Bad Dogs

Pep and Lady

Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary got an unusual inmate in 1924: “Pep the cat-murdering dog,” a black Labrador retriever who was allegedly incarcerated for killing the first lady’s favorite pet. In truth Pep was donated to the prison by governor Gifford Pinchot to improve morale; he was transferred to nearby Graterford Penitentiary in 1929.

Pep’s example was followed by Lady, a beagle who belonged to the captain of the prison’s guards. She posed for the second picture in 1957.

In American Notes, Dickens recalled that one inmate at Eastern State kept a rabbit in his cell; others kept birds and cats. And the prison was later home to Al Capone, who had some unusual quarters of his own.

| Oddities

Night Owl

Albert Herpin, born in France in 1862 and for fifteen years a hostler in the employ of Freeholder Walter Phares of this city, declares that he has not slept a wink during the past ten years. Notwithstanding this, he is in perfect health, and does not seem to suffer any discomfort from his remarkable condition. He goes to bed regularly, but says he never closes his eyes, or at least never for an instant loses consciousness of all going on about him. In the morning he arises refreshed and ready for another day’s work among the horses. He declares the change of position and the darkness of the room seem to give him all the rest he desires.

— “Hasn’t Slept in Ten Years,” New York Times, Feb. 29, 1904

| Oddities

Misc

  • EVIAN, SEIKO, and STROH’S are all English words spelled backward.
  • Can “I apologize” be false?
  • 165033 = 163 + 503 + 333
  • Little Wymondley, in Hertfordshire, is bigger than Great Wymondley.
  • “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?” — Satchel Paige
| Language · Science & Math · Trivia

Round and Round

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donaueschingen_wappen.svg

Does the top of a rolling wheel move faster than the bottom? In his Cyclopedia of Puzzles (1914), Sam Loyd calls this “an old problem which has created a considerable discussion in the mechanical world.”

The rolling wheel retains its shape; it will arrive at its destination as a connected unit. This seems to imply that all of its parts are moving at the same speed. Yet the point in contact with the ground is moving not at all, while the top continuously overtakes it. Surely, then, the top is moving faster? “There is just enough of the mathematical and mechanical element in the make-up of the problem,” writes Loyd, “to provoke discussions from such as are well-up on these subjects.”

His answer: “The top of a wheel progresses exactly as fast as the bottom.” And, being Sam Loyd, he adds a wrinkle: “If the question referred to a mark on the tire the answer would be different, for the top is the highest point of the wheel and cannot revolve, for if it revolves the hundredth part of an inch it ceases to be the top.”

A second vexed wheel riddle; William James and Lewis Carroll consider related questions; a train moves simultaneously east and west.

| Puzzles

Poetry in Motion

In October 1955, shortly after winning the Pulitzer Prize, Marianne Moore was approached by the Ford Motor Company to help devise a name for a new series of cars. “We should like it to have a compelling quality in itself and by itself,” wrote marketing research manager David Wallace. “To convey, through association or other conjuration, some visceral feeling of elegance, fleetness, advanced features and design.”

Moore accepted the challenge and contributed her suggestions throughout the year that followed. These included:

  • The Resilient Bullet
  • The Intelligent Whale
  • The Ford Fabergé
  • The Arc-en-Ciel
  • The Mongoose Civique
  • The Anticipator
  • The Regna Racer
  • The Aeroterre
  • The Turbotorc
  • The Thunder Crester
  • The Magigravure
  • The Pastelogram
  • The Utopian Turtletop

Ford added these to its own growing list. Finally, in November 1956, Wallace sent her the company’s decision. “We have chosen a name out of the more than six-thousand-odd candidates that we gathered,” he wrote. “It has a certain ring to it. An air of gaiety and zest. At least, that’s what we keep saying. Our name, dear Miss Moore, is — Edsel.”

| Literature

A Surprise Visitor

Create two columns, one starting with the numbers 12 and 18 and the other with 5 and 5. Continue each column, deriving each new number by adding the two that precede it:

JRM pi ratios

In the Journal of Recreational Mathematics, James Davis writes, “Forming successive pairs with adjoining numbers from each column one finds the ratio of the two numbers in each pair converges to π!” How can this be?

“The alert reader will suspect there is a trick in this method, as I did when π first presented it to me. The labor of several hours of computation coupled with trial and error produced half of the secret of the method. It is obviously based somehow on the fact that φ (the golden mean, which equals \frac{1+\sqrt{5}}{2}, can be closely approximated by the nifty pseudo equation below:”

1.2 \times \varphi ^{2}=\pi

“Can the reader decipher π’s technique for making herself with φ?”

| Science & Math

Word to the Wise

There is a tradition to the effect that Noel Coward once sent identical notes to the twenty most prominent men in London, saying, ‘All is discovered. Escape while you can.’

All twenty abruptly left town.

— Paul C. Sherr, The Short Story and the Oral Tradition, 1970

| Society

Hate Mail

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

Jackie Robinson received this note on May 22, 1951, before a double-header in Cincinnati:

WE HAVE ALREADY
GOT RID
OF SEVERAL
LIKE YOU
ONE WAS FOUND IN RIVER
JUST RECENTLY
ROBINSON
WE ARE GOING
TO KILL YOU
IF YOU ATTEMPT
TO ENTER A
BALL GAME AT
CROSLEY FIELD

It was signed THE TRAVELERS.

Robinson hit a home run in the first game.

| Society

“Singular Circumstance”

The following anecdote appears so marvellous, that we can scarcely expect it to obtain general belief; but it has been transmitted to us by a most respectable correspondent; a correspondent who is far from being credulous himself, and who has no interest in deceiving others:–‘The other day, a horse belonging to Mr. Thomas Johnstone, tenant on the estate of Major Culton of Auchenabony, having lost a shoe, and probably feeling his foot somewhat uneasy from the want of it, left the field where he was grazing, and went to a smithy about a mile distant, where he used to be shod. On arriving, he was observed to pause a few minutes, as if in expectation that the owner of the house would come out, and introduce him in due form; but finding nobody in attendance, he walked in, placed himself in the corner where he used to stand during the operation of shoeing; and on the smith’s coming in, he instantly made known his errand by holding up the shoeless foot. Soon after, the owner of the horse having missed him, came to the smithy in the course of his search, and to his no small surprise, found THE SMITH ENGAGED IN PUTTING ON A SHOE!’

— “Dumfries paper,” quoted in The Kaleidoscope, July 10, 1821

| Oddities