Cookie-Cutter Holes

On Nov. 24, 1984, the Spokane, Wash., Spokesman-Review reported the discovery of a massive chunk of earth, 10 feet long by 7 feet wide, that had somehow been plucked from the ground and put down, right side up and intact, 73 feet away. Roots had been torn apart rather than cut, and, strangely, the debris between the hole and the slab traced an arc rather than a straight line.

“All we know for sure is that this puzzle piece of earth is 73 feet away from the hole it came out of,” said geologist Greg Behrens.

Similar “cookie-cutter holes” have been observed elsewhere; the earliest known reference is in the Royal Frankish Annals of the 8th century:

In the land of the Thuringians, in the neighborhood of a river, a block of earth fifty feet long, fourteen feet wide, and a foot and a half thick, was cut out, mysteriously lifted, and shifted twenty-five feet from its original location.

No doubt there’s a mundane explanation for this, but for now no one knows what it is.

| Oddities

One-Note Sentences

Monotonous conversation from around the world:

Finnish:

Etsivät etsivät etsivät etsivät etsivät.
“The searching detectives are searching the searching detectives.”

Spanish:

¿Cómo como? ¿Cómo cómo como? Como como como.
“How do I eat? What do you mean, how do I eat? I eat how I eat.”

Icelandic:

Ái á Á á á í á.
“A farmer named Ái, who lives on a farm by the name of Á, owns a female sheep that is in a river.”

Malay:

Sayang, sayang sayang sayang, sayang sayang sayang?
“Darling, I love you, dear, do you love me?”

Romanian:

Stanca sta-n castan ca Stan.
“Stanca stood in a chestnut tree like Stan.”

Hungarian:

A követ követ követ.
“The envoy follows a stone.”

Tagalog:

Bababa ba? Bababa!
“Going down? It is!”

| Language

The Self-Flowing Flask

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boyle'sSelfFlowingFlask.png

Denis Papin described this perpetual motion scheme in 1685. The pint of liquid in the goblet weighs more than the ounce in the tube, and so forces it down. When the liquid spills out the top of the tube and back into the goblet, it starts a cycle that must continue until the liquid finally evaporates. Where is the error?

| Science & Math

Pieces of Pi

In the decimal expansion of π:

  • the digits 27182818 — the first eight digits of e — appear at position 1,526,800.
  • the digits 14142135 — the first eight digits of the square root of 2 — appear at position 52,638.
  • the first eight digits of π itself — 31415926 — reappear at position 50,366,472.
  • 16470 appears at position 16470.
  • there are seven 7s at position 3,346,228, eight 8s at position 46,663,520, and six 9s at position 762.
  • The White House switchboard number (456-1414) is at position 3,193,808, the population of France (65,073,482) is at position 98,709,092, and Disneyland’s zip code (92802) is at position 41,112.

Write out the alphabet starting with J:

JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHI

Erase all letters that have left-right symmetry (such as A) and count the letters in each of the five groups that remain. (James Davis)

| Science & Math · Trivia

Sea Story

Published in London’s Wide World Magazine in 1898, Louis de Rougemont’s adventures in Oceania made a sensation: He had witnessed octopus attacks on the pearl fishers of New Guinea, rode turtles while a castaway on an anonymous Pacific islet, and spent 30 swashbuckling years as a god-king among Australian cannibals. Here he’s beset by migrating rats:

It was impossible for me to observe in what order the rats were advancing, on account of the great stretch of country which they covered. Soon, however, their shrill squeals were distinctly heard, and a few minutes later the edge of that strange tide struck our tree and swept past us with a force impossible to realise. No living thing was spared. Snakes, lizards–ay, even the biggest kangaroos–succumbed after an ineffectual struggle. The rats actually ate those of their fellows who seemed to hesitate or stumble. The curious thing was that the great army never seemed to stand still. It appeared to me that each rat simply took a bite at whatever prey came his way, and then passed on with the rest.

In September an F.W. Solomon wrote in to say that he recognized the author — he was a Swiss manservant named Louis Grien whose nearest approach to the Outback had been a stint as butler to the governor of Western Australia. After some temporizing, De Rougemont vanished; he reappeared the following year in a South African music hall, billing himself as “The Greatest Liar on Earth.”

See Romance at Short Notice.

| Hoaxes

“A Snow Mushroom”

"http://books.google.com/books?id=ozETAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA98&dq=%22snow+mushroom%22&as_brr=3&ei=0CVWSqykK4PCMq7Q0aMH#v=onepage&q=%22snow%20mushroom%22&f=false

From the American Annual of Photography, 1908:

It is a natural snow-cap resting on the stump of a felled tree. The cap is nine feet in diameter and nearly four feet thick. Its weight has caused the rim to bend so that the top becomes a curved dome. The originally horizontal strata of the snow slope steeply downwards near the rim and small pieces break off where the strength is least, hence the edges are rough though the top is smooth. The cap acts as an umbrella sheltering the ground beneath from snowfall. The structure had taken some months to grow and would have been difficult to dislodge, for the snow was firmly welded by its own pressure. The total weight of the snow cap was calculated at about one ton.

See also Mushroom Rocks.

| Oddities

The Jumping Frenchmen of Maine

In 1878, neurologist George Miller Beard noted a strange trait among the French-Canadian lumberjacks in the Moosehead Lake area of Maine — they reacted strongly when startled:

  • “One of the jumpers while sitting in his chair with a knife in his hand was told to throw it, and he threw it quickly, so that it stuck in a beam opposite; at the same time he repeated the order to throw it, with cry or utterance of alarm resembling that of hysteria or epilepsy.”
  • “He also threw away his pipe when filling it with tobacco when he was slapped upon the shoulder.”
  • “Two jumpers standing near each other were told to strike, and they struck each other very forcibly.”
  • “One jumper when standing by a window, was suddenly commanded by a person on the other side of the window, to jump, and he jumped straight up half a foot from the floor, repeating the order.”
  • “One of these jumpers came very near cutting his ‘throat’ while shaving on hearing a door slam.”
  • “They had been known to strike their fists against a red-hot stove; they had been known to jump into the fire and into water; they could not help striking their best friend, if near them, when ordered.”
  • “It was dangerous to startle them in any way when they had an axe or knife in their hand.”

The condition, whatever it was, ran in families, chiefly among men, and the jumpers were otherwise “modest, quiet, retiring, deficient in power of self-assertion and push.” Similar cases have since been observed in Malaysia and Siberia, but no one knows whether the disorder is ultimately neurological or psychological.

| Oddities