Futility Closet

Curious coincidences in the lives of Louis Philippe and Napoleon III, from a French daily paper of 1869 — the central events in their lives seem to foretell their downfall:

See The Stars Align.

Erect squares on the sides of any parallelogram and their centers will always form a square.

In any triangle, the midpoints of the sides and the feet of the altitudes always fall on a circle.

“I have noticed that nothing I never said ever did me any harm.” — Calvin Coolidge

In 1954, a Chilean lawyer named Jenaro Gajardo Vera tried to join a local club but was rejected because he owned no real property. He was pondering how to overcome this problem when he looked into the night sky and found his solution.

He claimed the moon.

The local notary acknowleded that Gajardo’s claim met the technical requirements for real property, and no prior owner objected when he published a notice in Chile’s Diario Oficial. Gajardo was granted a deed, returned to the club, and received his membership.

This story is popular in Chile, but most of the sources are in Spanish, so I’m finding it hard to tell where the truth ends and the romance begins. It does appear that a lawyer named Jenaro Gajardo Vera was born in Chile and lived in Talca, as the story says. But you’ll have to decide how much of the rest to believe. It’s commonly said that:

• In 1969, Gajardo received a dispatch from Richard Nixon asking permission for American astronauts to land on his property.
• Gajardo failed to list the moon on his real property tax return, which led to trouble with the Chilean revenue office. When agents confronted him, he asked them to survey the property themselves, as the law required, and they dropped the action.
• Minister of the Supreme Court Galecio Ruben Gomez once asked why, if Gajardo could register the moon, he could not register Mars using the same argument. Gajardo pointed out that Mars does not belong to the earth, and thus is not open to a civil law property claim.
• In 2000, two years after Gajardo’s death, two strangers approached his family saying that NASA wanted to establish bases on the moon, which could bring them substantial revenue. The family paid them a large fee to “regularize Gajardo’s legacy,” and the strangers disappeared.

I’d be grateful to hear from anyone who can substantiate or debunk any of this. I’ll post any updates here. It’s certainly a wonderful story. (Thanks, Benito.)

Can God cease to be omnipotent?

Can God make himself simultaneously omnipotent and not omnipotent?

Can God make another omnipotent being?

Solution to A Curious Exchange:

There must be at least two sets of three numbers whose product is 36 but that have the same sum. Trial and error shows these are (1, 6, 6) and (2, 2, 9), both of which add to 13. Mrs. Smith’s second statement is a “red hairing” — the eldest daughter’s hair color is unimportant, but the fact that Mrs. Smith has an eldest daughter implies that (1, 6, 6) can’t be the right answer. Thus her daughter’s ages are 2, 2, and 9.

From Frank Morgan, The Math Chat Book, 2000.

Some readers object that even twins are not precisely the same age, so the (1, 6, 6) group does contain an “eldest” daughter and can’t be ruled out on that basis. I think that’s a valid criticism.

A curious phenomenon occurred at the farm of Balvullich, on the estate of Ord, occupied by Mr Moffat, on the evening of Monday last. Immediately after one of the loudest peals of thunder heard there, a large and irregular-shaped mass of ice, reckoned to be nearly 20 feet in circumference, and of a proportionate thickness, fell near the farm-house. It had a beautiful crystalline appearance, being nearly all quite transparent, if we except a small portion of it which consisted of hailstones of uncommon size, fixed together. It was principally composed of small squares, diamond-shaped, of from 1 to 3 inches in size, all firmly congealed together. The weight of this large piece of ice could not be ascertained; but it is a most fortunate circumstance, that it did not fall on Mr Moffat’s house, or it would have crushed it, and undoubtedly have caused the death of some of the inmates. No appearance whatever of either hail or snow was discernible in the surrounding district.

– Scotsman, Aug. 11, 1849, quoted in The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, October 1849

“My mother … pointed out that one could not say ‘a green great dragon,’ but had to say ‘a great green dragon.’ I wondered why, and still do.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

(Image: Flickr)

Census Taker: How old are your three daughters?

Mrs. Smith: The product of their ages is 36, and the sum of their ages is the address on our door here.

Census Taker: (after some figuring) I’m afraid I can’t determine their ages from that …

Mrs. Smith: My eldest daughter has red hair.

Census Taker: Oh, thanks, now I know.

How old are the three girls?

(Solution)

On being introduced to Margot Asquith, Jean Harlow mispronounced her name Margut.

“My dear, the t is silent,” said Asquith, “as in Harlow.”