You have two one-hour fuses: If you light one, it will be consumed in exactly one hour.
Unfortunately, they’re badly made — some sections of each fuse burn faster than others. You know only that each full fuse will burn in one hour.
Using only these two fuses (and matches to light them), how can you tell when 45 minutes have passed?
On being told the house doctor was coming, Max Baer said, “No, dummy, I need a people doctor.”
Hart Crane, jumping overboard: “Goodbye, everybody!”
Edison emerged from a coma to say, intriguingly, “It is very beautiful over there.”
James Joyce, fittingly: “Does nobody understand?”
Mahler: “Mozart!”
William Saroyan: “Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?”
Ernest Shackleton, to his doctor: “You are always wanting me to give up something. What do you want me to give up now?”
From Henry Dudeney:
A ball 13 inches in diameter has a hole 5 inches wide drilled through the center. How deep is the hole?
“An idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it.” — Don Marquis
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11111111111111111111111111111111111111111 is prime.
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD is an anagram of THE DOOR RING TIDED ILL.
More than eleven thousand pounds sterling worth of silver is wasted every year in the course of the circulation of crowns, half-crowns, florins, shillings, and sixpences. One hundred sovereigns of the date of 1820, which were weighed in 1859 by Mr. Miller, showed a loss in weight through the wear of circulation which was estimated at £1 6s. 7d. There is, therefore, more waste produced in the circulation of gold and silver coins than is generally thought of. …
Mr. Miller some years ago made a number of precise experiments, from which it was ascertained that £100 worth of sovereigns lost £3 9s. 8.4d. of their value in a hundred years; similarly £100 worth of half-crowns lost £13 11s. 8.8d.; £100 worth of shillings, £36 14s. 3.1d.; and £100 worth of sixpences lost £50 18s. 9.8d. in value, or more than one-half in the hundred years.
– The World of Wonders, 1883
aquabib
n. a drinker of water
For years, South African miners have been finding disks and spheres like this one. Usually brown or red, the objects can measure up to 10 centimeters in diameter, and like this one they’re often engraved with parallel grooves or ridges.
How could worked artifacts have found their way into mineral deposits that are billions of years old? Did aliens visit southern Africa in the remote past? Or is the region’s geologic history vastly different than we’d imagined?
Neither. Despite their artificial appearance, geologists say the objects arose naturally, probably as concretions as volcanic sediments in the region hardened into pyrophyllite.
See The Eltanin Antenna.
O precious codex, volume, tome,
Book, writing, compilation, work,
Attend the while I pen a pome,
A jest, a jape, a quip, a quirk.
For I would pen, engross, indite,
Transcribe, set forth, compose, address,
Record, submit–yea, even write
An ode, an elegy to bless–
To bless, set store by, celebrate,
Approve, esteem, endow with soul,
Commend, acclaim, appreciate,
Immortalize, laud, praise, extol
Thy merit, goodness, value, worth,
Experience, utility–
O manna, honey, salt of earth,
I sing, I chant, I worship thee!
How could I manage, live, exist,
Obtain, produce, be real, prevail,
Be present in the flesh, subsist,
Have place, become, breathe or inhale
Without thy help, recruit, support,
Opitulation, furtherance,
Assistance, rescue, aid, resort,
Favour, sustention, and advance?
Alack! Alack! and well-a-day!
My case would then be dour and sad,
Likewise distressing, dismal, gray,
Pathetic, mournful, dreary, bad.
Though I could keep this up all day,
This lyric, elegiac, song,
Meseems hath come the time to say
Farewell! Adieu! Good-by! So long!
— Franklin P. Adams, collected in Carolyn Wells, The Book of Humorous Verse, 1920
