Futility Closet

On the 9th of August, 1796, a cricket match was played by eleven Greenwich pensioners with one leg, against eleven with one arm, for one thousand guineas, at the new cricket ground, Montpelier gardens, Walworth. At nine o'clock the men arrived in three Greenwich stages; about twelve the wickets were pitched, and they commenced. Those with but one leg had the first innings, and got 93 runs; those with but one arm got but 42 runs during their innings. The one-leg commenced their second innings, and six were bowled out after they had got 60 runs; so that they left off one hundred and eleven more than those with one arm.

Next morning the match was played out; and the men with one leg beat the one-arms by one hundred and three runs. After the match was finished the eleven one-legged men ran a sweep-stakes of one hundred yards distance for twenty guineas, and the three had first prizes.

– Edmund Fillingham King, Ten Thousand Wonderful Things, 1860

In 1896, New Jersey clam diggers Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo decided to make a name for themselves by rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. On June 6 they set out from the Battery in an 18-foot oak rowboat with a compass, a sextant, and a copy of the Nautical Almanac. They reached England's Isles of Scilly in 55 days, a record that still stands.

Ironically, on the way home their passenger steamer ran out of coal. The pair launched their boat and rowed back to New York.

Decide which direction each of these men is looking in. Then cover their lower faces.

acapnotic
n. a nonsmoker

In November 1890, 4-year-old Ottie Cline Powell was gathering firewood when he wandered away from his schoolhouse in Amherst County, Virginia. An extensive search couldn't find him.

His body was found the following spring on the peak of Bluff Mountain in the Blue Ridge — 7 miles away, at an elevation of 3,372 feet.

This may be the first UFO photo ever taken. It's half of a stereo photograph dating from 1871, showing a cigar-shaped ship over Mount Washington, N.H.

"Mystery airships" were floating ominously over America between 1896 and World War I, but neither the ships nor the witnesses had quite got the hang of things yet. In 1897 the Washington Times suggested that the dirigibles were "a reconnoitering party from Mars"; the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch agreed that "these may be visitors from Mars, fearful, at the last, of invading the planet they have been seeking."

But other accounts said they were terrestrial airships piloted by mysterious humans. One of these supposedly told an Arkansas state senator that he was flying to Cuba to use his "Hotchkiss gun" to "kill Spaniards." In Texas, witnesses told of meeting "five peculiarly dressed men" who had descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel; they had learned English from British explorer Hugh Willoughby's ill-fated 1553 expedition to the North Pole.

Much of this is documented, but newspaper writers themselves were prone to practical jokes in that era, which makes the whole thing impossible to untangle. Plus, people seem to want to believe this stuff: In April 1897, hoaxers sent up a balloon made of tissue paper over Burlington, Iowa. The Des Moines Leader received reports that the ship had "red and green lights" and that "one reputable citizen swore he heard voices." Oh well.

Seeing a red apple should increase your confidence that all ravens are black.

Why? Because the statement "All ravens are black" is logically equivalent to "All non-black things are non-ravens." And seeing a red apple (or green grass) confirms this belief.

This is logically inescapable, even if it's counterintuitive. It's known as Hempel's paradox.

On May 26, 1828, a 16-year-old boy wandered into Nuremberg. He appeared to have the mental development of a 6-year-old; he could not say where he had come from, only repeating the sentence "I want to be a knight, as my father was" and the name "Kaspar Hauser."

Two letters carried by the boy implied that his widowed mother had given him up to the care of a laborer, who had raised him in a secluded room. He said he had spent most of his life in a tiny cell with a straw bed, fed only on bread and water and occupied only with a carved wooden horse. Occasionally he was drugged so that his clothes could be changed and his hair cut. A mysterious man would visit him on occasion, always careful to hide his face.

It was noted that Hauser bore a passing resemblance to the grand duke of Baden. Officially the house of Baden had no comment about his case (it doesn't to this day), but it seems someone was anxious to silence him: In 1829 a hooded man attacked him with an ax, succeeding only in wounding him slightly, and four years later another stranger waylaid and stabbed him. He died three days later.

Searching the crime scene, police found a small black purse with a note: "Hauser will be able to tell you how I look, where I came from and who I am. To spare him from this task I will tell you myself. I am from … on the Bavarian border … My name is MLO."

Hauser lies now in a country graveyard. His headstone reads, "Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time. His birth was unknown, his death mysterious."

Donald Duck's license plate number is 313.

Average annual working hours over eight centuries, compiled by Boston College sociologist Juliet Schor:

• British peasant, adult male, 13th century: 1,620 hours
• British casual laborer, 14th century: 1,440 hours
• British worker, Middle Ages, 2,309 hours
• British farmer-miner, adult male, 1400-1600: 1,980 hours
• Average British worker, 1840: 3,105-3,588 hours
• Average American worker, 1850: 3,150-3,650 hours
• Average American worker, 1987: 1,949 hours
• British manufacturing workers, 1988: 1,855 hours
• Average German worker, 2000: 1,362 hours