Futility Closet

• No point in Great Britain is more than 75 miles from the sea.
• MOONLIGHT = THIN GLOOM
• 2427 = 2¹ + 4² + 2³ + 7⁴
• Sweden had a Charles VII, but no Charleses I-VI.
• “If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness?” — Stanislaw Lec

North East, Pennsylvania, is in northwest Pennsylvania.

Northwest, Virginia, is in southeast Virginia.

AM IN MARKET HARBOROUGH, G.K. Chesterton once telegraphed his wife. WHERE OUGHT I TO BE?

There is just one spot on earth from which, in an hour’s driving time or less, a motoring tourist can reach either Athens, Belfast, Belgrade, Bremen, China, Denmark, Dresden, Frankfort, Limerick, Lisbon, Madrid, Mexico, Naples, Norway, Oxford, Palermo, Paris, Peru, Poland or Vienna. The spot is situated at about 44° 9′ north latitude, 69° 51′ west longitude, in the county of Sagadahoc, state of Maine, U.S.A., and it is surrounded by towns bearing these names, no one of them more than fifty-five miles away.

– Gary Jennings, Personalities of Language, 1965

On a board in front of a stage-office in Buffalo, I once read, ‘Stages start from this house for China, Sardinia, Holland, Hamburg, Java, Sweden, Cuba, Havre, Italy, and Penn Yan.’

– James Freeman Clarke, On Giving Names to Towns and Streets, 1880

No building in Washington, D.C., is taller than the Washington Monument.

The city enacted a height restriction in 1899 to protect Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an “American Paris” with “low and convenient” buildings on “light and airy” streets.

• Canada’s coastline is six times as long as Australia’s.
• Rudyard Kipling invented snow golf.
• ENUMERATION = MOUNTAINEER
• Can you see your eyes move in a mirror?
• 26364 = 26³ × 6/4
• “If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness?” — Stanislaw Lec

Weirton, W.Va., is the only town in the United States that borders two different states on opposite sides.

The town borders Ohio directly on the west and Pennsylvania on the east.

• 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

10 Downing Street has no keyhole.

Beetle Bailey and Lois Flagston, of Hi and Lois, are brother and sister.

Both comics were created by Mort Walker.

Between 1963 and 1987, a tortoiseshell cat named Towser caught an estimated 28,899 mice in Scotland’s Glenturret Distillery. (Mice like barley.) Her prowess earned her a bronze statue and a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

Her paw prints appeared on each bottle of Fairlie’s Light Highland Liqueur.