Futility Closet

• Hastie Love was convicted of rape in Tennessee in 1968.
• Zebra stripes are white.
• 14641 = (1 + 4 + 6)^{4 × 1}
• Spain’s national anthem has no words.
• LION + TIGER = LOITERING
• “Character is that which can do without success.” — Emerson

“The whole scheme of things is turned wrong end to. Life should begin with age & its privileges and accumulations, & end with youth & its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. As things are now, when in youth a dollar would bring a hundred pleasures, you can’t have it. When you are old, you get it & there is nothing worth buying with it then. It’s an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.”

– Mark Twain, letter to Edward Dimmitt, July 19, 1901

“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because it pleases him, and it pleases him because it is beautiful. Were nature not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, life would not be worth living.” — Henri Poincaré

“Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.” — Gertrude Stein

“When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.” — George Bernard Shaw

• Dorothy Parker named her dog Cliche.
• 27639 = 2⁷ × 6³ – 9
• Tikitiki cures beriberi.
• Can an object move itself?
• “The best way out is always through.” — Robert Frost

“History is all explained by geography.” — Robert Penn Warren

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” — Neil Armstrong

(Thanks, Hugh.)

“He who fears death either fears to lose all sensation or fears new sensations. In reality, you will either feel nothing at all, and therefore nothing evil, or else, if you can feel any sensations, you will be a new creature, and so will not have ceased to have life.” — Marcus Aurelius

• Newton was born the year that Galileo died.
• Cole Porter’s summer home was called No Trespassing.
• 66339 = (6 × 6)³ + 3⁹
• Could you have had different parents?
• “A good conscience is a continual Christmas.” — Ben Franklin

UPDATE: The first item here is incorrect. The dates coincide only if one uses the Gregorian calendar to date Galileo’s death and the Julian to date Newton’s birth. The two events occurred 361 days apart, which puts them in separate years on both calendars. Apparently this is a very common error. (Thanks, Igor.)