The Tomahawk Story
When Alec Guinness was filming The Swan in North Carolina in 1955, someone gave him a tomahawk purchased at a local fairground. Guinness thought it too heavy to take with him, so as he was departing he paid a porter to slip it into Grace Kelly’s bed.
Years later, while performing in London, he found the tomahawk in his own bed.
This meant war. Guinness bided his time until the princess visited America on a poetry tour, then he contacted the English actor with whom she was traveling and persuaded him to leave the tomahawk in her bed. (“Do you know Alec Guinness?” she asked him the next day. “No, I’ve never met him,” he said.)
Guinness thought no more about it until 1980, when he visited Hollywood to accept an honorary Oscar and found the tomahawk in his hotel bed. He waited until Kelly’s next tour of England and arranged to have it left in her suitcase.
She died in 1982, so that was the last laugh. There was no one to share it with — in 25 years, neither of them had ever acknowledged that this was happening.
Why Can’t I Find Amanda Hugginkiss?
Imaginary patrons of Jersey City’s Tube Bar paged by owner Louis “Red” Deutsch at the request of telephone pranksters John Elmo and Jim Davidson in the mid-1970s:
- Al Coholic
- Al Kaseltzer
- Al Kykyoras
- Ben Dover
- Butchie Pantsdown
- Frank Enstein
- Holden McGroin
- Imov Irgin
- Jim Nasium
- Joe Mama
- Mike Ocksmall
- Moe Ronn
- Oliver Closeoff
- Rufus Leakin
Elmo and Davidson recorded Deutsch’s earnest pages and the wild, vituperative threats that followed when he realized he’d been had. In the 1980s the tapes began to circulate among professional sports leagues and eventually found their way to animator Matt Groening … who turned them into a running gag on The Simpsons.
Spellbound
‘Well, it was a quite shocking, I must say — there was blood everywhere!’ Alfred Hitchcock began suddenly from the rear of the elevator. We were in the New York St. Regis Hotel, heading down to the lobby. There was as light flush to his cheeks from the several frozen dauquiris he had just drunk in his suite. The elevator had just stopped and three people dressed for the evening had joined us, and immediately Mr. Hitchcock had started to speak, sounding as though he were in midsentence and projecting in that careful and familiar TV tone of his.
He went on, ‘There was as stream of blood coming from his ear and another from his mouth.’ The people had recognized him immediately, but now they seemed purposely to avoid looking at him. He went right on, gazing beatifically ahead of him as the elevator stopped again and another well-dressed couple came aboard: ‘Of course, there was a huge pool of blood on the floor and his clothes were spattered with it — Oh, it was a horrible mess.’
No one on the elevator, it seemed, was breathing. ‘Blood all around! Well, I looked at the poor man and and I said, “Good God, what happened to you?”‘ At that point the elevator doors opened onto the lobby, and Hitchcock said, ‘Do you know what he told me?’ and then paused. After a moment, and quite reluctantly, the other passengers moved out of the elevator and then looked back at the director as we walked away.
After several foggy moments, I asked, ‘Well, what did he say?’ and Hitchcock smiled benevolently, taking my arm, and said, ‘Oh, nothing — that’s just my elevator story.’
– Peter Bogdonavich, Who the Devil Made It, 1997
Sighs and Whispers
Frustrated with the intertitles in silent films, Charles Pidgin invented a better solution in 1917: The performers would inflate ballons on which their dialogue was printed. “The blowing or inflation of the devices by the various characters of a photo-play will add to the realism of the picture by the words appearing to come from the mouth of the players,” Pidgin wrote. Even better, “the size of the speech may be increased with the increase of various emotions depicted on the screen.”
It’s not too late to implement this.
Rough Indeed
The world’s most dangerous golf hole is at Camp Bonifas in South Korea. It’s just south of the demilitarized zone, it’s a par 3, and it’s surrounded on three sides by live minefields.
I’ll wait over here.
Cat Snap
Harry Whittier Frees did a booming business in novelty postcards in the early 20th century, posing animals in human situations, including props and sets.
“I take occasion to give my personal assurance that all pictures appearing in this book are photographed from life,” he wrote in 1915′s The Little Folks of Animal Land. “The difficulties encountered in posing kittens and puppies for pictures of this kind have been overcome only by the exercise of great patience and invariable kindness.”
The Happiest Place on Earth
Yes, it’s The Rescuers, and yes, that’s a topless woman in the window.
