Tight Quarters

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bishop_Rock_Lighthouse_SV8006.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The world’s smallest island with a building on it is the Bishop Rock, a skerry off the coast of Cornwall. The islet is 46 by 16 meters, and the tower’s base is 10 meters across. Before the installation of a helipad in 1976, visitors would rappel from the tower’s base to waiting boats.

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

Among the Thousand Islands at the head of the Saint Lawrence River is the smallest inhabited island in the world, known as “Just Room Enough.” It accommodates a single house.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Smallest_House_in_Great_Britain,_Conwy_(8035).jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The “Smallest House in Great Britain” stands on the quay in Conwy, Wales. Built in the 16th century, it has a floor area of 3.05 by 1.8 meters.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drumheller,_AB,_Canada_-_panoramio.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Built in 1958, the Little Church in Drumheller, Alberta, is available for ceremonies. It seats six.

| Oddities

Lahaina Noon

Twice a year, objects Hawaii lose their shadows as the sun passes directly overhead.

A “zero shadow day” occurs biannually between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, arriving at each location when the sun’s declination equals its latitude.

| Oddities · Science & Math

“Narrow Escape of a Mouse”

https://archive.org/details/strand-1897-v-14/page/117/mode/2up

Mr. Chas. Hy. Heskins, of 94, Blenheim Road, Reading, was good enough to send in this extremely curious and interesting photo. The kettle, it seems, was a disused one, and stood for a long time on a shelf with the lid partly off, much as we see in the photo. One night the mouse got in, possibly in the hope of finding some stray crusts. Why the little animal should take it into his head to leave the inhospitable kettle by the spout is not known, but he did, with the result portrayed in the photo. His head got through all right, and two pathetic little paws; but ‘the force of Nature could no farther go,’ and poor mousie stuck fast. Next morning someone took the kettle in hand, and ‘assisted’ the mouse’s hindquarters with a stick of wood, with the result that he emerged slowly and stiffly, and was finally allowed to hobble painfully away. Truly, a narrow escape in more senses than one!

— Strand, July 1897

| Oddities

Number Theory

What’s the funniest number? Yale physicist Emily Pottebaum proposed the Perceived Specificity Hypothesis, which states that “for nonnegative integers < 100, the funniness of a number increases with its apparent precision." She surveyed 68 acquaintances and found that:

  • Among integers divisible by 10, 0 is funniest.
  • Odd numbers are consistently funnier than even.
  • “Furthermore, the most oddly specific numbers — odd numbers with a degree of specificity of 2 — are the most funny, according to the data presented here.”

The degree of specificity characterizes the distance between an integer and the nearest multiple of 5:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.24175
Image: arxiv.org

So 3, 7, 13, 17, etc. were judged to be funniest.

“I acknowledge my Ph.D. advisor, who I shall not name out of respect for her academic integrity, for her exasperation upon learning about this study. I thank her for putting up with my antics and plead that she continue to do so until I graduate.”

(E.G. Pottebaum, “What Is the Funniest Number? An Investigation of Numerical Humor,” arXiv preprint, arXiv:2503.24175 [2025].)

| Science & Math

Late Word

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jim_Croce_publicity_portrait_ABC_Records_(cropped).jpg

A week after songwriter Jim Croce died in a plane crash in 1973, his wife, Ingrid Jacobson, received this letter:

Dear Ing,

I know I haven’t been very nice to you for some time, but I thought it might be of some comfort, Sweet Thing, to understand that you haven’t been the only recipient of JC’s manipulations. But since you can’t hear me and can’t see me, I can’t bullshit, using my sneaky logic and facial movements. I have to write it all down instead, which is lots more permanent. So it can be re-read instead of re-membered, so, it’s really right on the line.

I know that you see me for who I am, or should I say, as who I are. ‘Cause I’ve been lots of people. If Medusa had personalities or attitudes instead of snakes for her features, her name would have been Jim Croce. But that’s unfair to you and it’s also unhealthy for me. And I now want to be the oldest man around, a man with a face full of wrinkles and lots of wisdom.

So this is a birth note, Baby. And when I get back everything will be different. We’re gonna have a life together, Ing, I promise. I’m gonna concentrate on my health. I’m gonna become a public hermit. I’m gonna get my Master’s Degree. I’m gonna write short stories and movie scripts. Who knows, I might even get a tan.
Give a kiss to my little man and tell him Daddy loves him.

Remember, it’s the first sixty years that count and I’ve got 30 to go.
I Love you,
Jim

(From Ingrid’s 2012 memoir, I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story.)

| Death · Entertainment

Piecework

In the Spring 1957 issue of Pi Mu Epsilon Journal, C.W. Trigg points out that, by two continuous cuts, the surface of a cube can be divided into two pieces that can be unfolded and assembled into a hollow square:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cube-h.svg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The cuts divide the cube’s surface into two congruent pieces, each composed of six connected isosceles right triangles. Joining these two pieces forms a hollow square with exterior side 2\sqrt{2}x and interior side \sqrt{2}x , where x is the length of the cube’s edge.

| Science & Math