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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrias_schleuchzeri.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In 1726, the Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer mistook the skull and vertebral column of a large salamander from the Miocene epoch for the “betrübten Beingerüst eines alten Sünders” (sad bony remains of an old human sinner) and dubbed it Homo diluvii testis, “the man who witnessed the Deluge.” The fossil lacked a tail or hind legs, so he thought it was the remains of a trampled human child:

It is certain that this [rock] contains the half, or nearly so, of the skeleton of a man; that the substance even of the bones, and, what is more, of the flesh and of parts still softer than the flesh, are there incorporated in the stone; in a word it is one of the rarest relics which we have of that accursed race which was buried under the waters. The figure shows us the contour of the frontal bone, the orbits with the openings which give passage to the great nerves of the fifth pair. We see there the remains of the brain, of the sphenoidal bone, of the roots of the nose, a notable fragment of the maxillary bone, and some vestiges of the liver.

The fossil made its way to Teylers Museum in the Netherlands, where in 1811 Georges Cuvier recognized it as a giant salamander. Ironically, Scheuchzer’s original belief is reflected in the fossil’s modern name, Andrias scheuchzeri — Andrias means “image of man.”

| Science & Math

Footloose

A visitor’s description of William Kingston, a Somerset farmer born without arms, recounted in John Platts, Encyclopedia of Natural and Artificial Wonders and Curiosities, 1876:

He highly entertained us at breakfast, by putting his half-naked feet upon the table as he sat, and carrying his tea and toast between his great and second toe to his mouth, with as much facility as if his foot had been a hand, and his toes fingers. … He then shewed me how he shaves himself with the razor in his toes; and he can comb his own hair. He can dress and undress himself, except buttoning his clothes. He feeds himself, and can bring both his meat or his broth to his mouth, by holding the fork or spoon in his toes. He cleans his own shoes, lights the fire, and does almost any domestic business as well as any other man. … He can milk his cows with his toes, and cuts his own hay, binds it up in bundles, and carries it about the field for his cattle. Last winter he had eight heifers constantly to fodder. The last summer he made all his hay-ricks. He can do all the business of the hay-field (except mowing) as fast and as well with his feet as others can with rakes and forks. … In a word, he can nearly do as much without as others can with their arms.

| Oddities

Ready to Hand

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calligrafie,_Jan_Van_De_Velde_(1605).jpg

Synonyms for WRITER’S CRAMP collected by Dmitri Borgmann in 1987:

CHIROSPASM
WRITERS’ PALSY
GRAPHOSPASM
SCRIVENERS’ PALSY
MOGIGRAPHIA or MOGOGRAPHIA
PENMAN’S SPASM
WRITERS’ NEUROSIS
HYPERKINESIA
DYSGRAPHIA
WRITERS’ SPASM
A STUTTERING OF THE HAND

MOGIGRAPHIA has four principal forms: SPASTIC, PARALYTIC, NEURALGIC, and TREMULOUS. Borgmann wrote, “No longer need you suffer from the WRITER’S CRAMP of the masses — you can, instead, discourse eloquently and frequently about the plethora of more elegant-sounding ailments that I have made available to you!”

(Dmitri A. Borgmann, “Quelque Chose,” Word Ways 20:1 [February 1987], 44-53.)

| Language

Inksmanship

The most prolific author in history may be Charles Hamilton (1876-1961), who could turn out 80,000 words a week writing long series of stories with recurring casts of characters, often set in boys’ public schools. Hamilton wrote under a variety of names and occasionally employed other writers to help with the work, but his own lifetime output has been estimated at 100 million words.

In his 1940 essay “Boys’ Weeklies,” George Orwell writes, “The stories in the Magnet are signed ‘Frank Richards’ and those in the Gem, ‘Martin Clifford’, but a series lasting thirty years could hardly be the work of the same person every week.”

He was forced to add a footnote: “This is quite incorrect. These stories have been written throughout the whole period by ‘Frank Richards’ and ‘Martin Clifford’, who are one and the same person!”

| Literature

Read It Aloud

Center Alley worse jester pore ladle gull hoe lift wetter stop-murder an toe heft-cisterns. Daze worming war furry wicket an shellfish parsons, spatially dole stop-murder, hoe dint lack Center Alley an, infect, word orphan traitor pore gull mar lichen ammonol dinner hormone bang. Oily inner moaning disk wicket oiled worming shorted, ‘Center Alley, gad otter bet, an goiter wark! Suture lacy ladle bomb! Shaker lake!’ an firm moaning tell gnat disk ratchet gull word heifer wark lacquer hearse toe kipper horsing ardor, washer heft-cistern’s closing, maker bets, gore tutor star fur perversions, cooker males, washer dashes an doe oily udder hoard wark. Nor wander pore Center Alley worse tarred an disgorged!

— Howard L. Chace, Anguish Languish, 1956

| Language

Memory Span

The peculiar architecture of Echo Bridge, in Newton, Massachusetts, will re-echo a human voice 18 times and a pistol shot (reportedly) 25 times.

In 1889 author Moses King wrote, “The favorite word to hurl at the arch is JULY, and the serious charge of lie — lie — lie is thrown back as vigorously and almost as frequently as if the bridge were a political newspaper in campaign time.”

| Oddities

The Numerosity Adaptation Effect

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Numerosityadaptation.png
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Fixate on the top figure for 30 seconds and then look at the bottom figure. Though the two circles in the lower figure contain the same number of dots, those on the left appear more numerous. This suggests that the visual system has adapted to the number of items seen in the priming phase, and that, like color, number is a primary attribute of vision.

Psychologists David Burr and John Ross write, “We propose that just as we have a direct visual sense of the reddishness of half a dozen ripe cherries, so we do of their sixishness. In other words there are distinct qualia for numerosity, as there are for color, brightness, and contrast.

“One of the more fascinating aspects of this study … is that although the total apparent number of dots is greatly reduced after adaptation, no particular dots seem to be missing. This reinforces old and more recent evidence suggesting that the perceived richness of our perceptual world is very much an illusion.”

(David Burr and John Ross, “A Visual Sense of Number,” Current Biology 18:6 [March 25, 2008], 425-428.)

| Science & Math

Selflessness

Carol Shields’ 2000 short story “Absence” does not contain the letter I:

She woke up early, drank a cup of strong, unsugared coffee, then sat down at her word processor. She knew more or less what she wanted to do, and that was to create a story that possessed a granddaughter, a Boston fern, a golden apple and a small blue cradle. But after she had typed half a dozen words, she found that one of the letters of the keyboard was broken, and, to make matters worse, a vowel, the very letter that attaches to the hungry self.

She resolves to write about it: “‘A woman sat down and wrote,’ she wrote.”

| Language · Literature