Futility Closet

When 5-year-old May Pierstorff asked to visit her grandmother, her parents had no money to buy a rail ticket.

So they mailed her.

On Feb. 19, 1914, May’s parents presented her at the post office in Grangeville, Idaho, and proposed mailing her parcel post to Lewiston, some 75 miles away. The postmaster found that the “package” was just under the 50-pound weight limit, so he winked at their plan, classed May as a baby chick, and attached 53 cents in stamps to her coat. May passed the entire trip in the train’s mail compartment and was duly delivered to her grandparents in Lewiston by mail clerk Leonard Mochel.

Other living parcels: Henry Box Brown, Charles McKinley, Owney the dog.

There is found, in some of the rivers of British North America, a species of smelt so rich in oil that it may when dried be used as a candle or torch. … At certain seasons the fish swarms up the rivers from the sea, and is then caught by the natives in wickerwork traps. … When a candle is required a dried fish is stuck, tail upwards, in a lump of clay or in a cleft stick; a light is applied to the tail, which instantly flames up, and the fish burns steadily downward, giving a light superior to that of the best quality of ‘dips.’

– The World of Wonders, 1883

Wyoming may be the Cowboy State, but it has an Eastern pedigree: It was named by an Ohio congressman after a valley in Pennsylvania.

Rep. J.M. Ashley named the territory after the Wyoming Valley, whose name means “at the big river flat.”

Still, that’s more authentic than Idaho.

plenilune
n. the full moon

In a 1961 letter to his aunt, J.R.R. Tolkien declared that this word is beautiful even before it is understood, and wished he could have the pleasure of meeting it again for the first time. “And surely the first meeting should be in a living context, and not in a dictionary, like dried flowers in a hortus siccus!”

Rain which on touching the ground crackles and emits electric sparks is a very uncommon but not unknown phenomenon. An instance of the kind was recently reported from Cordova, in Spain, by an electrical engineer who witnessed the occurrence. The weather had been warm and undisturbed by wind, and soon after dark the sky became overcast by clouds. At about 8 o’clock there came a flash of lightning, followed by great drops of electrical rain, each one of which, on touching the ground, walls, or trees, gave a faint crack, and emitted a spark of light. The phenomenon continued for several seconds, and apparently ceased as soon as the atmosphere was saturated with moisture.

– Western Daily Mercury, Nov. 1, 1892, quoted in Symons’s Monthly Meteorological Magazine, December 1892

In 1926 an English probate court accepted a will written on an empty eggshell.

A Manchester widow had found the shell on her husband’s wardrobe. On it was written, “17-1925. Mag. Everything i possess. — J. B.”

The dead man had been dieting and used to bring eggs with him to work. His initials had been J.B., the message was in his handwriting, and he had always called his wife “Mag.” The court accepted the shell as a valid will (Hodson v. Barnes, 1926).

See also Let’s Get This Over With.

Twenty percent of the world’s fresh water is in a single lake, Russia’s Lake Baikal.

Its surface is smaller than Lake Superior — but it’s a mile deep.

The Professor brightened up again. ‘The Emperor started the thing,’ he said. ‘He wanted to make everybody in Outland twice as rich as he was before — just to make the new Government popular. Only there wasn’t nearly enough money in the Treasury to do it. So I suggested that he might do it by doubling the value of every coin and bank-note in Outland. It’s the simplest thing possible. I wonder nobody ever thought of it before! And you never saw such universal joy. The shops are full from morning to night. Everybody’s buying everything!’

– Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno

Your vote will make a difference only if it breaks a tie or creates one.

This is very unlikely to be the case.

So why vote?

“He has no talent at all, that boy! You, who are his friend, tell him, please, to give up painting.”

– Manet to Monet, on Renoir