Baseball is a game of statistics, but numbers can be deceiving. It’s possible for one batter to outperform another in both halves of the season and still receive a lower batting average:
| First Half | Second Half | Total Season | |
| Player A | 4/10 (.400) | 25/100 (.250) | 29/110 (.264) |
| Player B | 35/100 (.350) | 2/10 (.200) | 37/110 (.336) |
This is an example of Simpson’s paradox, a mathematical quirk that arises occasionally in social science and medical statistics.
A 747 has 6 million parts.
“Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy” was presented to sideshow audiences as a freak of nature, raised by a savage in a Russian cave and prone to barking and growling incoherently when upset.
In reality, Fedor Jeftichew was born in St. Petersburg in 1868, and he spoke Russian, German, and English. His appearance was due to a medical condition called hypertrichosis, or excessive hair growth, the same disorder that produces “bearded ladies.”
Jeftichew inherited the condition from his father, Adrian, who had performed in French circuses. When his father died, Fedor eventually signed with an American show, going on to tour Europe and the United States extensively. He died in Turkey in 1904.
In 1898, Columbus prison inmate Charles Justice helped build and install Ohio’s only electric chair.
Justice finished his sentence and returned to society, but irony caught up with him. Thirteen years later he was back in prison, and on Nov. 9, 1911, he was executed in the same electric chair he had helped to build.
At pH 2.5, Coca-Cola’s acidity is midway between vinegar and gastric acid.
These circles are linked … but no two of them are linked.
They’re called Borromean rings.
Harvard philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine typed all his work on an old 1927 Remington typewriter. He had customized it by replacing the 1, !, and ? keys with specialized mathematical symbols.
Someone once asked him how he managed to write without using a question mark.
“Well, you see,” he replied, “I deal in certainties.”
illeist
n. one who refers to oneself in the third person
At $950 per troy ounce, a B-2 bomber costs more than twice its weight in gold.
“SENDING VESSELS OVER NIAGARA FALLS. — There have been three such instances. The first was in 1827. Some men got an old ship — the Michigan — which had been used on Lake Erie, and had been pronounced unseaworthy. For mere wantonness they put aboard a bear, a fox, a buffalo, a dog and some geese and sent it over the cataract. The bear jumped from the vessel before it reached the rapids, swam toward the shore, and was rescued by some humane persons. The geese went over the falls, and came to the shore below alive, and, therefore, became objects of great interest, and were sold at high prices to visitors at the Falls. The dog, fox, and buffalo were not heard of or seen again.
“Another condemned vessel, the Detroit, that had belonged to Commodore Perry’s victorious fleet, was started over the cataract in the winter of 1841, but grounded about midway in the rapids, and lay there till knocked to pieces by the ice.
“A somewhat more picturesque instance was the sending over the Canada side of a ship on fire. This occurred in 1837. The vessel was the Caroline, which had been run in the interest of the insurgents in the Canadian rebellion. It was captured by Colonel McNabb, an officer of the Canada militia, and by his orders it was set on fire then cut loose from its moorings. All in flames, it went glaring and hissing down the rapids and over the precipice, and smothered its ruddy blaze in the boiling chasm below. This was witnessed by large crowds on both sides of the falls, and was described as a most magnificent sight. Of course there was no one on board the vessel.”
— From Barkham Burroughs’ Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889