Futility Closet

On Dec. 30, 1888, Joseph Néel killed a Mr. Coupard on the tiny island of Île Aux Chiens off the Newfoundland coast.

France, which owns the island, shipped a guillotine from Martinique so that Néel could be beheaded on Aug. 24, 1889.

He is the only person ever executed by guillotine in North America.

Suppose a brave Officer to have been flogged when a boy at school, for robbing an orchard, to have taken a standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been made a General in advanced life: Suppose also, which must be admitted to be possible, that when he took the standard, he was conscious of his having been flogged at school; and that, when made a General, he was conscious of his taking the standard, but had absolutely lost the consciousness of his flogging. These things being supposed, it follows from Mr. Locke’s doctrine, that he who was flogged at school is the same person who took the standard; and that he who took the standard is the same person who was made a General. Whence it follows, if there be any truth in logic, that the General is the same person with him who was flogged at school. But the General’s consciousness does not reach so far back as his flogging; therefore, according to Mr. Locke’s doctrine, he is not the person who was flogged. Therefore the General is, and at the same time is not, the same person with him who was flogged at school.

– Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, 1785

In 1693, Samuel Pepys wrote to Isaac Newton with this question:

“Which is more likely, to throw at least 1 six with 6 dice, or at least 2 sixes with 12 dice, or at least 3 sixes with 18 dice?”

To Pepys’ surprise, Newton found that the first choice has the highest likelihood. The probabilities are 0.665, 0.619, and 0.597 (rounded to three places).

If a train remains at the station from two to two to two-two (from 1:58 to 2:02), a passenger who misses it must wait from two-two to two to two.

Tom, while playing a game of Scrabble against Dick, who, while considering the last word that Harry (who had had HAD) had had had had, had had HAD, had had HAD. Had HAD had more letters, he would have played it.

Wouldn’t the sentence “I want to insert a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish And Chips sign” have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips — and after Chips?

Every spring, the town of March in Cambridgeshire holds “a long, flat, pointless walk” across the Fens to Cambridge. “It has no purpose other than to be called the March March march.” There is an associated song, which is sometimes called the “March March March March.”

In March 1893, weary and vexed in his work classifying ancient finger rings, German archaeologist H.V. Hilprecht went to bed and dreamed that a tall priest led him to a Babylonian treasure chamber. The priest explained that the fragments were not finger rings but earrings for a statue of the god Ninib, cut from a votive cylinder sent by King Kirigalzu to the temple of Bel. “If you will put the two together you will have a confirmation of my words,” he said. “But the third ring you have not yet found in the course of your excavations, and you never will find it.”

“With this the priest disappeared,” Hilprecht wrote. “I awoke at once, and immediately told my wife the dream, that I might not forget it. Next morning — Sunday — I examined the fragments once more in the light of these disclosures, and to my astonishment found all the details of the dream precisely verified in so far as the means of verification were in my hands. The original inscription on the votive cylinder read: ‘To the god Ninib, son of Bel, his lord, has Kurigalzu, pontifex of Bel, presented this.’”

(Reported in The American Naturalist, October 1896)

When Clark Gable left the Army in June 1944, Ronald Reagan signed his discharge papers.

Solution to The Mensa Diet:

There are two different calorie measures. An ounce of scotch contains 100 kilocalories, not 100 calories. So with each ounce he drank, Salny took in 100,000 calories and used up only about 1,000. Nice try, though.

An hour before his death in April 1955, Albert Einstein muttered a few sentences in German.

The night nurse did not understand them.

– The Nic-Nac; or, Oracle of Knowledge, March 29, 1823

Finding himself hot and overweight at an Air Force base during World War II, Jerry Salny decided he could shed pounds by drinking scotch and soda. Here’s his reasoning:

• It takes 1 calorie of heat to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1° Celsius.
• A glass holds about 200cc of scotch, soda, and ice. Its temperature is 0° Celsius.
• As he drinks the scotch and soda, his body must supply enough heat to raise 200 grams to body temperature, or 37°C.
• That’s 200 grams × 37°C, or 7,400 calories.
• “Since all the calorie books show scotch as having 100 calories per ounce, and none at all for the soda, we should be able to drink scotch and soda all day and lose weight like mad.”

“This has been tried,” Salny reported, “and although the experimenter hasn’t lost any weight in the process, he doesn’t worry about it much anymore.”

Why doesn’t it work?

(Answer)