Encore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tennant_and_Tchaikowsky_as_Hamlet_and_Yorick.jpg

When Polish composer André Tchaikowsky died in 1982, he left his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company in hopes that he might appear as Yorick in a production of Hamlet.

No one felt comfortable fulfilling this wish until David Tennant used the skull in a performance in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2008. He continued to use it throughout the production’s West End run and in a later television adaptation.

“André’s skull was a profound memento mori, which perhaps no prop skull could quite provide,” said director Gregory Doran. “I hope other productions may, with the greatest respect for André, use the skull as he intended it to be used, for precisely this purpose.”

(Thanks, Pål.)

An old Danish jester named Yorick
Drank a gallon of pure paregoric;
“My jokes have been dull,”
He said, “but my skull
Will one of these days be historic.”

— Ogden Nash

| Death · Literature

Elbow Room

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Equilateral_triangle_cut_to_4.svg

Five points are located in an equilateral triangle with 10-inch sides (or on its perimeter). What’s the maximum distance between the two closest points?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Malice Aforethought

On May 31, 1964, Cyril Church beat Sylvia Nott into unconsciousness. Thinking he’d killed her, he dumped her body in a river, where she drowned.

Is this murder? The deliberate act wasn’t fatal, and the fatal act wasn’t deliberate. “His case is that he genuinely and honestly believed that she was dead,” Justice Glyn Jones told the jury. “I direct you that, if that was his genuine and honest belief, then when he threw what he believed to be a dead body into the river, he obviously was not actuated by any intention to cause death or grievous bodily harm; you cannot cause death or serious bodily harm to a corpse.”

They convicted Church of manslaughter.

| Crime

Memorable Dedications

By Franklin Pierce Adams, in Overset, 1922:

To
Herbert Bayard Swope
without whose friendly
aid and counsel every
line in this book was
written.

By E. Greenly, in The Earth, Its Nature and History, 1927:

To the memory of
my wife Annie
the last act of whose life was to
re-read critically the manuscript
of this book.

By Francis Hackett, in The Invisible Censor, 1921:

To
my wife
Signe Toksvig
whose lack of interest
in this book has been my
constant desperation.

By Benjamin Disraeli, in Vivian Grey, 1826:

To
The Best and Greatest of Men
I dedicate these volumes.
He for whom it was intended will accept and
appreciate the compliment;
Those for whom it was not intended will —
do the same.

By John Burroughs, in Bird and Bough, 1906:

To
the kinglet
that sang in my evergreens in October and
made me think it was May.

By Jerome K. Jerome, in Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, 1886:

To the very dear and well beloved Friend of my prosperous and evil days. — To the friend, who, though in the early stages of our acquaintanceship, he did ofttimes disagree with me, has since come to be my very warmest comrade. To the friend who, however often I may put him out, never (now) upsets me in revenge. To the friend who, treated with marked coldness by all the female members of my household, and regarded with suspicion by my very dog, nevertheless, seems day by day to be more drawn by me, and in return, to more and more impregnate me with the odour of his friendship. To the friend who never tells me of my faults, never wants to borrow money, and never talks about himself. To the companion of my idle hours, the soother of my sorrows, the confidant of my joys and hopes, my oldest and strongest Pipe, this little volume is gratefully and affectionately dedicated.

| Literature

“The Female Soldier”

http://books.google.com/books?id=E3gAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

When George Washington called for volunteers for the Continental Army in 1782, 23-year-old Deborah Sampson dressed as a man and enlisted in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment, giving the name Robert Shurtleff.

She served for 17 months, eating and sleeping with the troops and fighting in several battles in New York — she received a sword wound to the head and a bullet in the thigh, which she removed herself with a penknife.

A doctor discovered her identity when she was hospitalized with fever in summer 1783, but he kept her secret and she was discharged honorably shortly after the Treaty of Paris was signed in September. The government awarded her a pension for her service and extended one to her husband as well, declaring that the Revolutionary War “furnishes no other similar example of female heroism, fidelity, and courage.”

It was quickly forgotten. In 1861 Confederate general Richard Ewell remarked, “Women would make a grand brigade — if it was not for snakes and spiders! They don’t mind bullets — women are not afraid of bullets; but one big black-snake would put a whole army to flight.”

| History

Lights Out

http://www.google.com/patents/US313516?printsec=drawing#v=onepage&q&f=false

Fanny Paul’s “device for inducing sleep,” patented in 1885, works on a simple principle: It restricts blood flow to the brain. Worry “quickens the action of the heart,” which excites the nervous system; by putting a collar around the neck and tightening it with a screw, the insomniac “slightly modifies” the circulation “and thereby reduce[s] the activity of the brain in order that sleep may ensue.”

“I have experimented with different degrees of pressure upon the arteries and veins of the neck,” Paul wrote, “and find that … very soon after this takes place the nervous system becomes soothed and quieted, and sleep follows almost immediately.”

| Technology

Under Cover

A dwarf named Richbourg, who was only sixty centimetres (23 1-2 inches) high, has just died in the Rue du Four, St. Germain, Paris, aged 90. He was, when young, in the service of the Duchess d’Orleans, mother of King Louis Philippe. After the first revolution broke out he was employed to convey despatches abroad, and, for that purpose, was dressed as a baby, the despatches being concealed in his cap, and a nurse being made to carry him. For the last twenty-five years he has lived in the Rue du Four, and during all that time never went out. He had a great repugnance to strangers, and was alarmed when he heard the voice of one; but in his own family he was very lively and cheerful. The Orleans family allowed him a pension of 8000 francs.

— Ballou’s Dollar Monthly Magazine, February 1859

| Oddities

Product Placement

chord theorem

Draw a chord AB through a point P inside a circle, and the product PA × PB is constant — it has the same value for every chord through P.

“Again we have perfect democracy,” write Eli Maor in The Pythagorean Theorem. “Every chord has the same status in relation to P as any other.”

| Science & Math

Phrase Anatomy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Surgeons_at_Work.jpg

Curiosities of medical language:

  • HIRSCHSPRUNG’S DISEASE contains seven consecutive consonants.
  • PSEUDOPSEUDOHYPOPARATHYROIDISM contains each vowel at least twice.
  • CHOLANGIOCHOLECYSTOCHOLEDOCHECTOMY contains six Cs.
  • LAPAROHYSTEROSALPINGOOOPHORECTOMY has three consecutive Os.
  • PANCREATICODUODENOSTOMY contains five vowels in alphabetical order. SUBPOPLITEAL has them in reverse order.
  • UVULOPALATOPHARYNGOPLASTY, SUPRADIAPHRAGMATICALLY, and MACRACANTHORHYNCHIASIS contain no Es.
  • VESICULOGRAPHY contains no repeated letters.
  • PARASITOLOGICAL alternates vowels and consonants.
  • HYDROXYZINE is the only word in the Oxford English Dictionary (second edition) that contains XYZ.
  • BIOPSY is in alphabetical order.
  • Each letter in ZOONOSIS is rotationally symmetrical in uppercase.
  • Each letter in BERIBERI and INTESTINES appears twice.

In 2007 a Spanish physician wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine to tell of a 29-year-old patient with acute tendonitis isolated to the right infraspinatus. The doctor traced the problem to the patient’s new Wii videogame, with which he’d played tennis for several hours the previous day. He dubbed the ailment WIIITIS, a word with three consecutive Is. It’s a variant of NINTENDINITIS, a condition that doctors first recognized in 1990.

(Thanks, Bob.)

| Language