picqueter
n. one who arranges artificial flowers for a living
Arnold Bennett was surprised to find no fresh flowers in George Bernard Shaw’s apartment.
“But I thought you were so fond of flowers,” he said.
“I am,” Shaw replied, “and I’m very fond of children too, but I don’t chop their heads off and stand them in pots about the house.”
On April 12th, a three days’ battle opened at Shaiba with an attack by a motley army of 22,000 Turks, Kurds, and Arabs commanded by German officers. During the thick of the fighting, and when success was well within their grasp, the Turkish forces ceased firing and fled in wild panic from field.
A Turkish prisoner subsequently explained the cause of the Turkish withdrawal. It appears that a pack train, approaching the British line from the rear, had been so distorted by a mirage that it appeared to the Turks as a great body of reinforcements. Believing themselves to be fighting against enormous odds, they had yielded up a victory almost won.
– William C. King, King’s Complete History of the World War, 1922
Medieval sportsmen invented collective nouns for everything from owls to otters. Less well known are the terms they invented for people — this list is taken from Joseph Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, 1801:
The balls on the right exert greater torque than those on the left, so the wheel ought to turn forever, right?
Sadly, the balls on the left are more numerous.
“If at first you don’t succeed,” wrote Quentin Crisp, “failure may be your style.”
In 1793, two years after publishing his translation of Homer, William Cowper received this letter from 12-year-old Thomas Hayley, pointing out its defects:
HONORED KING OF BARDS,–Since you deign to demand the observations of an humble and unexperienced servant of yours, on a work of one who is so much his superior (as he is ever ready to serve you with all his might) behold what you demand! but let me desire you not to censure me for my unskilful and perhaps (as they will undoubtedly appear to you) ridiculous observations; but be so kind as to receive them as a mark of respectful affection from your obedient servant,
THOMAS HAYLEY
Book I, Line 184. I cannot reconcile myself to these expressions, ‘Ah, cloth’d with impudence, etc.’; and 195, ‘Shameless wolf’; and 126, ‘Face of flint.’
Book I, Line 508. ‘Dishonor’d foul,’ is, in my opinion, an uncleanly expression.
Book I, Line 651. ‘Reel’d,’ I think makes it appear as if Olympus was drunk.
Book I, Line 749. ‘Kindler of the fires in Heaven,’ I think makes Jupiter appear too much like a lamplighter.
Book II, Lines 317-319. These lines are, in my opinion, below the elevated genius of Mr. Cowper.
Book XVIII, Lines 300-304. This appears to me to be rather Irish, since in line 300 you say, ‘No one sat,’ and in 304, ‘Polydamas rose.’
Cowper wrote back, “A fig for all critics but you!”
In August 1911, a group of butchers discovered a 50-year-old “wild man” in their corral in Oroville, Calif. The local sheriff gave him into the keeping of a San Francisco anthropology museum, where he remained until his death five years later.
It’s believed that “Ishi” was the very last of his kind — the last of his group, the last of his people, and the last Native American in Northern California to have lived free of the encroaching European-American civilization.
The rest had been killed in encounters with the white man.
Even “Ishi” means only “man” in Yana, Ishi’s native language. When asked his actual name, Ishi had said, “I have none, because there were no people to name me.”
A sad catastrophe is reported to have happened to this Italian vessel, the Rosina, bound from Catania for New York. One day at the end of October she was nearly capsized by a sudden squall in the middle of the Atlantic. All hands were summoned instantly to take in sail, and all, together with the captain, were actively engaged, when an enormous wave swept the deck of every living person, leaving only one of the crew, who happened to be below. On running up on deck this man, named Criscuolo, found not a living soul, not even the ship’s dog, and saw himself the sole occupant of a half-wrecked vessel in a tempest in the Atlantic. For eight days he struggled against wind and sea without taking an instant’s repose, constantly on the watch for some sail, and had abandoned himself to despair, when the Marianna, a Portuguese brigantine, descrying the damaged vessel, bore down upon her as she was sinking and rescued Criscuolo, who was taken on to New York.
– “Wrecks and Casualties,” The Shipwrecked Mariner, January 1882
The Cat in the Hat uses 225 different words.
Dr. Seuss’ publisher, Bennett Cerf, wagered $50 that the author couldn’t reduce this total to 50 in his next book.
So Seuss produced a new manuscript using precisely 50 words, and collected the $50.
The book was Green Eggs and Ham.
On several occasions, mathematician Maria Agnesi (1718-1799) arrived in her study to discover that a vexing problem had been solved for her — and, eerily, solved in her own handwriting.
Agnesi was a somnambulist. In her sleep she would walk to the study, make a light, and solve a problem that she had left incomplete.
Then she’d return to bed with no memory of what she’d done.