“A Snake’s Attachment for Home”
Lord Monboddo relates the following anecdote of a serpent: ‘I am well informed of a tame serpent in the East Indies, which belonged to the late Dr. Vigot, once kept by him in the suburbs of Madras. This serpent was taken by the French when they invested Madras, and was carried to Pondicherry in a close carriage. But from thence he found his way back to his old quarters, though Madras was above one hundred miles distant from Pondicherry.’
– Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882
A Bad Morning
On March 14, 1887, Rhode Island evangelist Ansel Bourne woke up in an unfamiliar room. To his astonishment, he found that he was in Norristown, Pa., where he had been running a stationery and confectioner’s shop for two months, calling himself A.J. Brown.
His nephew helped him return to Providence, where psychologists diagnosed a case of dissociative fugue, multiple personality, and amnesia.
Inspired, Robert Ludlum borrowed the preacher’s surname for his novel The Bourne Identity.
Roughage
In 1760, was brought to Avignon, a true lithophagus, or stone-eater. He not only swallowed flints of an inch and a half long, a full inch broad, and half an inch thick; but such stones as he could reduce to powder, such as marble, pebbles, &c. he made into paste, which was to him a most agreeable and wholesome food. I examined this man, says the writer, with all the attention I possibly could; I found his gullet very large, his teeth exceedingly strong, his saliva very corrosive, and his stomach lower than ordinary, which I imputed to the vast number of flints he had swallowed, being about five-and-twenty, one day with another. Upon interrogating his keeper, he told me the following particulars: ‘This stone-eater,’ says he, ‘was found three years ago, in a northern uninhabited island, by some of the crew of a Dutch ship. Since I have had him, I make him eat raw flesh with the stones; I could never get him to swallow bread. He will drink water, wine, and brandy, which last liquor gives him infinite pleasure. He sleeps at least twelve hours in a day, sitting on the ground, with one knee over the other, and his chin resting on his right knee. He smokes almost all the time he is not asleep, or is not eating. The flints he has swallowed, he voids somewhat corroded, and diminished in weight; the rest of his excrements resembles mortar.’
– John Platts, Encyclopedia of Natural and Artificial Wonders and Curiosities, 1876
Topsy-Turvy
The great thing about Gustave Verbeek’s comic strips is that when you reach the end of a page, you can invert it to see the story continue.
He created 64 such comics for the New York Herald between 1903 and 1905.
Claudius in Ohio
In 1963, an Indiana construction engineer discovered a small hoard of coins on the bank of the Ohio River. Two of them eventually passed to a Clarksville museum, which identified them as Roman coins from the third century.
No one has explained how they came to be there. The engineer who found them said they’d been grouped as though in a leather pouch which had since disintegrated. But his name, and the rest of the hoard, has been lost.
Just Say No
In May 1797, William Maddison, of Sunderland, very much intoxicated, being warned by the bye-standers not to leap off the Quay into a Keel, which he was meditating; he replied with a volley of oaths, that he would go to hell in a flying leap: he instantly jumped off, and his breast having struck against the gunnel, caused his instant death.
– Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum, 1803
Look Again
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is an optical illusion.
It’s as wide as it is tall.
(Image: Wikipedia)
Look Out Below
On the 7th of November, 1492, a little before noon, a dreadful thunder-clap was heard at Ensisheim, in Alsace, instantly after which a child saw a huge stone fall on a field newly sown with wheat. On searching, it was found to have penetrated the earth about three feet, and weighed 260 lbs. making its size equal to a cube of thirteen inches the side. All the contemporary writers agree in the reality of this phenomenon, observing that, if such a stone had before existed in a ploughed land, it must have been known to the proprietor.
– Cabinet of Curiosities, Natural, Artificial, and Historical, 1822
Attaboy
Account of Samuel Bisset, “famous for teaching quadrupeds to perform very remarkable actions,” given in John Platts, Encyclopedia of Natural and Artificial Wonders and Curiosities, 1876:
Being a man of unwearied patience, three young cats were the next objects of his tuition. He taught those domestic tigers, to strike their paws in such directions on the dulcimer, as to produce several tunes, having music-books before them, and squalling at the same time in different keys or tones, first, second, and third, by way of concert. … He procured a leveret, and reared it to beat several marches on the drum with its hind-legs, until it became a good stout hare. … He taught canary-birds, linnets, and sparrows, to spell the name of any person in company, to distinguish the hour and minute of time, and play many other surprising tricks; he trained six turkey cocks to go through a regular country dance.
“In the course of six months’ teaching, he made a turtle fetch and carry like a dog; and having chalked the floor, and blackened his claws, could direct it to trace out any given name in the company.”
Cheshire Cat Illusion
Sit with a blank white wall to your right. Have a friend sit facing you. Hold up a hand mirror between you, positioned so that your left eye sees your friend’s face and your right eye sees a reflection of the wall. Now sweep your hand in a circular motion across the wall. Your friend’s face will disappear except for his eyes and mouth, like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.
This is worth the trouble to try, as the effect is startling. Your friend’s disembodied eyes may float before you for five seconds if he doesn’t blink or smile.
“Wonderful Memory of William Lyon”
William Lyon, a strolling player, who performed at the theatre in Edinburgh, and who was excellent in the part of Gibby, the Highlander, gave a surprising instance of memory. One evening over his bottle, he wagered a crown bowl of punch, a liquor of which he was very fond, that next morning, at the rehearsal, he would repeat a Daily Advertiser from beginning to end. At the rehearsal, his opponent reminded him of his wager, imagining, as he was drunk the night before, that he must certainly have forgot it, and rallied him on his ridiculous bragging of his memory. Lyon pulled out the paper, desired him to look at it and be judge himself whether he did or did not win his wager. Notwithstanding the want of connection between the paragraphs, the variety of advertisements, and the general chaos which goes to the composition of any newspaper, he repeated it from beginning to end, without the least hesitation or mistake.
