The word eternity occurs only once in the King James Bible (in Isaiah 57, verse 15).
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“What Is This Sea Which Is All Round Me?”
“The next day I was sad and sick at heart, for I felt how dull it was to be thus cut off from all the rest of the world. I had no great wish for work: but there was too much to be done for me to dwell long on my sad lot. Each day as it came, I went off to the wreck to fetch more things; and I brought back as much as the raft would hold.”
— From Robinson Crusoe in Words of One Syllable by Mary Godolphin, 1869
Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx
You’d think it would be an honor to appear on a magazine cover, but at Sports Illustrated it’s a curse. Braves third baseman Eddie Mathews appeared on the magazine’s very first issue, then suffered a hand injury a week later and missed seven games. Here’s what happened to other cover subjects:
- Jan. 31, 1955: Skier Jill Kinmont hit a tree and was paralyzed from the neck down.
- Nov. 18, 1957: After the headline “Why Oklahoma Is Unbeatable,” the Sooners immediately lost to Notre Dame.
- May 26, 1958: Formula One driver Pat O’Connor was killed in a 15-car pileup.
- Feb. 13, 1961: Figure skater Laurence Owen died in a plane crash.
- Dec. 14, 1970: The University of Texas fumbled nine times against Notre Dame, losing the Cotton Bowl.
- April 6, 1987: “Believe it! Cleveland is the best team in the American League!” The Indians lost 101 games that year.
- Sept. 4, 1989: Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti’s words about Pete Rose appeared on the cover; days later, Giamatti died of a heart attack.
- June 5, 1995: Giants third baseman Matt Williams broke his foot and missed two and a half months.
The magazine acknowledged the jinx by putting a black cat on a 2002 issue. Rams quarterback Kurt Warner refused to pose with the cat — and the Rams won their next two games and their second consecutive NFC championship.
Command Performance
The Bavarian village of Oberammergau has a special deal with God. While the bubonic plague was ravaging Europe, the town’s citizens vowed that if they were spared they would perform a play every 10 years depicting the life and death of Jesus.
God, apparently, accepted. The death rate among adults rose from 1 in October 1632 to 20 in March 1633, but then it dropped again to 1 in July 1633.
True to their word, the villagers staged a play in 1634, and they’ve done so every 10 years ever since.
Semordnilaps
A palindrome is a word or phrase that is spelled the same backward and forward. A semordnilap (“palindromes” spelled backward) produces a different word when reversed:
flog — golf
edit — tide
knits — stink
leper — repel
lager — regal
pupils — slipup
drawer — reward
diaper — repaid
A Verbal Palindrome
Most palindromes are spelled symmetrically, so their letters produce the same phrase whether read backward or forward:
Able was I ere I saw Elba.
But it’s also possible to do this at the level of words, as in this example:
You can cage a swallow, can’t you, but you can’t swallow a cage, can you?
When this is read backward, word by word, it produces the same sentence as when read forward. And it’s true!
Self-Reference
The Bible does not contain the word bible.
Extra Points for Creativity
“The boy who explained the meaning of the words fort and fortress must have had rather vague ideas as to masculine and feminine nouns. He wrote: ‘A fort is a place to put men in, and a fortress a place to put women in.'”
— Henry B. Wheatley, Literary Blunders, 1893
Hare Today
On the Isle of Portland, in the English Channel, it’s considered bad luck to say the word rabbit.
So people use the term “underground mutton.”
Sea Monks
In his Annales, English antiquarian John Stow describes the capture of a sea monster in the shape of a man, in 1187:
“Neere unto Orforde in Suffolke, certaine Fishers of the sea tooke in their nettes a Fish having the shape of a man in all pointes, which Fish was kept by Barlemew de Glanville, Custos of the castle of Orforde, in the same castle, by the space of six monthes, and more, for a wonder: He spake not a word. All manner of meates he gladly did eate, but more greedilie raw fishe, after he had crushed out all the moisture. Oftentimes he was brought to the Church where he showed no tokens of adoration. At length, when he was not well looked to, he stale away to the sea and never after appeared.”
The creature was not fish-tailed, but had a bald head, the body of a man, a beard and a very hairy chest. What was it really? A giant squid? A walrus? An angel shark? We’ll never know.