History Brief

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Meade brought his troops to this place where they were to win or lose the fight. At noon all was in trim, and at the sign from Lee’s guns a fierce rain of shot and shell fell on both sides. For three hours this was kept up, and in the midst of it Lee sent forth a large force of his men to break through Meade’s ranks. Down the hill they went and through the vale, and up to the low stone wall, back of which stood the foe. But Lee’s brave men did not stop here. On they went, up close to the guns whose fire cut deep in their ranks, while Lee kept watch from the height they had left. The smoke lifts, and Lee sees the flag of the South wave in the midst of the strife. The sight cheers his heart. His men are on the hill from which they think they will soon drive the foe. A dense cloud of smoke veils the scene. When it next lifts the boys in gray are in flight down the slope where the grass is strewn thick with the slain. … Oh, that there were no such thing as war!

— Josephine Pollard, The History of the United States Told in One-Syllable Words, 1884

| History · Language

Double Act

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In October 1885 Robert Louis Stevenson’s wife woke him out of a troubled sleep, and he cried, “O, why did you wake me? I was dreaming such a fine bogey tale.”

“One man was being pressed into a cabinet, when he swallowed a drug and changed into another being,” he told an interviewer later. “I awoke and said at once that I had found the missing link for which I had been looking so long, and before I again went to sleep, almost every detail of the story, as it stands, was clear to me.”

He wrote out the tale in three days and presented it to his wife, who said he had overlooked the allegory at the heart of the idea. He grew angry, paced his room, and reappeared. “You are right,” he said. “I have absolutely missed the allegory, which after all is the whole point of it.” He threw the manuscript into the fire and spent another three days rewriting it. In all he wrote 64,000 words in six days.

As he crossed to the United States in September 1887, he had an early intimation of the book’s fame: The ill-tempered pilot of his boat had been nicknamed Hyde, and his better-natured partner was called Jekyll.

| Literature

Things to Come

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DR. GALL: You see, so many Robots are being manufactured that people are becoming superfluous; man is really a survival. But that he should begin to die out, after a paltry thirty years of competition! That’s the awful part of it. You might think that nature was offended at the manufacture of the Robots. All the universities are sending in long petitions to restrict their production. Otherwise, they say, mankind will become extinct through lack of fertility. But the R.U.R. shareholders, of course, won’t hear of it. All the governments, on the other hand, are clamoring for an increase in production, to raise the standards of their armies. And all the manufacturers in the world are ordering Robots like mad.

HELENA: And has no one demanded that the manufacture should cease altogether?

DR. GALL: No one has the courage.

HELENA: Courage!

DR. GALL: People would stone him to death. You see, after all, it’s more convenient to get your work done by the Robots.

HELENA: Oh, Doctor, what’s going to become of people?

DR. GALL: God knows, Madame Helena, it looks to us scientists like the end!

— From Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R., which introduced the word robot

| Language · Literature · Society · Technology

The Leisure Class

A sort of mania for gambling overtook White’s, a gentlemen’s club in London, in the 18th century. Excerpts from its betting book:

  • “January the 14th, 1747/8. Mr. Fanshawe wagers Lord Dalkeith one guinea, that his peruke is better than his Lordship’s, to be judged of by the majority of members the next time they both shall meet.”
  • “Lord Ravensworth betts Ld. Leicester & Ld. Coke ten guineas each, that the General Post Office is not three miles distant from Lord Gower’s house in Upper Brooke Street.”
  • “Feb. 10th, 1748-9. Mr. Fanshawe betts Dr. Wm. Stanhope twenty guineas, that there was not a play acted at Covent Garden Play house twenty years ago.”
  • “Ap. 2nd, 1761. Mr. Fanshawe wagers Mr. Gauquier one Guinea that if Mr. Harley comes to the House of Commons the first day of sitting, he comes in a red gown.”
  • “Mr. Talbot bets Lord Frederick Bentinck five guineas, that destroying a horse by poison is not a capital offence by Act of Parliament.”
  • “Mr. Talbot bets Mr. Blackford one guinea, that the play of Julius Cæsar is acted within six weeks from this day. Feby. 15th, 1812.”
  • “Sir G. Talbot bets Sir Watkin W. Wynn five guineas, that he Sir W. does not drink a bottle of claret on French ground before the expiration of this month of March. March 6th, 1814.”
  • “Col. Cooke bets Ld. Clanwilliam thirty-five guineas, that if a person understood between them ever fights a duel, he kills his man.”

In 1816 Lord Alvanley and a friend bet £3,000 as to which of two raindrops would be the first to reach the bottom of a windowpane. In a 1750 letter, Horace Walpole wrote, “They have put in the papers a good story made on White’s; a man dropped down dead at the door, was carried in; the club immediately made bets whether he was dead or not, and when they were going to bleed him, the wagerers for his death interposed, and said it would affect the fairness of the bet.”

| Oddities

Sightseeing

http://www.google.com/patents/US502168

Sumter Battey’s surprisingly modern-looking “aerial machine” was patented in 1893. Essentially it’s an aluminum shell filled with hydrogen and bearing a car full of passengers and freight. The shell is fitted with adjustable wings, and the whole thing is propelled by detonating nitroglycerine pellets in the cup-shaped holder on the right, which can be swung back and forth in order to direct the vessel. “The devices for steering, as well as for causing the explosions, are fully under the control of the operator located within the car D.” What could go wrong?

| Technology

Right of Way

A Moral Principle met a Material Interest on a bridge wide enough for but one.

‘Down, you base thing!’ thundered the Moral Principle, ‘and let me pass over you!’

The Material Interest merely looked in the other’s eyes without saying anything.

‘Ah,’ said the Moral Principle, hesitatingly, ‘let us draw lots to see which shall retire till the other has crossed.’

The Material Interest maintained an unbroken silence and an unwavering stare.

‘In order to avoid a conflict,’ the Moral Principle resumed, somewhat uneasily, ‘I shall myself lie down and let you walk over me.’

Then the Material Interest found a tongue, and by a strange coincidence it was its own tongue. ‘I don’t think you are very good walking,’ it said. ‘I am a little particular about what I have underfoot. Suppose you get off into the water.’

It occurred that way.

— Ambrose Bierce, Fantastic Fables, 1898

| Society

Some Palindromes

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In the minuet in Haydn’s Symphony No. 47, the orchestra plays the same passage forward, then backward.

When Will Shortz challenged listeners to submit word-level palindromes to National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday in 1997, Roxanne Abrams offered the poignant Good little student does plan future, but future plan does student little good.

math palindromes

And Connecticut’s Oxoboxo River offers a four-way palindrome — it reads the same forward and backward both on the page and in a mirror placed horizontally above it.

| Art · Language · Science & Math

Alignment

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When informed of the accession of Peter III of Russia in 1762, George III said, “Well, there are now nine of us in Europe the third of our respective names”:

  • George III, King of England
  • Charles III, King of Spain
  • Augustus III, King of Poland
  • Frederick III, King of Prussia
  • Charles Emanuel III, King of Sardinia
  • Mustapha III, Emperor of the Turks
  • Peter III, Emperor of Russia
  • Francis III, Duke of Modena
  • Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha

Such a coincidence was unprecedented in European history.

| History