– Cabinet of Curiosities, Natural, Artificial, and Historical, 1822
The Piasa
In 1673, French missionary Jacques Marquette was exploring the Mississippi valley when he came upon a strange mural painted on a limestone bluff near what is now Alton, Ill.:
While Skirting some rocks, which by Their height and length inspired awe, We saw upon one of them two painted monsters which at first made Us afraid, and upon Which the boldest savages dare not Long rest their eyes. They are as large As a calf; they have Horns on their heads Like those of a deer, a horrible look, red eyes, a beard Like a tiger’s, a face somewhat like a man’s, a body Covered with scales, and so Long A tail that it winds all around the Body, passing above the head and going back between the legs, ending in a Fish’s tail. Green, red, and black are the three Colors composing the Picture. Moreover, these 2 monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is their author; for good painters in France would find it difficult to reach that place Conveniently to paint them. Here is approximately The shape of these monsters, As we have faithfully Copied It.
In 1836 local settler John Russell told of a flying monster that lived in the cliffs and attacked nearby Indian villages, and the notion of wings is carried through in the reproduction above. Because the original is lost, we can’t be sure how faithful it is.
(Image: Wikimedia Commons)
A Grim Guest
Thomas Jolley Death has a brother named Sudden Death, as the former told when he was on a professional visit to Nottingham, Eng., as a private detective. The father of the two men may yet be alive, and if so, has probably had time to reflect upon the hideous names with which he labelled his two baby boys to go through the world. The real name of the family is D’Ath.
– Bizarre Notes & Queries, April 1886
Priming Effect
Add these numbers aloud:
When you’re certain of your answer, confirm it with a calculator.
Most people find they’ve made a mistake.
Long Way Home
Born in 1818, Yamamoto Otokichi was only 14 when a storm carried his transport ship away from his native Japan. The trip home took him literally around the world.
The ship drifted for more than a year across the Pacific while the crew drank desalinated water and slowly devoured the cargo of rice. By the time it reached the United States, all but three had died of scurvy, and the survivors were enslaved by Indians and then delivered to the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Their patron there sent them to London and then on to Macao in hopes they might help to open trade with the East. But Tokyo met their overtures with cannonfire, and Otokichi spent most of his remaining years as a seaman and translator.
He died in 1867 in Singapore, but his story has a belated resolution: In 2005, half of Otokichi’s remains were returned to his hometown in Japan — 187 years after he left.
Oops
In the Cathedral of Girgenti, in Sicily, the slightest whisper is borne with perfect distinctness from the great western door to the cornice behind the high altar, — a distance of two hundred and fifty feet. By a most unlucky coincidence, the precise focus of divergence at the former station was chosen for the place of the confessional. Secrets never intended for the public ear thus became known, to the dismay of the confessors, and the scandal of the people, by the resort of the curious to the opposite point, (which seems to have been discovered accidentally,) till at length, one listener having had his curiosity somewhat over-gratified by hearing his wife’s avowal of her own infidelity, this tell-tale peculiarity became generally known, and the confessional was removed.
– Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1890
Hope Springs Eternal
In central Bahrain stands a large mesquite known as the Tree of Life. It’s the only tree that survives in this part of the desert, and it’s been here for 400 years. No one knows where it’s finding water and nutrients.
See also Spectacularly Bad Driving.
Pyrexia
A Lusitanian physician had a patient who insisted upon it he was perpetually frozen, and would sit before a great fire even in the dog-days. The Portuguese Esculapius procured him a dress of rough sheep skins, saturated with aqua vita, and set him on fire. The patient then declared he was quite warm, rather too much so, and was cured.
– Cabinet of Curiosities, Natural, Artificial, and Historical, 1822
“Print of Human Feet in Rocks”
“Two apparent prints or impressions of the human foot in a tabular mass of limestone,” discussed in Schoolcraft’s Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley, 1825:
The rock containing these interesting impressions is a compact limestone of a grayish blue color. It was originally quarried on the left bank of the Mississippi at St. Louis, and is a part of the extensive range of calcareous rocks upon which that town is built. Foundations of private dwellings, and the military works erected by the French and Spaniards, from this material, sixty years ago, are still as solid and unbroken as when first laid.
“The probability … of their having been imparted by some individual of a race of men who were unacquainted with the art of tanning skins, and at a period much anterior to that to which any tradition of the present race of Indians reaches, derives additional weight from this peculiar shape of the feet.”
So There
When the Russian prince Dimitri, the son of Ivan II, was assassinated on May 15, 1591, at Uglich, his place of exile, the great bell of that town rang the signal of insurrection. For this serious political offence the bell was sentenced to perpetual banishment in Siberia, and conveyed with other exiles to Tobolsk. After a long period of solitary confinement it was partially purged of its iniquity by conjuration and re-consecration and suspended in the tower of a church in the Siberian capital; but not until 1892 was it fully pardoned and restored to its original place in Uglich. A like sentence was imposed by a Russian tribunal on a butting ram in the latter half of the seventeenth century.
– E.P. Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, 1906
Eternal Flame Falls
Under a waterfall in New York’s Chestnut Ridge Regional Park there’s a grotto that emits natural gas.
It can be lit to produce a flame.
What’s in a Name?
In the seventeenth century, André Pujom, finding that his name spelled Pendu à Riom, fulfilled his destiny by cutting somebody’s throat in Auvergne, and was actually hung at Riom, the seat of justice in that province.
– William Dobson, Poetical Ingenuities and Eccentricities, 1882
