Oops

That the deliverance of the saints must take place some time before 1914 is manifest, since the deliverance of fleshly Israel, as we shall see, is appointed to take place at that time, and the angry nations will then be authoritatively commanded to be still, and will be made to recognize the power of Jehovah’s Anointed. Just how long before 1914 the last living members of the body of Christ will be glorified, we are not directly informed; but it certainly will not be until their work in the flesh is done; nor can we reasonably presume that they will long remain after that work is accomplished. With these two thoughts in mind, we can approximate the time of the deliverance.

— Charles Taze Russell, Studies in the Scriptures, 1908

That the deliverance of the saints must take place very soon after 1914 is manifest, since the deliverance of fleshly Israel, as we shall see, is appointed to take place at that time, and the angry nations will then be authoritatively commanded to be still, and will be made to recognize the power of Jehovah’s Anointed. Just how long after 1914 the last living members of the body of Christ will be glorified, we are not directly informed; but it certainly will not be until their work in the flesh is done; nor can we reasonably presume that they will long remain after that work is accomplished. With these two thoughts in mind, we can approximate the time of the deliverance.

— Charles Taze Russell, Thy Kingdom Come, 1916

Local Industry

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the tiny town of Vernon in Florida’s panhandle gained a disturbing reputation for insurance fraud. Only 500 people lived in Vernon, but fully 10 percent of these (all men) reported they had lost arms, legs, and fingers. For a brief period this region of Florida accounted for two-thirds of all loss-of-limb claims in the United States.

“Somehow they always shoot off the parts they seem to need least,” noted one investigator. Another wrote, “To sit in your car on a sweltering summer evening on the main street of Nub City, watching anywhere from eight to a dozen cripples walking along the street, gives the place a ghoulish, eerie atmosphere.”

The trend lasted only a few years, and the allegations were never proven, but the town remained sensitive to its reputation for decades. In 1981 filmmaker Errol Morris was planning a documentary about Vernon (where, he said, the people “became a fraction of themselves to become whole financially”). According to Morris’ Web site, the film “had to be retooled when his subjects threatened to murder him.”

Pest Control

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

This looks a bit … direct, but it dates from 1882. James Williams needed a device that would destroy a burrowing animal and give an alarm so that it could be reset. His solution was a revolver attached to a treadle. Touché.

The patent abstract adds, “This invention may also be used in connection with a door or window, so as to kill any person or thing opening the door or window to which it is attached.” Evidently Williams had problems bigger than rodents.

“A Sheep’s Taste for Music”

The Rev. T. Jackson says, in referring to sheep being fond of, and variously affected by, music, that the Highland breed of sheep carry off the palm for cleverness and for their partiality to sweet sounds. He knew one of them that would jump and skip about with considerable pleasure whenever a lively, quick tune was played; but the moment it heard the National Anthem, it would hang down its head, appear to be very sullen, annoyed, and much displeased until the music ceased.

— Vernon S. Morwood, Wonderful Animals, 1883

High-Class Forgery

In 1925, small-time criminal Alves Reis convinced the British firm that printed Portuguese currency to make some for him, and he passed some 5 million phony escudos into the Portuguese economy. Because the unauthorized bills came from official presses, the government at first could detect nothing wrong, but finally it found some duplicate serial numbers in Reis’ accounts and the game was up.

Reis argued that he had cheated no one, but he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Lord Macmillan of Aberfeldy called the scheme “a crime for which, in the ingenuity and audacity of its conception, it would be difficult to find a parallel.”

And it raises an interesting legal question: If currency is produced by an official government printer, can it still be called counterfeit?

Art and Artifice

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NautilusCutawayLogarithmicSpiral.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Suppose … that a finely wrought object, one whose texture and proportions are highly pleasing in perception, has been believed to be the product of some primitive people. Then there is discovered evidence that proves it to be an accidental natural product. As an external thing, it is now precisely what it was before. Yet at once it ceases to be a work of art and becomes a natural ‘curiosity.’ It now belongs in a museum of natural history, not in a museum of art. And the extraordinary thing is that the difference that is thus made is not one of just intellectual classification. A difference is made in appreciative perception and in a direct way. The esthetic experience — in its limited sense — is thus seen to be inherently connected with the experience of making.

— John Dewey, Art as Experience, 1934

Lear in Limericks

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kinglearpainting.jpeg

GONERIL/REGAN: Pop’s tops!
LEAR: True Cordelia?
CORDELIA: Oh, Dad!
LEAR: I banish you!
KENT: Gad!
LEAR: Vanish!
FOOL: Mad!
Believe me, these sisters
Deceive you.
LEAR: The twisters!
GLOUCESTER: And my boy’s a bastard.
EDMUND: Too bad.
EDGAR: I’m disguised. Tom’s a fruitcake.
LEAR: Me too!
GONERIL/REGAN: Prise those eyes out.
GLOUCESTER: I’m blinded! Boo-hoo!
EDMUND: I fix my own odds.
GLOUCESTER: The gods are such sods.
EDGAR: No they’re not. Jump! All right!
GLOUCESTER: And that’s true.
REGAN: My hubby’s just snuffed it. To bed!
EDMUND: My lady?
GONERIL: He’s mine!
ALBANY: You’re still wed.
LEAR: The law is an ass;
Forgive me, my lass.
CORDELIA: Of course!
REGAN: Ugh!
GONERIL: Agh!
EDMUND: Oogh!
ALBANY: They’re all dead!
Good old gods! Three cheers!
KENT: I feel queer!
LEAR: She’s dead. Howl. Fool. Gurgle.
ALBANY: Oh dear!
KENT: He’s dead and I’m dying.
EDGAR: It’s time to start crying;
I’m king. That’s your lot. Shed a tear.

— Bill Greenwell

See GRKTRGDY.

Fair Enough

The grave of Arthur Haine in the City Cemetery [of Portland, Oregon], between 10th and 13th Streets, is marked by a stone of his own design and the epitaph, ‘Haine Haint.’ Haine, who died in 1907, left a will saying, ‘Having lived as an atheist I want to be buried like one — without any monkey business.’

— Federal Writers’ Project, Oregon Trail: The Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, 1939