False Father

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saturday_evening_post_1903_11_28_a.jpg

For more than a century, the cover of the Saturday Evening Post claimed that it was “founded in A.D. 1728 by Benj. Franklin.”

This has never been true. Franklin died in 1790, and his Pennsylvania Gazette ceased publication in 1815. The Post did not appear until six years later, and it proclaimed itself “Founded, A.D. 1821” for the next 77 years, until publisher Cyrus H.K. Curtis acquired it in 1897.

Only then did the reference to Franklin appear — apparently based solely on the fact that the Post had been launched in the same building that had once housed Franklin’s newspaper.

| Literature

Unquote

“Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.” — Lewis Carroll

| Quotations

“A Curious Knife Found in the Flesh of a Codfish”

http://books.google.com/books?id=tMwWAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

While discharging a fare of codfish from the schooner Vinnie M. Getchell, at Gloucester, Mass., on September 15, 1886, Capt. John Q. Getchell, master of the vessel, found imbedded in the thick flesh of a large cod a knife of curious workmanship represented by the accompanying illustration. …

The fish in which the knife was found was one of a fare caught in 75 fathoms of water on the northeast part of George’s Bank; it was apparently healthy, being thick and ‘well-fed,’ and according to Captain Getchell, would weigh about 40 pounds after being split, or say 60 pounds as it came from the water. The general excellent quality of the fare of fish attracted considerable attention from people who saw them, and led to the discovery of the knife. Some remarks having been made concerning the fish, Captain Getchell lifted several of them from a tub (where they had been thrown to wash after being weighed) and exhibited them to the by-standers, commenting on the size and thickness of the specimens. Holding one across the edge of the tub in a semi curved position, he ran his hand over the thicker portion of the fish to call attention to its fatness. In doing so, he felt something hard beneath his fingers, and further examination produced the knife. Of course much surprise was expressed by those present, who had never before seen such a strangely formed implement, and speculation was rife as to how it came there. When found, the knife-blade was closed, and the small or posterior end of the handle was the part first felt by Captain Getchell, and was nearest the tail of the fish.

The handle of the knife is of brass, curved and tapering posteriorly, with a longitudinal incision, on the concave side, to receive the edge of the blade. The handle is remarkable in form, and is suggestive of the handiwork of some savage tribe or the scrimshaw work of a sailor. … The blade is lanceolate in form, with the cutting edge curved outward, to fit into the handle, and the back nearly straight. … The total length, from point to point in a straight line, is 6 1/4 inches.

— Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Dec. 31, 1886

| Oddities

Art Theft

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duke_of_Wellington_2.jpg

This is Francisco Goya’s painting Portrait of the Duke of Wellington.

In 1961 it was stolen from the National Gallery in London.

In 1962 it turned up again — it hangs in Dr. No’s lair in the first James Bond film.

| Art · Crime · Entertainment

Vet Service

In 1936, Democrats took over Rhode Island’s state senate and began giving out $100 bonuses to veterans. Concerned at this liberality, a Republican quietly recommended a bonus for Sgt. Evael O.W. Tnesba of the Twelfth Machine Gun Battalion. A Democrat seconded the bill and it passed immediately, sending a ripple of laughter through the chamber.

Sensing they’d been had, the Democrats referred the bill to a committee for study. There they discovered that Evael O.W. Tnesba spelled backward is Absent W.O. Leave.

“It is true that members of the Rhode Island General Assembly, except dual office holders, get only $300 a year each for their legislative labors,” opined the Providence Journal. “But even for this modest sum they ought to do better than to vote gratuities to non-existent war veterans.”

| Hoaxes

Crass Menagerie

http://books.google.com/books?id=5-cvAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

It’s one thing to shoot a bear, another to take its dignity. From a feature on “animal furniture” in Strand, August 1896:

“This obsequious-looking bear was shot in Russia by no less a personage than the Prince of Wales; and for years it has ‘waited’ meekly in the smoking-room at Marlborough House.”

Evidently this was the vogue in the 1860s. Further examples:

  • A chair made from a baby giraffe shot in British East Africa
  • A pet monkey converted into a candle holder (“Mr. Jamrach, the famous wild beast importer, was vexed with orders for dead monkeys”)
  • A black swan table lamp, made to order for a wealthy Australian gentleman
  • A “tiger chair” made for a gentleman in the Indian Civil Service (“Observe the ingenious way in which the tail is disposed, as though the tiger were coiled right round the chair”)
  • A small elephant made into a hall porter’s chair

Gandhi would later write, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=5-cvAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

| Oddities

The “Child Hatchery”

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2279.htm

Babies were featured in carnival sideshows in the early 20th century, as part of a campaign by German pediatrician Martin Couney to introduce incubators to the public. He had started at the World Exposition in Berlin in 1896, displaying premature babies borrowed from a local charity hospital, then moved to London the following year. The Lancet expressed some misgivings about associating babies with carnival showmen, but it supported Couney’s exhibit and the principle of incubation.

Couney moved to the United States in 1903 and displayed babies at Coney Island every summer for 40 years. Because he charged the parents nothing, the exhibition brought the expensive procedure within reach of needy families, saving hundreds of lives as it educated the public. “Dr. Couney’s Baby Farm” remained open until 1943, shortly after Cornell University opened the city’s first neonatal unit, and a number of adults who had been treated there met regularly in New York.

| Oddities