Disney discovered her in two frames of the film’s 1999 home video release, but apparently she’d been there since the film’s premiere in 1977.
The studio recalled 3.4 million videotapes and released a cleaned-up version two months later. If they know who did it, they’re not saying.
The Triple Deal
Take any twenty-one cards, and ask a person to choose one from them. [Deal] them in three heaps, and ask the person who selected the card in which heap it is placed. Gather them up, and put the heap containing the chosen card between the other two. Do this twice more, and the chosen card will be found the eleventh from the top.
– Alfred Elliott, The Playground and the Parlour, 1868
No Comment
A good American misprint was the following, which is warranted as true and genuine. It occurred in the proof-sheets of a scientific treatise. The sentence, as written by the author, ran as follows: ‘Filtration is sometimes assisted by the use of albumen.’ This came out as: ‘Flirtation is sometimes arrested by the use of aldermen.’
– Patrick Maxwell, Pribbles and Prabbles, 1906
“A Good Catch”
The following is a good catch: lay a wager with a person that to three observations you will put to him, he will not reply ‘a bottle of wine.’ Then begin with some common-place remark, such as, ‘We have had a fine, or wet, day to-day,’ as it may be; he will answer, of course, ‘a bottle of wine.’ You then make another remark of the same kind, as, ‘I hope we shall have as fine or finer to-morrow,’ to which he will reply, as before, ‘a bottle of wine.’ You must then catch him very sharply, and say, ‘Ah! there, sir! you’ve lost your wager;’ and the probability is, if he be not aware of the trick, he will say ‘Why, how can you make that out?’ or something similar, forgetting that, though a strange one, it is the third observation you have made.
– Samuel Williams, The Boy’s Treasury of Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations, 1847
Unquote
“Look. I have two kinds of acting. One on a horse and one off a horse. That’s it.” — Robert Mitchum
You’re Welcome
You’d pay $1,000 to witness my mastery of the black arts, wouldn’t you? Of course you would.
- Buy a brand-new deck of cards.
- Discard the jokers, cut the deck 13 times, and deal it into 13 piles.
- Now stand back … Ph’nglui mglw’nafh C’thulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
- Look at the cards. Presto! They have magically grouped themselves by value — all the aces are in one pile, kings in another, etc.
You owe me $1,000.
Playing Favorites
A tied football match in southern Congo came to an unexpected conclusion on Oct. 28, 1998, when a lightning bolt struck and killed all 11 members of the visiting team.
“The athletes from [home team] Basanga curiously came out of this catastrophe unscathed,” reported the Kinshasa newspaper L’Avenir.
“The exact nature of the lightning has divided the population in this region, which is known for its use of fetishes in football.”
Tempting
The Earl of Yarborough offers you a wager. He’ll shuffle an ordinary deck and deal you 13 cards. If none of your cards ranks above 9, he’ll give you a thousand pounds. Otherwise you must give him one pound.
Should you accept?
The Horizontorium
This clever anamorphic illusion was invented by W. Shires in 1821. Cut out the center piece, make a hole at A, fold it at B, and position it at D. (Here’s a larger version.)
Peer through the hole with one eye, preferably with a light source on your right, and you’ll see the tombstone in three dimensions, surrounded by a low palisade.
Here’s another scene using the same principle; position the eyepiece where the turrets’ lines would converge and “the whole view will appear in its just proportions, representing a castle at a considerable distance, the loftiest part of which appearing scarcely an inch high.”
Action!
This is the Roundhay Garden Scene, the earliest surviving motion picture, shot in 1888 in the Leeds garden of Joseph and Sarah Whitley.
The scene is only 2 seconds long, but it seems to have conveyed a queer curse. Sarah died only 10 days after the shoot; director Louis Le Prince vanished from a French train two years later; and actor Alphonse Le Prince was found dead of a gunshot in 1902. There’s a novel in here somewhere.
All the News …
How’s that for a headline? It ran in the New York Times Sunday magazine on Aug. 27, 1911:
Canals a thousand miles long and twenty miles wide are simply beyond our comprehension. Even though we are aware of the fact that … a rock which here weighs one hundred pounds would there only weigh thirty-eight pounds, engineering operations being in consequence less arduous than here, yet we can scarcely imagine the inhabitants of Mars capable of accomplishing this Herculean task within the short interval of two years.
The Times was relying on Percival Lowell, who was convinced that a dying Martian civilization was struggling to reach the planet’s ice caps. “The whole thing is wonderfully clear-cut,” he’d told the newspaper — but he was already largely ostracized by skeptical colleagues who couldn’t duplicate his findings. The “spokes” he later saw on Venus may have been blood vessels in his own eye.
