Futility Closet

"The greatest smoker in Europe died at Rotterdam, and left behind him the most curious of wills. He expresses the wish in his last testament that all the smokers of the country be invited to attend his obsequies, and that they smoke while following in the funeral cortege. He directs that his body be placed in a coffin, which shall be lined with wood taken from old Havana cigar boxes. At the foot of his bier, tobacco, cigars, and matches are to be placed. And the epitaph which he requests shall be placed upon his tombstone is as follows:

Here Lies
TOM KLAES,
The Greatest Smoker in Europe.
He Broke His Pipe
July 4, 1872.
Mourned by his family and
all tobacco merchants.
STRANGER, SMOKE FOR HIM!

– Charles Bombaugh, Facts and Fancies for the Curious From the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1905

"Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote." — Grover Cleveland, 1905

Earth seen from 4 billion miles away, photographed by Voyager 1 on June 6, 1990.

Of the "pale blue dot," astronomer Carl Sagan said, "That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

If every rule has an exception, then there must be an exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.

The Tower of London has nothing on Hollywood's Knickerbocker Hotel — it's said to be haunted by six different ghosts:

• Frances Farmer
• William Frawley
• D.W. Griffith
• Harry Houdini
• Marilyn Monroe
• Rudolph Valentino

Houdini, perhaps, doesn't count.

The Playboy Mansion is the only private residence in Los Angeles with a fireworks permit.

"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock." — Will Rogers

In 1775, the whaler Herald came across a derelict ship near Greenland. The Octavius had been an English trading ship, but now she was dead: The crew's frozen bodies were found below decks, and the lifeless captain sat over the ship's log in his cabin. The last entry was dated 1762, which meant that the ghost ship had been drifting through the arctic for 13 years.

As it turned out, the Octavius had been trying to sail from Asia to England via Canada's arctic archipelago — the storied Northwest Passage. She was trapped in sea ice north of Alaska, but the Herald had found her in the Atlantic.

That means the first Western sailing ship to make the Northwest Passage … carried a crew of corpses.

The sky isn't blue. It's actually violet, but a quirk of human vision makes us less sensitive to those wavelengths.

Individually and as a band, the Beatles have appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone more than 30 times.