Different Strokes

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

In 1964, Swedish journalist Åke Axelsson paid a zookeeper to give a brush and paint to a 4-year-old chimpanzee named Peter. Then he chose the best of Peter’s paintings and exhibited them at the Gallerie Christinae in Göteborg, saying they were the work of a previously unknown French artist named Pierre Brassau.

Critic Rolf Anderberg of the Göteborgs-Posten wrote, “Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brush strokes twist with furious fastidiousness. Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer.”

After Axelsson revealed the hoax, Anderberg maintained that Peter’s work was “still the best painting in the exhibition.”

| Art · Hoaxes

Reverses

In one oft-repeated anecdote from the memoirs of Melville Stone, publisher of the Chicago Daily News in the 1870s, the News suspected that the Chicago Post and Mail, published by the McMullen brothers, was pirating its stories. The News retaliated by printing an account of a famine in Serbia, in which the local mayor was quoted as saying (ostensibly in Serbian) ‘Er us siht la Etsll iws nel lum cmeht.’ When the afternoon edition of the Post and Mail duly reproduced the quote, Stone ran to all the other Chicago papers to reveal the hoax: read backward, the supposed quote said ‘The McMullens will steal this sure.’ According to Stone, the Post and Mail never recovered from the embarrassment, and the Daily News was able to buy it for a pittance less than two years later.

— Stuart Banner, American Property: A History of How, Why, and What We Own, 2011

(Thanks, Keith.)

| Hoaxes · Language

Podcast Episode 97: The Villisca Ax Murders

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jingerelle/5180105661
Image: Flickr

Early one morning in 1912, the residents of Villisca, Iowa, discovered a horrible scene: An entire family had been brutally murdered in their sleep. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe the gruesome crime, which has baffled investigators for a hundred years.

We’ll also follow the further adventures of German sea ace Felix von Luckner and puzzle over some fickle bodyguards.

See full show notes …

| Crime · History · Podcast

Dinner Wit

It’s said that when Frederick the Great hosted Voltaire at Sanssouci Palace, he sent him this puzzling note:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick-rebus.png
Image: Wikimedia Commons

It’s a rebus in French: deux mains sous Pé à cent sous scie? (“two hands under ‘p’ at hundred under saw”) means demain souper à Sanssouci? (“supper tomorrow at Sanssouci?”).

Voltaire replied “Ga!”: Gé grand, A petit! (“big ‘G’, small ‘a’!”) means j’ai grand appétit!, or “I am very hungry!”

| Language · Puzzles

Town and Country

https://pixabay.com/en/chess-player-chess-game-play-chess-122966/

More chess masters reside in New York City than in the rest of the United States combined. We’re planning a chess tournament that all American masters are expected to attend, and we want to minimize the total intercity traveling done by the players. The New York players argue that, by this criterion, the tournament should be held in their city. The West Coast players argue that a city should be chosen near the center of the gravity of the players. Where should we hold the tournament?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Disappeared

first ladies

There are no known pictures of two American presidents’ wives: Martha Jefferson and Margaret Taylor.

We have one silhouette (left) of Jefferson, who was a little over 5 feet tall and had auburn hair and hazel eyes.

And one 1903 book contains a suggested likeness of Taylor (right), who was described during her life as “a fat, motherly looking woman,” “countenance rather stern but it may be the consequence of military association.”

But no portrait of either woman is known to exist. Some artists have attempted renderings based on pictures of their daughters, whom they were said to resemble, but that’s the best we can do.

| History

Living Large

https://pixabay.com/en/elephant-serengeti-national-park-687338/

In his 1984 book Scaling, Duke University physiologist Knut Schmidt-Nielsen points out a pleasing coincidence:

A 30-gram mouse that breathes at a rate of 150 times per minute will breathe about 200 million times during its 3-year life; a 5-ton elephant that breathes at the rate of 6 times per minute will take approximately the same number of breaths during its 40-year lifespan. The heart of the mouse, ticking away at 600 beats per minute, will give the mouse some 800 million heartbeats in its lifetime. The elephant, with its heart beating 30 times per minute, is awarded the same number of heartbeats during its life.

In fact, most mammals have roughly the same number of heartbeats per lifetime, about 109. Small mammals have high metabolic rates and short lives; large ones have low rates and long lives. Humans are lucky: “We live several times as long as our body size suggests we should.”

| Science & Math

In a Word

excogitous
adj. inventive

volitorial
adj. pertaining to flying

empyreuma
n. a burnt smell

Newsreel men recently witnessed an unscheduled drama as flames ended the attempt of Constantinos Vlachos, co-inventor of one of the strangest of flying craft, to win government aid for its development. He had planned an ascent from the lawn of the Congressional Library at Washington, D.C., to demonstrate his ‘triphibian,’ which he claimed could navigate in the air, on land, or in the water. Hardly had he started the motor when fire enveloped the machine. Spectators dashed to his aid and dragged him, severely burned, from the blazing wreck.

— Popular Science, January 1936

(Thanks, Tucker.)

| Language · Technology

Current Affairs

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fly_Tour_1.jpg

Is it possible to sail on a river on a windless day? In Why Cats Land on Their Feet (2012), Mark Levi points out that the answer is yes, at least in principle. If the keel is turned broadly against the current, then this will carry the boat downstream, drawing the sail through the still air. Now the roles of the sail and the keel are reversed: The keel catches the motion of the river, acting as a sail, and the boat follows the course established by the sail, which acts as a keel. “It’s just like regular sailing,” Levi writes, “except upside down.”

That’s from the point of view of an observer on shore. In the boat’s reference frame, the water is still and a wind is blowing upstream. From this perspective the boat is sailing conventionally — the sail is catching the wind and the keel slices through the water.

“This is a neat symmetry,” Levi notes. “The sail and the keel exchange roles, depending on your reference frame! So the sail and the keel have completely equal rights in that respect.”

| Science & Math