The Body in the Cylinder

In 1943 a bulldozer turned up a 6-foot cylinder while clearing building debris from a blitzed site in Liverpool. It was laid aside by the building contractors and remained unregarded for two years, until in July 1945 three boys discovered a human skeleton inside.

It appeared to be the remains of an adult male who had crawled into the cylinder and was lying there, his head pillowed on a brick wrapped in sacking, when he died, probably around 1885. He was wearing Victorian clothing of good quality, and his pockets contained two diaries, a postcard, a handkerchief, a brooch, a signet ring, and some miscellaneous papers.

The postcard was addressed to T C Williams. In 1885 Liverpool had had a paint and brush manufacturer by that name. He had declared bankruptcy the year before, and the inquest hypothesized that he’d left home and been sleeping in the cylinder, perhaps at his place of business, when it became sealed somehow and he’d asphyxiated. Possibly the authorities at the time assumed he’d absconded to escape his debts. There is no record in England of his burial.

The whole case is fascinating.

| Death · Oddities

The AVE Mizar

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AVE-Mizar-1973-N68X-XL.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In 1971, two aeronautical engineering students set out to make an aircraft by mating the wings, engine, and airframe of a Cessna Skymaster to a modified Ford Pinto. In principle you could drive to the airport, attach the wings in two minutes, and get quickly into the air under the combined power of two engines. At your destination you’d land, stop quickly using the car’s four-wheel brakes, detach the wings, and drive off.

By 1973, two prototypes had been built and the FAA was considering certification, but on two testing flights a wing strut detached from the car. One pilot had to land in a bean field, and another died when the wing folded. The project was dropped.

| Technology

Living Sculpture

Crop artist Stan Herd plants, mows, and plows land to create large-scale images visible from the air.

“All over the world farmers draw with the plough, harrow, and harvesting combine, and paint with the colors of their crops,” he says. He applies the same techniques to create portraits, still lifes, and (somewhat recursively) landscapes.

| Art

Duty

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Queen_Mary_with_Princess_Elizabeth_and_Margaret.jpg

In 1936 the Princess learnt that their father had become king. Margaret Rose asked her sister, ‘Does that mean you will have to be the next queen?’ ‘Yes, some day’, replied Elizabeth. ‘Poor you!’ came the response.

— Lucinda Hawksley, Elizabeth Revealed: 500 Facts About the Queen and Her World, 2018

| History

Podcast Episode 313: The Santa Claus Association

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Santa%27s_Portrait_TNast_1881.jpg

In 1913, New York publicist John Duval Gluck founded an association to answer Santa’s mail. For 15 years its volunteers fulfilled children’s Christmas wishes, until Gluck’s motivation began to shift. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe the rise and fall of “Santa’s Secretary” in New York City.

We’ll also survey some splitting trains and puzzle over a difference between twins.

See full show notes …

| History · Podcast · Society

Pursuit

http://cyclopediaofpuzzles.com/page/216

A problem from Sam Loyd’s Cyclopedia of Puzzles, 1914:

Here is the puzzle of Tom the Piper’s Son, who, as told by ‘Mother Goose,’ stole the pig and away he run. It is known that Tom entered the far gate shown at the top on the right hand. The pig was rooting at the base of the tree 250 yards distant, and Tom captured it by always running directly towards it, while the pig made a bee-line towards the lower corner as shown. Now, assuming that Tom ran one-third faster than the pig, how far did the pig run before he was caught?

Intriguingly, Loyd adds, “The puzzle is a remarkable one on account of its apparent simplicity and yet the ordinary manner of handling problems of this character is so complicated that solvers are asked merely to submit approximately correct answers, based upon judgment and common sense, just to see who can make the best guess. The simple rule for solving it, however, which will doubtless be quite new to our puzzlists, is based upon elementary arithmetic.” What’s the answer?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles · Science & Math

First Things First

An odd encounter between Thomas Edison and Henry Ford at a Democratic fundraising luncheon at New York’s Biltmore Hotel, 1916, from the memoir of Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels:

I do not suppose anything so strange ever occurred at a luncheon in New York and elsewhere. … After the first course, Edison, pointing to a large chandelier, with many globes, in the middle of the room, said, ‘Henry, I’ll bet anything you want that I can kick the globe off that chandelier.’ It hung high toward the ceiling. Ford said he would take the bet. Edison rose, pushed the table to one side of the room, took his stand in the center and with his eye fixed on the globe, made the highest kick I have ever seen a man make and smashed the globe into smithereens. He then said, ‘Henry, let’s see what you can do.’ The automobile manufacturer took careful aim, but his foot missed the chandelier by a fraction of an inch. Edison had won and for the balance of the meal or until the ice-cream was served, he was crowing over Ford, ‘You are a younger man than I am, but I can out-kick you.’ He seemed prouder of that high kick than if he had invented a means of ending the U-boat warfare.

(Via Edmund Morris’ 2019 biography Edison.) (Thanks, Aditya.)

| History

Family Resemblance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_Children%E2%80%99s_Games_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games.’ I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? — Don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would not be called “games”‘ — but look and see whether there is anything common to all. — For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look! — Look for example at board games, with their multifarious relationships. Board games, what are some? Consider chess, of course, but think also of Monopoly. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost.– Are they all ‘amusing’? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball-games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear.

— Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953

| Oddities