Late Acceptance

In 1832, at age 19, Giuseppe Verdi applied to study at the Milan Conservatory and was rejected.

In 1898, at the end of his career, he learned that the conservatory had decided to rename itself the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatorium.

“My God, this was all that was lacking to plague the soul of a poor devil like me who desires only to be serene and to die serenely!” he wrote to his publisher. “No, sir! Even this isn’t allowed me! What wrong have I done that I should be tormented like this?”

That’s not quite fair. He had been four years over the age limit and a foreigner to the state of Lombardy-Venetia, where the school was located. But he remembered it as “a Conservatorium that (I do not exaggerate) tried to kill me, and whose memory I should try to escape.”

February 12, 2012February 12, 2012 | Art

Frontier Justice

In 1881 a federal trial judge in the Territory of New Mexico, presiding at Taos in an adobe stable used as a temporary courtroom, passed sentence on murderer José Gonzales. We don’t know the details of Gonzales’ crime, but it must have been extraordinary — here’s the sentence:

José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, in a few short weeks it will be spring. The snows of winter will flee away, the ice will vanish, and the air will become soft and balmy. In short, José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, the annual miracle of the years will awaken and come to pass, but you won’t be here.

The rivulet will run its purring course to the sea, the timid desert flowers will put forth their tender shoots, the glorious valleys of this imperial domain will blossom as the rose. Still, you won’t be here to see.

From every tree top some wild woods songster will carol his mating song, butterflies will sport in the sunshine, the busy bee will hum happy as it pursues its accustomed vocation, the gentle breeze will tease the tassels of the wild grasses, and all nature, José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, will be glad but you. You won’t be here to enjoy it because I command the sheriff or some other officer of the country to lead you out to some remote spot, swing you by the neck from a nodding bough of some sturdy oak, and let you hang until you are dead.

And then, José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, I further command that such officer or officers retire quickly from your dangling corpse, that vultures may descend from the heavens upon your filthy body until nothing shall remain but bare, bleached bones of a cold-blooded, copper-colored, blood-thirsty, throat-cutting, chili-eating, sheep-herding, murdering son of a bitch.

Cleopatra Mathis discovered the transcript in the records of the U.S. District Court, New Mexico Territory Sessions. She published it in Antaeus in autumn 1976.

Shortcut

Dashrath Manjhi

When his wife grew ill in the early 1960s, Indian farmhand Dashrath Manjhi took her from their home in Gelaur to the hospital in the neighboring town of Wazirganj. Unfortunately, this meant a journey of 19 kilometers, as a hillock of solid rock lay between the two villages.

When he returned to Gelaur, Manjhi resolved to improve matters. Working alone with a hammer and chisel, he spent 22 years cutting a passage through a solid mass of rock 360 feet long, 25 feet high, and 30 feet wide. When he finished in the 1980s, he had reduced the route from 19 kilometers to six and the travel time from six hours to one.

When Dasrath died in 2007, the Indian state of Bihar gave him a state funeral. He is remembered today in Gelaur as “the man who moved a mountain.”

See A for Effort.

(Thanks, Jebadiah.)

February 11, 2012February 11, 2012 | Oddities

Defense Posture

You walk into Arlington, Virginia. As the Pentagon comes into view, you’ll be able to see either two or three sides of the building. Which is more likely?

	Select Click for Answer
They’re equally likely. Imagine someone approaching the building from the opposite side. If you can see two sides, she can see three, and vice versa. Because these are the only two possibilities, the probability of each must be 1/2. (Strictly speaking, the two probabilities are perfectly equal only if you’re approaching an abstract pentagonal building from an infinite distance. But you get the point.)

Click for Answer

February 11, 2012January 31, 2013 | Puzzles

“Good Heavens, Holmes!”

Stage instruction from La Tragedia de Baskerville, a five-act drama mounted in Bilbao in 1915 by Gonzalo Jóver and Enrique Arroyo:

El perro ha de ser de atrezzo, grande, negro, de cabeza achatada, en los ojos dos lámparas eléctricas rojas y otra en la boca, simulando la parte de la lengua. El perro irá montado sobre ballestas arquedas, con las patas extendidas en actitud de galopar. Las dos ballestas se unen por dos travesaños que irán debajo de las patas. Del travesaño delantero se engancha un alambre, del cual se tirará fuertemente, para que el perro corra con el movimiento propio del galope. Para que no se vea el montaje es necesario que los apliques sean más altos que el practicable del camino.

