One other oddity concerning street names: In 1971, the city planning board of Greensboro, N.C., proposed the name Forkover Place for the downtown street on which the regional office of the IRS was located.
The IRS objected, and the street was named Federal Place.
Another notable invention for roasting meat was the musical turnspit, that, whilst causing joints to gyrate before the Count de Castel Maria’s kitchen-fire, played four-and-twenty tunes to the cooks of that opulent lord of Treviso. The spits of this machine turned a hundred and thirty roasts at the same time; and the chef was informed, by the progress of the melodies, when the moment had arrived for removing each piece of meat. Chickens were done to a turn when the organ had played its twelfth tune; the completion of the eighteenth air was the signal for withdrawing hares and pheasants; but the largest pieces of beef and venison were not ready for the board until the twenty-fourth melody had been played out.
— John Cordy Jeaffreson, A Book About the Table, 1875
My success as a salesman depends on trust: Before I can close a sale with you, you have to trust me. But this requires me to act deliberately in a way that appears sincere. It’s not enough simply to be sincere and hope that you notice this; my best interests are served by actively cultivating this impression. And this kills true sincerity — now I’m self-consciously promoting an appearance.
“If sincerity is a natural and unforced conformity between avowals and actions, then it does not make sense to try to be sincere or to devise strategies for becoming more sincere, both of which require the deliberate attempt to achieve a state that cannot be brought about by calculation,” writes Monmouth College philosopher Guy Oakes. “Their self-consciousness — their knowledge of the circumstances of their role and the conditions required for its performance — rules out the possibility of sincerity. Sincerity produces insincerity.”
(Guy Oakes, “The Sales Process and the Paradoxes of Trust,” Journal of Business Ethics 9:8 [August 1990], 671-679.)
Lady Kent articled with Sir Edward Herbert that he should come to her when she sent for him; and stay with her as long as she would have him, to which he set his hand; then he articled with her that he should go away when he pleased, and stay away as long as he pleased, to which she set her hand. This is the epitome of all the contracts in the world.
— John Selden, Table Talk, 1689
The avoid creating duplicate street names in Columbia, Maryland, developer The Rouse Company took its inspiration from famous works of art and literature. Street name maven Howard Channing cited these as some of his favorites:
These and more are listed in Paul Dickson’s 1996 book What’s in a Name?, and the town once published a book with the whole story. This database catalogs some of the names’ origins. Channing called Columbia the most “provocatively and imaginatively” named town he’s studied.
manducate
v. chew
congustable
adj. having a similar flavor
deturpation
n. a making foul
gazingstock
n. a thing gazed at with wonder
Beneath Seattle’s Pike Place Market is a 50-foot brick wall covered with used chewing gum. Begun in the 1990s, the wall now bears an estimated 180 pieces of gum per brick. In 2009 it was ranked second only to the Blarney Stone as the world’s germiest tourist attraction.
Washington state governor Jay Inslee called the “gum wall” his “favorite thing about Seattle you can’t find anywhere else,” but in fact Bubblegum Alley, in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is even bigger, at 70 feet long (below). Opponents call it offensive, but the Chamber of Commerce lists it as a “special attraction.”
Aphorisms from Austin O’Malley’s Keystones of Thought, 1914:
“A little learning striving to explain a great subject is like an attempt to light up a cathedral with a single taper, which does no more than to show for an instant one foolish face.”
I am told that a certain friend of mine, as an undergraduate at Cambridge, was of an extreme nimbleness, an agility which he could not well control. One day that grave and reverend personage, the Master of his college, happening to meet him, remonstrated with him thus: ‘Mr. Dash, I am sorry to say I never look out of my window but I see you jumping over those railings.’ Mr. Dash was equal to the emergency, for he respectfully replied, ‘And it is a curious fact, sir, that I never leap over those railings without seeing you looking out of that window.’
— Frederick Locker-Lampson, Patchwork, 1879
From Catriona Agg’s endlessly rewarding Twitter feed:
The three smaller squares are the same size. What’s the angle? (The outermost shape too is a square.)
On Aug. 6, 1945, 24-year-old Jacob Beser was the radar specialist aboard the Enola Gay when it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Three days later, Beser was aboard the B-29 Bockscar when it dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.
He is the only person who served as a strike crew member on both missions.
Below him, Japanese marine engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi endured the first bombing during a business trip to Hiroshima, then returned home to Nagasaki in time to receive the second.
He is the only person acknowledged by the Japanese government to have survived both bombings.
