A puzzle from The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night:
“Solve the following problem if you can: a flock of pigeons alighted upon a tree, some perching upon the upper branches and some upon the lower; those upon the upper branches said to those upon the lower: ‘If one of you flies up to us our number will be double yours; if one of us flies down to you, our numbers will be equal.'”
How large was the flock?
In 1999, archaeologists made a stunning find near the summit of a stratovolcano on the Argentina–Chile border. Three Inca children, sacrificed in a religious ritual 500 years earlier, had been preserved immaculately in the small chamber in which they had been left to die. Due to the dryness and low temperature of the mountainside, the bodies had frozen before they could dehydrate, making them “the best-preserved Inca mummies ever found.” Even the hairs on their arms were intact; one of the hearts still contained frozen blood.
Known as the Children of Llullaillaco, they’re on display today at the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in Salta.
In 1957, a runaway cow in Guildford knocked down a man on a pedestrian crossing. At trial, the defendant’s counsel argued that the owner of a tame animal was not liable for damage it did that was “foreign to its species.” Since a cow was undoubtedly tame, he would seek to prove that “the cow attacked the plaintiff; if that were so, there was no liability.” This was followed by a memorable exchange:
His Lordship: Is one to abandon every vestige of common sense in approaching this matter?
Counsel: Yes, my Lord.
The hearing was adjourned, and the court eventually decided for the defendant.
In 2007, during a construction project at 39 Avenue George V in Paris, artist Pierre Delavie draped the site in a scaffolding tarpaulin of 2,500 square meters printed with a distorted image of the site’s former structure. Crows and cornices of polystyrene were even added to complete the effect. When the work was finished, pieces of the trompe-l’œil drapery were sold at auction.
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes — our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.” — G.K. Chesterton
Cruising off Rhode Island in 1717, pirate Samuel Bellamy plundered a Boston sloop and granted his crew’s wish to sink her. Before putting the captain ashore, Bellamy told him:
I am sorry they won’t let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a mischief, when it is not to my advantage; damn the sloop, we must sink her, and she might be of use to you. Though you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by knavery; but damn ye altogether: damn them for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls. They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better make then one of us, than sneak after these villains for employment?
The captain replied that his conscience forbade him to break the laws of God or man. Bellamy returned, “You are a devilish conscience rascal! I am a free prince, and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a hundred sail of ships at sea and an army of 100,000 men in the field; and this my conscience tells me! But there is no arguing with such snivelling puppies, who allow superiors to kick them about deck at pleasure.”
(From Charles Johnson, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, 1724.)
John Alexander Smith, Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, opened a course of lectures in 1914 with these words:
“Gentlemen — you are now about to embark upon a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Some of you, when you go down from the University, will go into the Church, or to the Bar, or to the House of Commons, to the Home Civil Service, to the Indian and Colonial Services, or into various professions. Some may go into the Army, some into industry and commerce; some may become country gentlemen. A few — I hope a very few — will become teachers or dons. Let me make this clear to you. Except for the last category, nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life — save only this — that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.”
David Morice posed this puzzle in the February 1989 issue of Word Ways. The following sentence is such a thicket of interrupting clauses that it’s difficult to divine its meaning. Who is accused, what’s the verdict, what are the crimes, and what’s the real name of the real criminal? “Let’s see you unChandler this one!”
Big Mike, when Susan, without whom he, whose rugged jaw, as he muttered, “Why did you, who committed, after you changed your name, though nobody –” but he paused, while he glared at her, even though Melissa thought, which seemed immaterial, for the courtroom, where the judge, before the verdict, whether Big Mike was guilty, though Melissa, since Ted no longer, however she, when Big Mike, because she blamed him, while the cops, who trusted, although they sensed, until Detective Jennings, against his better judgment, fell in love with the lady, her guilt, her innocence, held him at gunpoint, for her bank robbery, was picked up, played her cards, wanted to buy diamonds for her, murdered him with a dagger, or framed, could be decided, heard Susan’s surprise testimony, was packed with an angry mob, to the prosecuting attorney, of Ted as her real lover, in the witness stand, to catch his breath, “– seems to realize, from Melissa to Joyce, both crimes, lay your rap on me?” under his breath, was clenched bitterly, wouldn’t have been arrested, fingered him, was found guilty!
With Love and with Lust, I often have reckoned,
Whichever comes first soon turns into the second.
(By Oxford English professor Nevill Coghill, 1899-1980.)
