A problem from the British Columbia Colleges Senior High School Contest for 2000:
If I place a 6 cm × 6 cm square on a triangle, I can cover up to 60% of the triangle. If I place the triangle on the square, I can cover up to 2/3 of the square. What is the area, in cm2, of the triangle?
(a) 22 4/5
(b) 24
(c) 36
(d) 40
(e) 60
Don Martin’s cartoons in MAD magazine were famous for their sound effects:
LINENLESSNESSES has one I, two Ls, three Ns, four Es, and five Ss.
(Discovered by Sir Jeremy Morse.)
“It is harder to make one’s name by means of a perfect work than to win praise for a second-rate one by means of the name one has already acquired.” — Jean de La Bruyère
In 1911, three British explorers made a perilous 70-mile journey in the dead of the Antarctic winter to gather eggs from a penguin rookery in McMurdo Sound. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow the three through perpetual darkness and bone-shattering cold on what one man called “the worst journey in the world.”
We’ll also dazzle some computers and puzzle over some patriotic highways.
North, South Carolina, is 100 miles southeast of Due West.
Also: Northwest, North Carolina, is in southeast North Carolina, due east of Due West, South Carolina, and east and slightly north of North, South Carolina.
(Thanks, Bob and Rick.)
And while we’re at it:
Proverbs from around the world:
Canada is south of Detroit.
Due to a curve in the border, Windsor, Ontario, lies south of Michigan’s largest city.
A floral compass in Windsor bears a plaque that reads:
THE GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION OF THE U.S.A. AT THIS POINT LIES DUE NORTH OF CANADA
The Spanish monk Florentius made a humble appeal to posterity in 945: Start at the F at top center, and as long as your path works steadily either southeast or southwest you’ll spell out FLORENTIUM INDIGNUM MEMORARE, “Remember unworthy Florentius.”
His manuscript is now in the Biblioteca Nacional de España, so it appears he got his wish.
This must have scared the daylights out of people in 1895 — The Execution of Mary Stuart, one of the first films to use editing for special effects.
After the executioner raises his ax, the actress is replaced with a mannequin.
