Prospector William Schmidt was overjoyed when he struck gold on California’s Copper Mountain, but he faced one problem: He was on the north side of the mountain, and the road to the smelter was on the south side.

So he dug a tunnel.

He started in 1906, at age 35, working with a pick, a 4-pound hammer, a hand drill, and dynamite. When he finally broke into daylight on the mountain’s south side, it was 1938 and he was 66 years old. He had single-handedly dug a tunnel 1,872 feet long, displacing 2,600 cubic yards of granite.

Alas, success had to be its own reward. While Schmidt had been digging, rail and road links had been built around the mountain — so the tunnel was unnecessary.

The largest city in human history is modern Tokyo, with a population of around 35 million. That’s a pretty big mammal colony, but it’s nowhere near the record.

In 1901 scientists discovered a “town” of 400 million prairie dogs in Texas. It covered more than 23,000 square miles — an area larger than Costa Rica.

Seeing so many meteorological phenomena in your excellent paper, Knowledge, I am tempted to ask for an explanation of the following, which I saw when on board the British India Company’s steamer Patna while on a voyage up the Persian Gulf. In May, 1880, on a dark, calm night, about 11.30 p.m., there suddenly appeared on each side of the ship an enormous luminous wheel whirling round, the spokes of which seemed to brush the ship along. The spokes would be 200 or 300 yards long, and resembled the birch rods of the dames’ schools. Each wheel contained about sixteen spokes, and made the revolution in about twelve seconds. One could almost fancy one heard the swish as the spokes whizzed past the ship, and, although the wheels must have been some 500 or 600 yards in diameter, the spokes could be distinctly seen all the way round. The phosphorescent gleam seemed to glide along flat on the surface of the sea, no light being visible in the air above the water. The appearance of the spokes could be almost exactly represented by standing in a boat and flashing a bull’s-eye lantern horizontally along the surface of the water round and round. I may mention that the phenomenon was also seen by Captain Avern, commander of the Patna, and Mr. Manning, third officer. Lee Fore Brace.

— Knowledge, Dec. 28, 1883

See Light Show for a remarkably similar account.

The United Equipment Company sells bulldozers — but you might have guessed that from its headquarters building in Turlock, Calif., which is shaped like an oversized yellow Caterpillar D6. Built in 1977, it’s two stories tall and contains six rooms. See also Yogi Bear’s Dream.

Dubious but worth recording: A tract dated 1622 reports a vast war of starlings over Cork, Ireland, Oct. 12-14, 1621. Armies of birds had reportedly converged from the east and west some four or five days before, and on Oct. 12 “they forthwith, at one Instant, took Wing, and so mounting up into the Skies, encountered one another with such a terrible Shock, as the Sound amazed the whole City and the Beholders,” until “there fell down in the City, and into the Rivers, Multitudes of Starlings or Stares, some with Wings broken, some with Legs and Necks broken, some with Eyes picked out, some their Bills thrust into the Breast and Sides of their Adversaries, on so strage [sic] a Manner, that it were incredible, except it were confirmed by Letters of Credit, and by Eye-Witnesses with that Assurance which is without all Exception.”

The birds adjourned, for some reason, on Sunday, though visitors from Suffolk reported seeing a similar war over remote woods there. On Monday the fight resumed over Cork, and this time the dead included a kite, a raven, and a crow.

I can’t find the original pamphlet, but it’s referenced by Johns Hopkins (1905), the London Library (1888), the New York State Library (1882), and the Bodleian Library (1860), among others. Starlings do have a colorful history — see Oops and Fragments of Night.

Abe Lincoln never actually slept in the Lincoln Bedroom, but his ghost seems to spend a lot of time there:

• Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Sometimes when I worked at my desk late at night I’d get a feeling that someone was standing behind me. I’d have to turn around and look.”
• Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands reportedly fainted after seeing “an ectoplasm in a stovepipe hat.”
• Harry Truman heard knocks but saw nothing. Winston Churchill preferred to sleep in the room across the hall, but did not say why.
• Ronald Reagan’s dog Rex would not enter the room, and he barked as he passed it. He would sometimes prowl the presidential study on the floor below, staring at the ceiling.
• Reagan’s daughter Maureen and her husband insisted they’d seen “a shadowy figure by the fireplace” and “a man wearing a red coat.”

“If you see him again,” Reagan told Maureen, “send him down the hall. I have some questions.”

The following anecdote is told by Professor Dove, of Berlin, in illustration of the production of snow by change of temperature. On an extremely cold but starlight night, a large company had assembled in a ballroom in Sweden, which in the course of the evening became so warm that some of the ladies fainted. An officer tried to open a window, but found it was frozen to the sill. He then broke a pane of glass, and the rush of cold air from without produced a fall of snow in the room. Its atmosphere was charged with vapour, which, becoming suddenly condensed and frozen, fell in the form of snow upon the astonished dancers.

— The World of Wonders, 1883

In 1719 a body, preserved from corruption by the vitriolic water with which it had been saturated, was found in an abandoned part of the Fahlun mines [of Sweden]. When it had been brought up to the surface, the whole neighbourhood flocked together to see it; but nobody could recognise a lost friend or kinsman in its young and handsome features. At length an old woman, more than 80 years of age, approached with tottering steps, and casting a glance on the corpse, uttered a piercing shriek and fell senseless on the ground. She had instantly recognised her affianced lover, who had mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years previously, but whose image she still bore in her faithful memory. As he was not employed in the mines, no search had been made for him underground at the time. Most probably he had fallen, by some accident, into one of the numerous crevices by which the surface of the mines is traversed. Thus the tottering woman, weighed down with the double burden of infirmity and age, saw once more the face of her lover as she had looked upon it in the days of her youth.

— Georg Hartwig, The Subterranean World, 1871