical body, the International Board of Hygiene. It’s a good thing they didn’t assign it any responsibilities: The “board” was really a group of drinking buddies who met in a turf bar in Tijuana during Prohibition. San Diego pathologist Rawson Pickard invented a surgeon, “Honorable J. Fortescue,” as a founder, and anyone who attended a meeting became a lifetime member.
Pickard probably imagined his joke would be exposed pretty quickly, but the other shoe never dropped. In response to his letter, the League of Nations recognized the board in a couple of weeks. Soon the nonexistent Fortescue was invited to join the American Conference on Hospital Service, and the U.S. National Research Council included him in a directory of child psychologists. Pickard began to write articles under his byline and answered journalists’ inquiries on his behalf.
The joke kept snowballing. By 1936 Fortescue was listed in Who’s Who in San Diego, including his publications, association memberships, medical studies and travels. He lived in Paris, ostensibly, but his address was given as “The International Board of Hygiene, 1908 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, Maryland.”
That’s it. For years membership of the International Board of Hygiene spread by invitation, but no one ever caught on. Pickard died in 1963, taking Fortescue with him.
Someone ought to check the rest of our luminaries. Do they all exist?
Tour de France
Riding in the Tour de France is the equivalent of running a marathon almost every day for almost three weeks, plus climbing three Mount Everests. Each day, riders eat up to 10,000 calories, the equivalent of 17 Big Macs.
Unquote
“The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” — Alfred Hitchcock
Faces of a Pandemic
Famous people with HIV:
- Isaac Asimov
- Roy Cohn
- Eazy-E
- Michel Foucault
- Liberace
- Greg Louganis
- Robert Mapplethorpe
- Rudolph Nureyev
- Anthony Perkins
Noah’s Headache
This is a jaglion, a cross between a jaguar and a lion. Big cats interbreed pretty easily, which makes for some confusing nomenclature.
Cross a lion with a tiger and you get a liger or a tigon, depending on the parents’ sexes. Cross a leopard with a jaguar and you’ll get a jagulep or a lepjag. And if you cross a puma with a leopard you get the magnificently named pumapard.
You can even make hybrids of your hybrids. Cross your new jagulep with a lion you’ll have a lijagulep. Keep going and eventually you can make liards, jaguatigers, doglas, leotigs, tigards, tiguars, and liguars.
And theoretically, if you crossed a jaguar with a tigress … you’d get a jagger. Hmmm.
In a Word
quacksalver
n. one who falsely pretends to knowledge of medicine
Starting Early
Ronald Reagan received the following letter in April 1984:
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Andy Smith. I am a seventh grade student at Irmo Middle School, in Irmo, South Carolina.
Today my mother declared my bedroom a disaster area. I would like to request federal funds to hire a crew to clean up my room. I am prepared to provide the initial funds if you will privide matching funds for this project.
I know you will be fair when you consider my request. I will be awaiting your reply.
Sincerely yours,
Andy Smith
Reagan replied, pointing out a technical problem: “The authority declaring the disaster is supposed to make the request. In this case your mother.” He recommended that Andy launch a volunteer program — and sent his congratulations.