Sound Sense

A favorite kind of school-boy humor is that which takes the form of evolving sentences like the following: Forte dux fel flat in gutture, which is good Latin for ‘By chance the leader inhales poison in his throat,’ but which read off rapidly sounds like the English ‘Forty ducks fell flat in the gutter.’ A French example is Pas de lieu Rhône que nous, which it is hardly necessary to explain makes no sense in French at all, though every word be true Gallic, but by a similar process of reading reveals the proverbial advice, ‘Paddle your own canoe.’

— William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1909

See also “It Means Just What I Choose It to Mean.”

| Language

Ice Rings

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What’s 2.5 miles wide, perfectly circular, and warm enough to melt ice?

I don’t know either, but there are at least two of them in Russia’s Lake Baikal.

They were spotted in April from the international space station.

09/26/2013 Resolved. (Thanks, Drew.)

| Oddities

Memorial

Byron wasn’t shy with his political opinions — he proposed this epitaph for Lord Castlereagh, who died in 1822:

Posterity will ne’er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss.

| Death · Poems · Society

A Point to Make

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mirin_Dajo_promotional.jpg

In 1945, Dutch designer Arnold Henske realized that his body was “invulnerable” and took to swallowing glass and razor blades as a fakir in Amsterdam.

That’s a real rapier transfixing his thorax at left.

His dream was to use his ability to spread a message of love and peace, but Dutch officials would license him only to perform his act, not to preach against materialism, as he’d hoped.

A voice told him to swallow a steel needle in 1948, and he died of an aortic rupture — a broken heart.

| Oddities

Smullyan’s Paradox

At a desert oasis, A and B decide independently to murder C. A poisons C’s canteen, and later B punches a hole in it. C dies of thirst. Who killed him?

A argues that C never drank the poison. B claims that he only deprived C of poisoned water. They’re both right, but still C is dead. Who’s guilty?

| Oddities

Air Mail

Distances to which objects were carried by the tornado at Mount Carmel, Ill., June 4, 1877:

A letter from Mount Carmel was found at Vincennes, Ind., twenty-five miles northeastward. A piece of tin roofing was picked up near Hazleton, Ind., seventeen miles northeastward. The spire, vane, and gilded ball of the Methodist church were found near Decker’s Station, Ind., fifteen miles northeastward. A letter from Mount Carmel was carried by the wind to Widner Township, Ind., forty-five miles north-northeastward. A discharge from the military service of the United States belonging to a Mount Carmel man was found near Edwardsport, Ind., nearly fifty miles northeastward, and a letter from Mount Carmel was found near the same place. … I was also told that a paper sack of flour from a demolished store was found nearly five miles distant in Indiana, with no further damage than a small hole in it.

From the Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1877.

| Oddities

Gef the Talking Mongoose

In September 1931, the Irving family claimed to hear a scratching behind the walls of their farmhouse on the Isle of Man. That seemed mundane enough until the scratcher revealed itself as Gef, a 79-year-old talking mongoose from New Delhi. Over the next four years, James Irving kept a journal recording the family’s bizarre interactions with the creature, which he said threw objects, boasted about its powers, and gossiped about the neighbors.

Investigations went nowhere, as Gef appeared and spoke only to the Irvings. A hair sample and tooth impressions suggested only a dog; a set of pawprints were found not to be those of a mongoose.

It’s hard to credit such an outlandish story, but it’s equally hard to see why anyone would invent it. The Irvings profited nothing by it and were widely ridiculed in the media; when the family finally sold the house in 1937, they lost money, as it was now reputed to be haunted.

In 1947, the new owner claimed to have discovered and shot a real mongoose on the property. You don’t suppose … ?

| Oddities

The Valentine Phantom

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

Each year, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day, someone scatters red hearts through downtown Montpelier, Vt.

When they first appeared, in 2002, they were simple photocopies, but by 2006 large banners were gracing the State House columns. Soon the decorations spread to the high school’s chimney and a tower at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

“Currently, there are no leads and no suspects,” joked police chief Dave Janawicz in 2007, when 14 inches of snow failed to stop the bandit. “But the investigation continues.”

Vermont’s capital is not alone in this — for years, the same thing has been happening in Portland, Maine, and in Boulder, Colo. No one knows who does it or why.

A similar phantom visits the grave of Edgar Allan Poe each year on the poet’s birthday.

| Oddities · Society