Whatever his shortcomings, Lowell’s passions led to some significant accomplishments, including Lowell Observatory and the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death. “Science,” wrote Emerson, “does not know its debt to imagination.”
“The Magic Circle”
Assure the company that it is in your power, if any person will place himself in the middle of the room, to make a circle round him, out of which, although his limbs shall be quite at liberty, it will be impossible for him to jump without partially undressing himself, let him use as much exertion as he may. This statement will, without doubt, cause some little surprise; and one of the party will, in all probability, put your asseverations to the test. Request him to take his stand in the middle of the room, then blindfold him, button his coat, and next with a piece of chalk draw a circle round his waist. On withdrawing the bandage from his eyes and showing him the circle you have described, he must at once perceive that he cannot jump out of it without taking off his coat.
– Samuel Williams, The Boy’s Treasury of Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations, 1847
Diamond in the Rough
Irving Berlin composed more than 3,000 songs, including “God Bless America,” “White Christmas,” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” but he could barely read music, and his own singing voice was nearly inaudible.
Worse, as a self-taught pianist he played everything in F# major, requiring a special piano to explore other tonalities. “The black keys are right there under your fingers,” he once said. “The key of C is for people who study music.”
He relied on assistants to arrange his ideas — but he still claimed credit for the ideas themselves. “You may not be able to type your own letter, but somebody else can do it for you,” he said. “But they can’t make it up for you.”
The Publius Enigma
In June 1994, shortly after Pink Floyd released the album The Division Bell, someone calling himself Publius posted two messages to the newsgroup alt.music.pink-floyd:
- “My friends, You have heard the message Pink Floyd has delivered, but have you listened? Perhaps I can be your guide, but I will not solve the enigma for you.”
- “The Division Bell is not like its predecessors. Although all great music is subject to multiple interpretations, in this case there is a central purpose and a designed solution. For the ingenious person (or group of persons) who recognizes this–and where this information points to–a unique prize has been secreted.”
When readers asked for proof of his authenticity, Publius wrote, “Monday, July 18, East Rutherford, New Jersey. Approximately 10:30pm. Flashing white lights. There is an enigma.” Sure enough, at the appointed time during a Floyd concert the words ENIGMA PUBLIUS appeared in white lights at the front of the stage.
Unfortunately, the clues then dwindled, no explanation was given, and no winner was ever announced. Rumors about the enigma have appeared ever since in fan circles and semi-cryptically from the band’s organization, but no one really knows what the enigma is. “It is important to note that neither I nor anyone involved with this zine will enter into any correspondence on this topic,” wrote Jeff Jensen, editor of the band’s fan magazine, in issue 34. “It’s a puzzle for you, devised by the one who loves you enough to drive you mad.”
Apropos
How many letters are in ACE KING QUEEN JACK TEN NINE EIGHT SEVEN SIX FIVE FOUR THREE TWO?
Fifty-two.
(This also works in Spanish.)
“The Glass of Wine Under the Hat”
Place a glass of wine upon a table, put a hat over it, and offer to lay a wager with any of the company that you will empty the glass without lifting the hat. When your proposition is accepted, desire the company not to touch the hat; and then get under the table, and commence making a sucking noise, smacking your lips at intervals, as though you were swallowing the wine with infinite satisfaction to yourself. After a minute or two, come from under the table, and address the person who took your wager with, ‘Now, sir.’ His curiosity being, of course, excited, he will lift up the hat, in order to see whether you have really performed what you promised; and the instant he does so, take up the glass, and after having swallowed its contents, say, ‘You have lost, sir, for you see I have drunk the wine without raising up the hat.’
– Samuel Williams, The Boy’s Treasury of Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations, 1847
Gin!
Combine all 100 Scrabble tiles and you can spell:
COUNTRYMEN, I AM TO BURY, NOT EULOGIZE, CAESAR; IF EVIL LIVES ON, BEQUEATHING INJURY, GOOD OFT EXPIRES: A PALSIED, AWKWARD DEATH!
False Confidence
A 19th-century opening manual gives this line in the Queen’s Gambit Declined:
1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 c5 4. Nf3 cxd4 5. Nxd4 e5 6. Ndb5 d4 7. Nd5 Na6 8. Qa4 Bd7 9. e3 Ne7
The authors say Black has the superior position. That may be a bit optimistic — do you see why?
