Name and Rank

The New York Times of Sept. 18, 1972, reported that a man named Minor W. Major attended a historical conference in Tarrytown, N.Y. Asked how he got his name, he said, “Before the Civil War, a young woman named Minor married a young man named Major and became Mrs. Major. He was a Confederate agent, and he sank Union shipments on the Mississippi. He had a Yankee uniform for use at certain times, and in those circumstances Minor Major, the Confederate agent, became Major Minor, a Union officer. I’m a great-grandson of the Major who married Miss Minor.”

| Language

Little Women

Douglas MacArthur’s mother dressed him in skirts, blouses, and bows and kept his hair in curls until he was 8 years old. Franklin Roosevelt wore shoulder-length blond curls and short skirts, “as he liked to kick and feel free to move about.”

Rainer Maria Rilke’s mother, who had lost a daughter the year before he was born, baptized her son René Maria, dressed him as a girl, and arranged his hair in curls until he was 5.

“I had to wear beautiful long dresses,” he recalled later, “and until I started school I went about like a little girl. I think my mother played with me as though I were a big doll.”

| History · Literature

“The Best Bridge Problem Ever Invented”

http://books.google.com/books?id=67UvAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

I don’t play bridge, so I’m posting this somewhat blindly. It was devised by W.H. Whitfeld, card editor of the Field, apparently in the late 19th century. The reader who submitted it to the Strand wrote, “If you don’t know the solution, I guarantee that it will take you or any of your staff three or four days.”

“We have a higher opinion of our readers’ skill than to allot them such a time-limit as this,” wrote the editors. “But certainly anyone who can solve this problem in three or four hours will have good cause to be congratulated on his ingenuity.”

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Rimshot

This guy takes a gorilla out golfing. At the first tee the gorilla says, “So what am I supposed to do?” The guy says, “You see that green area about 400 yards from here? You’re supposed to hit the ball onto that.” So the gorilla takes a club and whacks the ball and it soars up into the sky and drops down neatly on the green. The guy tees off and makes about 150 yards, so he hits an iron shot and then another iron shot and finally they arrive at the green. The gorilla says, “What do I do now?” The guy says, “Now you hit it into that cup.” The gorilla says, “Why didn’t you tell me that back there?”

| Humor

To Whom It May Concern

Visiting France in 1777, Benjamin Franklin received hundreds of inquiries from ardent Frenchmen seeking to join the American army. Finally he penned a “model of a letter of recommendation of a person you are unacquainted with”:

Sir.–The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here. Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person brings another equally unknown to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another! As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be; I recommend him however to those civilities which every stranger, of whom one knows no harm, has a right to, and I request you will do him all the good offices and show him all the favour that, on acquaintance, you shall find him to deserve. I have the honour to be, &c.

See Backhanded Letters of Reference.

| History · Society