Futility Closet

Solution to Christopher Crusty’s Little Idea:

The diagram is sideways. Bwahahaha! (ducks)

How should we correct it? Well, if we turn it a quarter turn clockwise, then Black’s light-square bishop is trapped behind an unmoved pawn, which is impossible. So turn it to the left:

Now, the black pawn on g2 must have started on h7; otherwise Black’s pawns must have devoured an impossible amount of material to reach their present positions. That means that the f5, f4, and g2 pawns cannot have moved last, and that means that Black’s last move must have been b7-b5. Thus White can capture the b-pawn en passant, giving mate:

From the Leeds Mercury Supplement, collected in Thomas B. Rowland, Chess Fruits, 1884.

In the afternoon of Monday, July 25th, 1768, an extraordinary gust of wind near Cleobury Mortimer, in Shropshire, not only unroofed the dwelling-house, barns, stables, and out-buildings belonging to a farmer named Bishop (levelling one of the buildings with the ground, and tearing up and rending more than sixty apple and pear trees), but also took up his son, a youth of sixteen, and carried him at a height of four or five yards from the ground to a distance of about eight yards, over a stone wall, fish-pond, and a hedge, depositing him in a great state of terror, but otherwise unhurt, in a field of hay.

– The World of Wonders, 1883

The world’s largest population of feral camels is in … Australia.

Thousands were imported between 1840 and 1907 to help explore the continent’s arid interior — it’s said that the first piano in Alice Springs arrived on a camel’s back. (A world away, the same thing was happening in the United States.)

The animals were gradually obviated by automobiles, but as many as a million still wander the country in herds — so many, ironically, that Australia has begun exporting camels to Saudi Arabia.

White to mate on the move.

“A real-right-down regular rare one. The problem exhibited is quite correct Chess, and no violation of any law takes place. In fact, it is found to be quite easy — when you know how.”

(Solution)

On Feb. 23, 1885, convicted murderer John Lee of Devon was brought to the scaffold and positioned on the trapdoor. The noose was fitted around his neck, and executioner James Berry pulled the lever.

Nothing happened.

Two warders tried to force the trapdoor to open under Lee, but they failed. They removed the condemned man and tested the door, and it worked. So they put Lee in position again, and again Berry pulled the lever.

Again nothing happened.

Exasperated, the warders again put Lee aside and set to work on the door, this time with hatchets. When they were satisfied, they returned him to the scaffold, and Berry pulled the lever a third time.

Nothing happened.

So the Home Secretary commuted Lee’s sentence to life imprisonment.

“We praise or blame as one or the other affords more opportunity for exhibiting our power of judgment.” — Nietzsche

Here’s a tip for your next craps game. You can find the odds of rolling any number with two dice by subtracting the number from 7, ignoring the sign, and subtracting the result from 6. The remainder is the number of chances out of 36 that the number will appear.

For example, there are (6 – (7 – 5)) = 4 chances in 36, or 1 chance in 9, that you’ll roll a 5.

David Contorno of Lemont, Ill., has had the same mobile telephone number for 24 years.

He bought an Ameritech AC140 from Ameritech Mobile Communications on Aug. 2, 1985, and he’s kept the same mobile operator and telephone number ever since.

In October 1871, the American steamer Polaris began to leak, and 19 men, women, and children crowded onto an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean. The ship got away from them and, incredibly, they spent the whole of the arctic winter riding the melting floe down the Greenland coast. Excerpts from the journal of steward John Herron:

Oct. 15. … We remained shivering all night. Saved very little provisions.

Nov. 6. Joe caught a seal, which has been a godsend. … Mr. Meyer made a pack of cards from some thick paper, and we are now playing euchre.

Dec. 2. Boiled some seal-skin to-day and ate it–blubber, hair and tough skin. The men ate it; I could not.

April 14. Our small piece of ice is wearing away very fast; our provisions are nearly finished. Things look very dark; starvation very near.

April 25. … We are all soaking wet, in everything we have, and no chance of drying anything. … All is dark and dreary, but, please God, it will soon brighten up.

Finally, as hope was fading, they were picked up on April 30 by a Newfoundland sealer near Labrador. In six months they had drifted more than 1,440 miles — but all survived.