“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

Hands Up

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/830355

There are 13 ways to draw four of a kind and 40 possible straight flushes.

Why then does a straight flush beat four of a kind?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

In a Word

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nikolay_Yaroshenko_-_Sunset_1880s.jpg

kumatage
n. “A bright appearance in the horizon, under the sun or moon, arising from the reflected light of these bodies from the small rippling waves on the surface of the water”

(Nathaniel Bowditch, The New American Practical Navigator, 1837)

| Language

Worth a Try

Publicity hound Jim Moran brought a sealed case of playing cards to a meeting of magicians. One randomly chosen audience member opened the case, a second chose a deck, a third opened the deck, a fourth cut it, and a fifth chose a card.

Moran said, “It’s the six of diamonds.”

It wasn’t. “But if it had been the six of diamonds,” Moran said later, “those bastards would still be talking about it.”

| Humor

Unsatire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kawa1.jpg

Journalist George Shepard Chappell intended his Cruise of the Kawa (1921) as a burlesque on romantic South Sea adventure books — it records author “Walter E. Traprock’s” improbable adventures among the “Filbert Islands” of Polynesia:

The wak-wak has a mouth like a subway entrance and I was told that so great was his appetite for human flesh that when, as occasionally happened, some unfortunate swimmer had been eaten by a shark, a wak-wak was sure to come rushing up and bolt shark, man and all. Consequently I did most of my swimming in the lagoon.

Chappell salted the whole book with nonsense: “Captain Ezra Triplett” is shown holding a flintlock pistol carved out of wood, and the nest of the “Fatu-liva” bird is shown to contain “four snow-white, polka-dotted cubes.” Author Traprock’s other books are even listed as Through Borneo on a Bicycle, Around Russia on Roller Skates, Who’s Hula in Hawaii, and How to Explore, and What.

Inevitably, though, it received several serious reviews, and at least one reader responded to the book’s ad for an excursion to the South Seas in order to “see the cute cannibals.” So — after an interval of bemused blinking, one imagines — Chappell gamely followed it up with My Northern Exposure (1922) and Sarah of the Sahara: a Romance of Nomads Land (1925).

| Hoaxes

The Interloper

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adolf_Friedrich_Erdmann_von_Menzel_046.jpg

Consider the classic story of Henry, a backwoods villager watching a theatrical performance, who leaps to the stage to save the heroine from the clutches of the villain and a horrible death. Of course Henry is mistaken if he thinks he can save the actress. She is not in danger; there is nothing to save her from. But the character she portrays is in danger and does need saving. Can Henry help her, despite the fact that he doesn’t live in her world?

— Kendall L. Walton, “How Remote Are Fictional Worlds From the Real World?”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1978

| Puzzles

Space Saver

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=jkFBAAAAEBAJ

Even in 1923, parking was a problem. Iowa’s Leander Pelton proposed this solution — a lightweight car that can be stood on end and wheeled about on casters.

“When it is in this position, it may be moved through an ordinary doorway, or a very large number of them could be stored or parked in a comparatively small road or floor area.”

Unfortunately it would also be a bonanza for car thieves.

| Technology

Overstuffed Monograms

In 1960, Cambridge graduate Ron Hall announced a discovery he called Hall’s Law: “For any sufficiently large group of people the average number of initials possessed by members of that group is a direct measure of the predominant social class of the group.”

Hall’s computer analysis of the English aristocracy found that dukes averaged four names apiece, marquesses 3.96, earls 3.92, barons 3.53, baronets 3.49, viscounts 3.41, and knights 3.06. As modern examples he named John Selwyn Brooke Lloyd and Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell; those from the past included Admiral the Honorable Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunket-Ernle-Erle-Drax, a commodore of convoys during World War II, and Major Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache, who was killed in World War I.

From across the sea, an American newspaper observed, “It would be interesting to know what the worthy major’s parents called him in his boyhood years.”

| Language · Society

Limericks

A girl who weighed many an oz.
Used language I dare not pronoz.
For a fellow unkind
Pulled her chair out behind
Just to see (so he said) if she’d boz.

There once was a young cow named Zephyr.
She seemed quite an amiable hephyr.
But the farmer came near
And she kicked off his ear,
Which made him considerably dephyr.

(Thanks, Jon.)

A guy asked two jays at St. Louis
What kind of an Indian the Souis.
They said “We’re no en-
Cyclopaedia, by hen!”
Said the guy: “If you fellows St. Whouis?”

A bright little maid in St. Thomas
Discovered a suit of pajhomas.
Said the maiden: “Well, well!
What they are I can’t tell,
But I’m sure that these garments St. Mhomas.”

— Ferdinand G. Christgau

| Language · Poems