The dog, large and black, with red electric lights for eyes and another to indicate the tongue, is to be mounted on arched crossbows, with paws extended as though running. The crossbows are to be joined by two cross timbers, placed under the feet, and to the foremost cross piece a copper wire is to be attached in such fashion that it may be vigorously pulled, to give the animal a galloping movement. Arrangement of the mechanical mounting is to be such that the appliances are not visible from the audience.

Historian Paul Patrick Rogers notes that the play “seems never to have reached Madrid.”

February 10, 2012February 9, 2012 | Literature

Black and White

By Sam Loyd. White to mate in two moves.

	Select Click for Answer
1. Rh8 Kxc2 2. Qh7#

February 10, 2012January 31, 2013 | Puzzles

Forefather

John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, has two living grandchildren.

Tyler (1790-1862) was 63 when he fathered his seventh son, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, in 1853. And Lyon was in his 70s when he fathered two boys, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. in 1924 and Harrison Ruffin Tyler in 1928. (Harrison, now 84, owns Sherwood Forest, the Virginia plantation that his grandfather purchased in 1842.)

This makes Tyler the oldest U.S. president with living grandchildren. Second place belongs to James Garfield, who was 41 years younger than Tyler.

(Thanks, Arnold.)

February 10, 2012February 9, 2012 | History

In a Word

cunctator
n. a procrastinator

February 9, 2012February 8, 2012 | Language

Fashion Victim

Effects of lightning on Mrs. T.T. Boddington, struck as her post-chariot departed Tenbury on April 13, 1832, as reported in the Lancet:

The … electric fluid … struck the umbrella she had in her hand; it was an old one made of cotton, and had lost the ferule that is usually placed at the end of the stick, so that there was no point to attract the spark. It was literally shivered to pieces, both the springs in the handle forced out, the wires that extended the whalebones broken, and the cotton covering rent into a thousand shreds. From the wires of the umbrella the fluid passed to the wire that was attached to the edge of her bonnet, the cotton thread that was twisted round that wire marking the place of entrance, over the left eye, by its being burnt off from that spot all round the right side, crossing the back of the head and down into the neck above the left shoulder. The hair that came in contact with it was also singed; it here made a hole through the handkerchief that was round the throat, and zigzagged along the skin of the neck to the steel busk of her stays, leaving a painful but not deep wound, and also affecting the hearing of the left ear. … There were marks of burning on the gown and petticoat above the steel; and the inside of the stays, and all the garments under the stays, were pierced by the passage of the fluid to her thighs, where it made wounds on both; but that on the left so deep, and so near the femoral artery, that the astonishment is, that she escaped with life;–even as it was, the hemorrhage was very great.

It also magnetized her corset:

“Both ends attract strongly the south pole of the needle, the upper part for some considerable way down; it then begins to lose power over the south pole, and the point of northern attraction is at about one third of the length of the busk from the bottom; so that by far the greatest portion of the whole has acquired southern attraction.”

February 9, 2012September 18, 2019 | Science & Math

Post Haste

In 2002 a Russian student emailed her postal address to a friend in France so that she could send her a Harry Potter book. Unfortunately the French friend’s email program was not set up to display Cyrillic characters; instead, it produced diacritics from the Western character set. Apparently not realizing the error, the French girl copied them down and mailed the package. Postal employees realized what had happened, deciphered the address, and delivered the book successfully. (Thanks, Nicholas.)

Readers of the Strand seemed to delight in torturing the post office. In 1908 one mailed this card, which was delivered successfully, though postal officials said it took them 20 minutes to decipher it:

The address reads “Hemhigheses Hemhayary Achhighelel, Teaarhehentea Veehayelelwhy, Oheldee Esteahayteahighhohen Achohyoueshe, Elhighseaachefhighhehelldee, Esteahayefefes.” “The puzzle … is quite an easy matter once the clue is obtained.”

This American letter was mailed late one Sunday night in 1902:

It was delivered correctly the next morning to Alfred Craven of Chattanooga, Tenn., who remarked, “I think it shows the efficiency of our postal service.” The profile is made up of the letters A. CRAVEN.

February 9, 2012June 1, 2012 | Oddities