U.S. Camel Corps

http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=188616

Necessity is the mother of invention. In the 1840s, when Army horses and mules were failing in the American Southwest, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (yes, same guy) allocated $30,000 for “the purchase of camels and the importation of dromedaries, to be employed for military purposes.” The Navy sent a ship to North Africa, and in 1856 33 confused camels arrived in Indianola, Texas.

They did pretty well. After a survey expedition to California, an enthusiastic Col. Edward Beale declared, “I look forward to the day when every mail route across the continent will be conducted … with this economical and noble brute.”

The Civil War put an end to the project, but there’s a strange postscript. Some of the camels escaped into the Texas desert, where apparently they adapted to life in the wild. The last feral camel was sighted in 1941. There’s a movie in here somewhere.

| History · Oddities

Lipogram Pangram

This verse is a combined lipogram and pangram: Each stanza omits the letter e but includes every other letter of the alphabet:

A jovial swain should not complain
Of any buxom fair,
Who mocks his pain and thinks it gain
To quiz his awkward air.

Quixotic boys who look for joys
Quixotic hazards run;
A lass annoys with trivial toys,
Opposing man for fun.

A jovial swain might rack his brain,
And tax his fancy’s might;
To quiz is vain, for ’tis most plain
That what I say is right.

— W.S. Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892

| Language · Poems

R.I.P.

http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=97467

Unfortunate epitaphs:

Sacred to the Memory of
Captain Anthony Wedgwood
Accidentally Shot by His Gamekeeper
Whilst Out Shooting
“Well Done Thou Good and Faithful Servant”

Erected to the Memory
of
John McFarlane
Drown’d in the Water of Leith
By a Few Affectionate Friends

| Death

“The Four Sevens”

Another puzzle from Henry Ernest Dudeney:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16713/16713-h/16713-h.htm

“In the illustration Professor Rackbrane is seen demonstrating one of the little posers with which he is accustomed to entertain his class. He believes that by taking his pupils off the beaten tracks he is the better able to secure their attention, and to induce original and ingenious methods of thought. He has, it will be seen, just shown how four 5’s may be written with simple arithmetical signs so as to represent 100. Every juvenile reader will see at a glance that his example is quite correct. Now, what he wants you to do is this: Arrange four 7’s (neither more nor less) with arithmetical signs so that they shall represent 100. If he had said we were to use four 9’s we might at once have written 99 9/9, but the four 7’s call for rather more ingenuity. Can you discover the little trick?”

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

“The Atuk Curse”

Hollywood has stopped developing The Incomparable Atuk, a comedy about an Eskimo hunter adapting to life in the big city. The project is said to be cursed — four successive actors died after being offered the lead role:

  • John Belushi
  • Sam Kinison
  • John Candy
  • Chris Farley

Farley also showed the script to Phil Hartman in 1998, encouraging him to take a co-starring role. Hartman was murdered later that year.

| Entertainment

Let’s Get This Over With

The longest war in history lasted from 1650 to 1985, between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly (located off the southwest coast of the United Kingdom).

The Dutch had declared it against the Royalists there during the Second English Civil War, and then forgot about it. In 335 years, no shots were fired and no lives were lost.

The shortest war was the Anglo-Zanzibar War, fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar in 1896. It lasted 45 minutes. Kudos.

| History

Dud Bust

In 1979 author Stephen Pile published The Book of Heroic Failures, a celebration of human ineptitude.

The first edition included an application to join the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain; this was removed when the club received more than 30,000 applications and was judged a “failure as a failure.”

The club held two “disastrously successful” meetings, during which president Pile was deposed for showing “alarming competence” by preventing a mishap involving a soup tureen. Shameful.

| Humor