The Great Outdoors

On Nov. 20, 1980, Leonce Viator Jr. went fishing with his nephew on Louisiana’s Lake Peigneur. He might have noted two worrisome things: Below the lake was a salt mine, and above it was a drilling rig.

The drill punctured the mine’s roof, and the resulting whirlpool devoured two oil rigs, 11 barges, a tugboat, a loading dock, “assorted greenhouses,” a house trailer, several tractors, countless trees, and most of the Live Oak Botanic Gardens. Amazingly, the water drained so quickly that Viator’s 14-foot aluminum boat was stuck in the mud at the lake’s bottom, and the pair were able to walk away.

No one was killed, but Lake Peigneur is now saltwater.

UPDATE: Viator’s boat wasn’t stuck in the mud — he tied it to a tree, ran to safety, and watched the hole eat both the boat and the tree. There’s good footage here, including the waterfall formed when the normally outflowing Delcambre Canal reversed itself to feed the whirlpool:

(Thanks, Kevin.)

| Oddities

Form Regards

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_Troops_NGM-v31-p372.jpg

The wife of a Russian soldier received this letter, handwritten in cursive, during World War I:

My Dear and Beloved Wife!

I am sending you, my dear, a little note about myself from far away. I am, thank God, alive and well and feel good about myself. Write me about your health and the health of our dear children. If only you knew, how my heart longs for you and the children, if only I could hold you to my chest and kiss you from the bottom of my heart.

I ask you, my darling spouse, write me even more often. I live by your letters alone. As soon as I receive communication from you, I read it through and through several times, and it’s as if I see you and the children, as if I am right next to you.

Every day I pray to our Good Lord above for you and for our children, and I ask Him, so that He, the Merciful, would let us meet again. And I believe, that happy day is not far off. Or, my dearest one, do not despair but instead as soon as you receive my letter, write me back about everything in great detail, for I eagerly await your note. I rely on the Lord, Our God, that I will find you and the dear children in good health and happiness.

I am sending heartfelt greetings to all our friends and family. Let them not forget me, for I shall not forget them.

I remain your loving and faithful husband.

“What is unique about the letter is that the government, not the soldier, authored it,” writes Andrew Carroll in Behind the Lines (2005). “Recognizing the importance of mail to bolster spirits on the home front as well as the battlefield, the Russian government provided these prewritten letters, which soldiers could simply fold up and send to the designated recipient.”

| History

Heaven on Earth

In 1864, Peter and Hannah Armstrong deeded a tract of Pennsylvania land to God:

Containing four square miles of land of which we have redeemed about six hundred acres, and we do hereby set apart the balance of said tract at or before the redemption of the whole world, as the purchased possession of Jesus Messiah, together with all and singular rights, liberties, privileges and appurtenances whatsoever thereunto belonging to us; we do grant, deed and convey to the said Creator and God of heaven and earth and to his heirs Jesus Messiah, for their proper use and behoof for ever. In witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands and seal the day and year above written.

The Deity failed to pay his property taxes, unfortunately, and the land was auctioned back to a human.

In an 1884 will, Charles Hastings deeded a plot of Massachusetts land “unto the Lord Jesus, the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.” Perhaps learning from the Armstrongs’ experience, he gave it in trust, reserving the right as agent to “occupy and improve, make repairs, pay taxes, insurance policies, &c.” But Hastings’ heirs contested the will in 1897, and it was declared invalid.

| Religion

The Crooked Forest

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nowe_czarnowo-krzywy_las.jpeg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Outside the village of Nowe Czarnowo in western Poland is a grove of 400 pine trees bent into curious crooked shapes. The surrounding trees are straight, but these were apparently deliberately bent north at their bases about 10 years after their planting in 1930. No one knows why.

(Thanks, Bullet.)

| Oddities

Invisible Man

The book that Montgomery Carmichael published in 1902 seemed at first to be a straightforward biography:

The will of my friend Philip Walshe has put me in possession of a large and extraordinary collection of valuable MSS., and has at the same time laid upon me a task of no little delicacy and difficulty. These MSS. are the voluminous works of his father, the late Mr. John William Walshe, F.S.A., who died on the 2nd July 1900, aged sixty-three, at Assisi, in Umbria, where he had passed the latter half of his life. Mr. Walshe was well known to scholars as perhaps the greatest living authority on matters Franciscan: otherwise he had practically no fame. The busy world, at all events, knew him not.

“It takes some time to realize that this is all an elaborate piece of mystification,” wrote a Dial reviewer, “and to recall the fact that the name of Walshe does not figure in any actual list of Franciscan scholars, living or dead.”

The Life of John William Walshe is the detailed portrait of a man who never existed. Librarian Edmund Lester Pearson calls it “one of the most inexplicable examples of the literary hoax. … It contained not one atom of satire, it was not a parody, and so far as I, at least, could have discovered by internal evidence, it was what it purported to be: a sober and reverent biography of an Englishman dwelling in Italy, a devout member of the Church of Rome, and in particular an enthusiastic student and pious follower of St. Francis of Assisi.”

Carmichael was a member of the British consular service in Italy and the author of a number of European travel books. So far as I can tell, he never explained this work — he called it only “the story of a hidden life.”

(10/23/2021 This has begun to fascinate me. The New York Times reviewed the book, favorably even while acknowledging its possible falsity, in 1902. Archive.org has a complete copy.)

| Hoaxes · Literature

“Ping-Pong at Its Greatest Height”

http://books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&pg=PA239&id=9awvAAAAMAAJ#v=onepage&q&f=false

This photograph, taken in mid-winter at the highest point in His Majesty’s home domains, shows two of the meteorologists enjoying a game of ping-pong alongside the observatory on the summit of Ben Nevis. The photo was taken when the snow reached an average depth of 7ft., and during the progress of the game the temperature was as low as 18deg. Fahr. The table, composed as it was of a solid block of snow, covered with baize, served its purpose admirably, and the game, if not played under the most favourable climatic conditions, can at least boast of ‘high’ scoring.

— Robert H. Macdougall of Ben Nevis Observatory, quoted in Strand, August 1902

| Oddities

Logic

John-a-Nokes was driving his Cart toward Croydon, and by the Way fell asleep therein: Mean time a Thief came by and stole his two Horses, and went quite away with them; In the End he awaking, and missing them, said, Either I am John a Nokes, or I am not John a Nokes. If I am John a Nokes, then have I lost two Horses; and if I be not John a Nokes, then have I found a Cart.

— The Jester’s Magazine, February 1766

| Humor