Futility Closet

On seeing Niagara Falls, Gustav Mahler exclaimed: “Fortissimo at last!”

“The following singular inscription is to be seen carved on a tomb situated at the entrance of the church of San Salvador, in the city of Oviedo. The explanation is that the tomb was erected by a king named Silo, and the inscription is so written that it can be read 270 ways by beginning with the large S in the center. The words are Latin, SILO PRINCEPS FECIT.”

T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T
I C E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I
C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P S F E C
E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E
F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F
S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S
P C C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P
E E N I R P O L I S I L O P R I N C E
P E C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P
S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S
F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F
E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E
C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P S P E C
I C E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I
T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T

“Besides this singular inscription, the letters H. S. E. S. S. T. T. L. are also carved on the tomb, but of these no explanation is given. Silo, Prince of Oviedo, or King of the Asturias, succeeded Aurelius in 774, and died in 785. He was, therefore, a contemporary of Charlemagne. No doubt the above inscription was the composition of some ingenious and learned Spanish monk.”

– Barkham Burroughs’ Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889

Uninspiring land speed records:

• 39.24 mph, Dec. 18, 1898, Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat (France)
• 41.42 mph, Jan. 17, 1899 Camille Jenatzy (Belgium)
• 43.69 mph, Jan. 17, 1899 Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat (France)
• 49.93 mph, Jan. 27, 1899 Camille Jenatzy (Belgium)
• 57.65 mph, March 4, 1899 Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat (France)
• 65.79 mph, April 29, 1899 Camille Jenatzy (Belgium)

Interestingly, these were all set with electric vehicles.

“I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man.” — Charles Lamb

Excerpts from “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema,” a paper published by Horace Miner in the June 1956 edition of American Anthropologist:

• “They are a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east.”
• “The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man’s only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose.”
• “In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these items in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client.”
• “There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to make women’s breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large. A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mammary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee.”

It’s a satire. What’s Nacirema spelled backward?

One of these Vermeers is a forgery. Which is it?

Click for answer …

In January 1892, Rhode Island farmer George Brown buried his daughter Mercy. She had died of consumption, as had her mother and sister.

Two months later George’s son, Edwin, also became sick, and the farmer decided that one of his dead family members was returning from the grave as a vampire to cause his son’s illness.

So he dug up his daughter’s body, cut out her heart, mixed it into a potion, and told his son to drink it.

Edwin died two months later.

If Earth were the size of a tennis ball, the sun would be 2,460 feet away.

And the nearest star would still be 125,000 miles away.

The June 1851 issue of Scientific American reported that a zinc and silver vase had been blasted from solid rock 15 feet below the surface of Meeting House Hill in Dorchester, Mass. The bell-shaped vessel had floral designs inlaid with silver.

Experts at the time estimated it to be about 100,000 years old, which would obviously throw everything we know out the window.

Unfortunately, it disappeared after circulating through several museums. What’s the real story? Who knows?

latrocinate
v. to engage in highway robbery