Laid up in the hospital, James Thurber passed the time doing crossword puzzles.
One day he asked a nurse, “What seven-letter word has three u’s in it?”
She said, “I don’t know, but it must be unusual.”
Light Infantry
Since 1844, the Royal Welch Fusiliers have had a regimental goat. He’s not a mascot, but a ranking member of the unit — he marches at the head of the battalion during ceremonial duties, and fusiliers must stand to attention when he walks past.
They’re not always model soldiers. The most recent goat — Lance Corporal William Windsor, inevitably known as Billy — was once demoted for butting a drummer at the queen’s birthday celebration. But he was promoted again three months later, after taking the summer “to reflect on his behavior.” Boys will be boys.
See Reviewing the Troops.
Hello?
From the examination of William Henry Preece, electrician to the British General Post Office, before the House of Commons’ select committee on lighting by electricity, May 2, 1879:
Q: … Do you consider that the telephone will be an instrument of the future which will be largely adopted by the public?
A: I think not.
Q: It will not take the same position in this country as it has already done in America?
A: I fancy that the descriptions we get of its use in America are a little exaggerated; but there are conditions in America which necessitate the use of instruments of this kind more there than here. Here we have a superabundance of messengers, errand boys, and things of that kind.
In a Word
qualtagh
n. the first person one meets after leaving the house
Right of Way
In the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, Australian rower Bobby Pearce was leading in the quarter-final when he looked ahead and saw a family of ducks crossing his lane.
He leaned immediately on his oars and let them pass. This let Frenchman Victor Saurin catch up and then pull away to a five-length lead.
But Pearce rocketed after him and won by 20 lengths — setting a new course record and making him a favorite with Dutch schoolchildren.
The Rich Are Different
Wanted–A professor to come twice a week to the house of a noble family in order to reform the pronunciation of a parrot.
— Advertisement, Paris Figaro, quoted in William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892
Short Subjects
While adapting The Big Sleep for the screen, a confused Howard Hawks wired Raymond Chandler asking who was supposed to have killed General Sternwood’s chauffer in the novel. Chandler responded:
NO IDEA
When a Paris news editor asked Ernest Hemingway for an accounting of his expenses, he cabled:
SUGGEST YOU UPSTICK BOOKS ASSWARDS
A movie studio once approached Eugene O’Neill to write a screenplay for a Jean Harlow film. They asked him to reply in a collect telegram of no more than 20 words. He wrote:
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO O’NEILL
When Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize in in 1969, he received a telegram from a Parisian named Georges Godot … apologizing for keeping him waiting.
Long Addition
In The Hunting of the Snark, the Butcher confirms for the Beaver that Two and One are Three:
Taking Three as the subject to reason about–
A convenient number to state–
We add Seven, and Ten, and then multiply out
By One Thousand diminished by Eight.
The result we proceed to divide, as you see,
By Nine Hundred and Ninety and Two:
Then subtract Seventeen, and the answer must be
Exactly and perfectly true.
Fittingly for Carroll, the math works:
Overkill
Poet/farmer Thomas Tusser composed his Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1573) for the most part in rhyming couplets. But in Chapter 49 he gets ambitious, casting his conclusion in 94 consecutive words that begin with the letter T:
The thrifty that teacheth the thriving to thrive,
Teach timely to traverse, the thing that thou ‘trive,
Transferring thy toiling, to timeliness taught,
This teacheth thee temp’rance to temper thy thought.
Take Trusty (to trust to) that thinkest to thee,
That trustily thriftiness trowleth to thee.
Then temper thy travell, to tarry the tide,
This teacheth thee thriftiness, twenty times try’d.
Take thankfull thy talent, thank thankfully those,
That thriftily teacheth thy time to transpose.
Troth twice to be teached, teach twenty times ten,
This trade thou that takest, take thrift to thee then.
“Perhaps this was the most difficult chapter, according to its length, that our author had to compose,” writes editor William Mavor, “yet he has strained alliteration to the most extravagant pitch; for when he writes trive for contrive, and for the sake of the rhyme uses thee for thrive, we cannot help pitying the miserable expedients to which he was reduced, in order to accomplish his design.”
“In other respects the advice is good.”
Evaporated Milk
At the Mesa de Pavones, in the middle of the steppes of Caraccas, Mr. Bonpland and I saw cows suspended in the air. Distance one thousand toises. Measuring with the sextant, the breadth of the aërial interval, we found the animal’s feet elevated above the soil 3’20”. Simple suspension, no double image. I was assured, that horses had been seen, near Calabozo, suspended and inverted, without exhibiting any direct image.
— Mirage described in Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, 1818