A Rare Birthday

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Sweden briefly had a February 30. In planning to switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, the Swedish Empire resolved to omit leap days from 1700 to 1740. It followed through on this plan in 1700, but through error 1704 and 1708 remained leap years. With the time now out of joint, the empire abandoned its plan and returned to the Julian calendar by observing two leap days, February 29 and February 30, in 1712. (Sweden finally converted to the Gregorian calendar in 1753.)

If the original plan had been carried out, a person born on Feb. 29, 1696, would not celebrate a birthday until 1744. As it was, a person born on Feb. 30, 1712, would never celebrate a birthday at all.

| Oddities

Colorful

henry cope

A bizarre entry in the Annual Register of 1806:

“Oct. 25. — Among the personages who lately attracted public notice at Brighton, was an original, or would be original, generally known by the appellation of the green man. He dressed in green pantaloons, green waistcoat, green frock, green cravat; and, though his ears, whiskers, eye-brows, and chin, were powdered, his countenance, no doubt from the reflection of his clothes, was also green. He ate nothing but greens, fruits, and vegetables; had his rooms painted green, and furnished with green sofa, green chairs, green tables, green bed, and green curtains. His gig, his livery, his portmanteau, his gloves, and his whip, were all green. With a green silk handkerchief in his hand, and a large watch chain with green seals, fastened to the green buttons of his green waistcoat, he paraded every day on the Steine.

“This morning at 6 o’clock, this gentleman leaped from the window of his lodging on the south parade, into the street, ran from thence to the verge of the cliff nearly opposite and threw himself over the precipice to the beach below. Several persons immediately ran to his assistance, and carried him, bleeding at the mouth and ears, back to his lodgings. The height of the cliff, from whence he precipitated himself, is about 20 feet perpendicular. From the general demeanour of the above gentleman, it is supposed he is deranged. His name, we understand, is Henry Cope, and that he is related to some highly distinguished families.”

| Oddities

Hocus Pocus

A magician invites me to do the following:

  1. Open a brand-new deck of playing cards and place it face down on the table.
  2. Count off the top 20 cards, turn them face up, and insert them at random into the remainder of the deck.
  3. Shuffle the deck thoroughly.
  4. Count off the top 20 cards and hand them to him under the table.

Now, after a period of mysterious activity under the table, he places his pack of 20 cards next to mine of 32. Using the dark arts, he says, he has arranged that both packs now contain the same number of face-up cards. We count, and they do. How has he accomplished this?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Presumption Rewarded

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Sinclair Lewis received this letter from a lawyer in a Midwestern city:

Dear Lewis:

Have read a few of your works and would like to ask a few favors. Please send me a list of your stories, your autograph, picture, and a letter describing your life. How many children have you and their names.

Thanking you, I am

Yours very truly,

J.J. Jones, Esq.

He responded:

My Dear Jim:

There was only one thing about your nice letter that I didn’t like. It was so sort of formal. True, we have never met, and somehow I feel we aren’t likely to, but, isn’t this a democratic country? So let me call you Jim, and you call me Fatty, or any other friendly name.

Now Jim, I haven’t got a photograph of me here, but I’ll go right down to the junction and have one taken. I’m preparing a letter about my life, but it’s been a pretty long one and a bad one, and that will take me several weeks.

But in the meantime, Jim, I’m awfully interested in lawyers. Kindly send me your picture, picture of your home and office, a list of your assets and liabilities, average income per month, list of the books you have read since 1914, if any. Kindly inform me whether you have ever defended a bootlegger and why. Should be glad to have any other interesting personal information for use in a story. How do you get along with your wife? Kindly explain this in detail.

Thanking you in advance, I remain,

Yours affectionately,

Sinclair Lewis

| Literature · Society

A New Utility

Before the possibility of radio broadcast, inventors experimented with “piping” music into homes acoustically. From London’s Musical World, Jan. 6, 1855:

At the Polytechnic, a band playing in a distant apartment is unheard; but connect the different instruments, by means of thin rods of wood, each with the sounding board of a harp in the lecture theatre, and the music is audible to all as if it were present. The experiments prove, what we have often speculated on, that music might be laid on to the houses of a town from a central source, like gas or water.

“A well-known joker, at the private view, proposed the establishment of a ‘band-ditty’ company on the spot.”

| Technology

A Versatile Palindrome

From Royal V. Heath in Scripta Mathematica, March 1955:

0264 + 4125 + 5610 = 0165 + 5214 + 4620

… remains valid if you split each term with a multiplication sign:

02 × 64 + 41 × 25 + 56 × 10 = 01 × 65 + 52 × 14 + 46 × 20

… or an addition sign:

02 + 64 + 41 + 25 + 56 + 10 = 01 + 65 + 52 + 14 + 46 + 20

Remarkably, everything above holds true if you square each term.

| Science & Math

The Northanger Horrid Novels

In Northanger Abbey, Isabella Thorpe recommends seven Gothic novels to Catherine Morland:

‘Dear creature! how much I am obliged to you; and when you have finished Udolpho, we will read The Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.’

‘Have you, indeed! How glad I am! — What are they all?’

‘I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocket-book. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those will last us some time.’

‘Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?’

‘Yes, quite sure; for a particular friend of mine, a Miss Andrews, a sweet girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the world, has read every one of them.’

For a century it was assumed that Jane Austen had invented these titles, but then Montague Summers and Michael Sadleir discovered they were actual novels. Here’s an excerpt from Horrid Mysteries, which is certainly well named:

‘Thank God, Countess,’ one of them began, ‘that you have been rescued from the cruel hands of that barbarian, and are now in the company of more humane beings!’

‘From what cruel hands?’ I replied, with astonishment.

‘From those of your pretended lover, the Marquis Carlos of G******.’

‘Be silent, vile reptile,’ I exclaimed, ‘and dare not to asperse the name of a man whom I adore!’

Ironically, Austen’s parody may have rescued these titles from an oblivion they otherwise deserved. Announcing his discovery in a 1927 article, Sadleir wrote, “So long as Jane Austen is read — which will be for at least as long as there are readers at all — [these novels] will survive as tiny stitches in the immense tapestry of English literature.”

| Literature