“Quake Hairs”

From a Scientific American account of a Thai earthquake on May 13, 1848:

During the shock, there spontaneously came out of the ground a species of human hairs in almost every place — in the bazaars, in the roads, in the fields, and the most solid places. These hairs, which are pretty long, stand upright and adhere strongly to the ground. When they are burned, they twist like human hairs and have a burned smell which makes it to be believed that they are really hairs; they all appeared in the twinkling of an eye during the earthquake. The river of Chantibun was all rippling, and bubbles rose to the surface, so that the water was quite white. It is thought that these hairs may have been produced by electricity.

Similar “hairs” have been reported after other Asian earthquakes. Some have been identified as fibers from the hemp palm Chamaerops fortunei, a native tree. Others remain unexplained.

| History · Oddities · Science & Math

Jim Morrison’s Death

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Jim Morrison’s grave, in Paris. Officially, the Doors frontman died on July 3, 1971, but some questions remain. For one thing, no autopsy was performed; a French physician attributed his death to heart failure on the advice of Morrison’s wife, who was the only one to see the body (and who died herself a few years later). When The Doors’ manager arrived, Morrison’s body was already in a sealed casket.

Beyond that, it’s known that Morrison was tired of fame and had told his bandmates that he wanted to fake his own death. Short of an exhumation, we’ll never know for sure, but Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek has said, “If there was one guy that would have been capable of staging his own death — getting a phony death certificate and paying off some French doctor … and putting a 150-pound sack of sand into a coffin and splitting to some point on this planet — Africa, who knows where — it is Jim Morrison who would have been able to pull it off.”

| Entertainment

Devil Deal

Here’s what a pact with Satan looks like:

I deny God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Mary and all the Saints, particularly Saint John the Baptist, the Church both Triumphant and Militant, all the sacraments, all the prayers prayed therein. I promise never to do good, to do all the evil I can, and would wish not at all to be a man, but that my nature be changed into a devil the better to serve thee, thou my lord and master Lucifer, and I promise thee that even if I be forced to do some good work, I will not do it in God’s honor, but in scorning him and in thine honor and that of all the devils, and that I ever give myself to thee and pray thee always to keep well the bond that I gave thee.

This one was presented as evidence against Urbain Grandier, a French Catholic priest who was executed for seduction and witchcraft in 1634.

| History

Special Delivery

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Where there’s a will, there’s a way. In 1849, Henry Box Brown escaped slavery by mailing himself to Philadelphia.

Brown stood 5’8″ and weighed 200 pounds, and he spent 26 hours in a box 2’8″ x 2′ x 3′. Unfortunately, he spent a lot of it upside down. “I felt my eyes swelling as if they would burst from their sockets,” he later wrote, “and the veins on my temples were dreadfully distended with pressure of blood upon my head.” The trip from Richmond covered 275 miles by overland express stage wagon.

When the box was opened, his first words were “How do you do, gentlemen?”

| History · Oddities

Penthouse, Please

Record skyscrapers through history:

  • 1873 – Equitable Life Building, New York: 142 feet (6 floors)
  • 1876 – St. Pancras Chambers, London: 269 feet (9 floors)
  • 1889 – Auditorium Building, Chicago: 269 feet (17 floors)
  • 1890 – New York World Building, New York: 309 feet (20 floors)
  • 1894 – Manhattan Life Insurance Building, New York: 348 feet (18 floors)
  • 1895 – Milwaukee City Hall, Milwaukee: 350 feet (9 floors)
  • 1899 – Park Row Building, New York: 391 feet (30 floors)
  • 1908 – Singer Building, New York, 612 feet (47 floors)
  • 1909 – Met Life Tower, New York, 700 feet (50 floors)
  • 1913 – Woolworth Building, New York: 792 feet (57 floors)
  • 1930 – Chrysler Building, New York: 925 feet (77 floors)
  • 1931 – Empire State Building, New York: 1,250 feet (102 floors)
  • 1972 – World Trade Center, New York: 1,368 feet (110 floors)
  • 1974 – Sears Tower, Chicago: 1,451 feet (108 floors)
  • 2003 – Taipei 101, Taipei, Taiwan: 1,474 feet (101 floors)
| Technology

Unquote

“In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts in living color, we bring you another first, an attempted suicide.” — Florida newscaster Christine Chubbuck, before shooting herself on live television, July 15, 1974

| Quotations

“The Racetrack”

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In Death Valley, rocks move. No one’s actually seen it happen, but they leave tracks hundreds of feet long. Experts attribute the phenomenon to a combination of wind, ice, and mud, but some of the stones weigh as much as a man. One 700-pound rock disappeared altogether in May 1994. Hmm.

08/28/2014 UPDATE: The puzzle is solved! (Thanks, Dan.)

| Oddities

A Premonition

In April 1865, Abraham Lincoln related the following story to his bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon:

About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. “Who is dead in the White House?” I demanded of one of the soldiers, “The President,” was his answer; “he was killed by an assassin.” Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.

He was assassinated a few days later.

| History · Oddities