Futility Closet

Lesser-known maxims from Poor Richard’s Almanack:

• “Happy that Nation, — fortunate that age, whose history is not diverting.”
• “He that is rich need not live sparingly, and he that can live sparingly need not be rich.”
• “Kings and bears often worry their keepers.”
• “Proclaim not all thou knowest, all thou owest, all thou hast, nor all thou can’st.”
• “Would you persuade, speak of Interest, not of Reason.”
• “Those who are fear’d, are hated.”
• “Many complain of their Memory, few of their Judgment.”
• “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
• “Where there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.”

And: “Mankind are very odd Creatures: One Half censure what they practise, the other half practise what they censure; and the rest always say and do as they ought.”

Frankenstein nearly came true in 1803, when Italian physicist Giovanni Aldini ran electric current through the newly dead body of murderer George Forster.

The prison record states that “on the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion.”

One witness reportedly died of fright, but there was really no cause for alarm. If Forster had returned to life, the prison planned to re-execute him — after all, he’d been sentenced to “hang until he be dead.”

librocubicularist
n. one who reads in bed

Update: An alert reader points out that this is not a proper English word — it was proposed by Christopher Morley in his Haunted Bookshop (1919):

‘All right,’ said the bookseller amiably. ‘Miss Chapman, you take the book up with you and read it in bed if you want to. Are you a librocubicularist?’

Titania looked a little scandalized.

‘It’s all right, my dear,’ said Helen. ‘He only means are you fond of reading in bed. I’ve been waiting to hear him work that word into the conversation. He made it up, and he’s immensely proud of it.’

In any case, etymologically librocubicularist should mean merely “someone who does something with a book in a bedroom.” Apologies for the error, and thanks to Eadwine for pointing it out.

In 1984, a pet kitten was given to Koko, the Stanford University gorilla who communicates through sign language.

She cared for it as a baby gorilla until December of that year, when the cat escaped from her cage and was run down by a car.

When her trainers told Koko what had happened, she gave the signs for two words.

They were “cry” and “sad.”

A “wonderful fish” caught near Eastport, Maine, in August 1868, as depicted in Harper’s Weekly.

It’s known that basking sharks can reach 40 feet in length.

Then again, basking sharks don’t have legs.

Another sighting of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, previously discussed here:

This singular production of nature, which is one of the curiosities of the East, though not commonly known, has heretofore engaged much of the attention of the learned naturalists. To the eye, though a perfect vegetable in its internal form, particularly at a distance, it carries an exact resemblance of the animal whose name it bears. It has four stalks or stems, which appear like feet, and the body is covered with a brownish kind of down, which has the medicinal quality of stopping blood; its head also bears an exact resemblance to the representation we have given of it.

– Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum, 1803

The statement “no statements are true unless they can be proven scientifically” cannot be proven scientifically.

In 1958 the U.S. Air Force mistakenly dropped an atom bomb on South Carolina. A B-47 was over Mars Bluff when navigator Bruce Kulka accidentally released the device. Its fissionable core was stowed elsewhere, fortunately, but the bomb still contained thousands of pounds of conventional explosives. It fell 15,000 feet into the home of William Gregg, where it created a mushroom cloud and left a 75-foot crater.

Presumably they raised his insurance rates.