No Thanks

In June 1744, the College of William & Mary invited the Indians of the Six Nations to send six young men to be “properly” educated. They received this reply:

We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those Colleges, and that the Maintenance of our young Men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinc’d, therefore, that you mean to do us Good by your Proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know that different Nations have different Conceptions of Things; and you will therefore not take it amiss if our Ideas of this kind of Education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some Experience of it: Several of our young People were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your Sciences; but when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the Woods, unable to bear either Cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a Cabin, take a Deer, or kill an Enemy, spoke our Language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, or Counsellors; they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less oblig’d by your kind Offer, tho’ we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful Sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take great Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them.

January 31, 2012February 5, 2012 | History · Society

Divine Wills

When Scunthorpe solicitor R.A.C. Symes died in 1930, his will specified that “in the event of the Second Coming of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ my Will shall (so far as may be legally permissible) come into operation and take effect as though I were dead.”

When retired London schoolmaster Ernest Digweed died in 1976, he left his whole estate, more than £26,000, in trust for Jesus Christ at the Second Coming. The estate was to be invested for 80 years, and “if during those 80 years the Lord Jesus Christ shall come to a reign on Earth, then the Public Trustee, upon obtaining proof which shall satisfy them of his identity, shall pay to the Lord Jesus Christ all the property which they hold on his behalf.” If Jesus does not appear, then the estate goes to the crown.

See Heaven on Earth.

January 31, 2012January 31, 2012 | Religion · Society

Brute Force

A Paris inventor patented this “cynophere,” or dog-powered velocipede, in 1875.

Twelve years later, a Cleveland designer offered this “motor for street-cars.” That’s progress.

January 31, 2012January 30, 2012 | Technology

Popularity Contest

Prove that at least two Welshmen have the same number of Welsh friends.

	Select Click for Answer
Well, suppose they don’t. If there are n Welshmen in the world, each can have any number of Welsh friends from 0 to n-1 (he can’t be friends with himself). If we are to arrange things so that no two Welshmen have the same number of friends, then the first must have 0 friends, the next 1 friend, and so on. But then the loneliest Welshman has no friends and the most popular is friends with every Welshman but himself. This is a contradiction. Hence there must be some overlap — at least two Welshmen must have the same number of friends. This is essentially the same idea as in Hand Count. I think it appeared originally in the Litton Problematical Recreations series.

Click for Answer

January 30, 2012January 31, 2013 | Puzzles

Unquote

“The difference between a conviction and a prejudice is that you can explain a conviction without getting angry.” — Anonymous

January 30, 2012January 27, 2012 | Quotations

After Hours

A third case is one of somnocyclism (cycling in sleep). The patient, asleep, sometimes in cycling costume, and sometimes in an undershirt or less, got up, mounted his wheel, and rode about town and in the country. He generally awoke from a fall. On one occasion it was at the foot of a hill, his head on the edge of a pond, and his wheel about thirty feet distant. Another night he found himself suspended by his shirt on a pear tree in his father’s garden. It is not known whether he had descended thither from the roof or was trying to ascend. At other times he would go to his office and work. Once, having stuck over a balance in the afternoon, he found next morning that he had completed it, correcting an error previously not observed. There is no subsequent recollection of what has transpired. He has been observed in hospital to hold a conversation through an imaginary telephone, and again to sit atop a wardrobe with an umbrella up over him. Evidently this man’s disease included a sense of humour.

— G.R. Wilson, “Alcoholism and Allied Neuroses,” Journal of Mental Science, October 1899

January 29, 2012July 13, 2019 | Oddities

Father, Country

Time and weather have sculpted a likeness of George Washington in Colorado’s Roxborough State Park. It even has “teeth.”

Right: A profile discovered near South Bethlehem, Pa., during the clearing of a mountainside in 1913. “Viewed in profile, the nose, upper lip, eye, and chin are as clearly defined as though cut by human agency,” wrote one observer. “Even the rock formation of the head has a surface curiously like in appearance to the wigs of colonial days.”

January 29, 2012January 28, 2012 | Oddities

Yar

Three pirates find themselves on an island with a chest full of miscellaneous treasure. They have no weighing or measuring equipment. How can they divide the loot to the satisfaction of each?

	Select Click for Answer
Pirate A picks out what he thinks is a third of the loot. Pirates B and C, in turn, have the option of returning some of it to the chest. In effect, each is making a bid as to the smallest “third” that he’s willing to accept. The last one to make a proposal (which might be Pirate A himself) keeps this first portion for himself. The other two pirates then split the remaining treasure in the conventional way: one divides it into two portions and the other chooses between them.

Click for Answer

January 29, 2012January 31, 2013 | Puzzles

“Death by Falling From the Clouds”

robert cocking and parachute

The following is an account of the post-mortem examination of the body of Mr. Robert Cocking, aged sixty-one, who fell with a suicidal machine called a parachute, from the cord of a balloon which ascended from Vauxhall Gardens, on the 24th of July, 1837. The height which the balloon had reached when the parachute commenced its descent, is stated to have been 5000 feet. The instrument of death was simply a canvas toy, constructed in ignorance, and used with the hardihood which might distinguish an unfortunate being who contemplated his own destruction by extraordinary and wonder-exciting means,– an end which, without the motive, was more effectually attained, by the crushing of the parachute in the air as it dropped:–

On the right side.–The second, third, fourth, and fifth ribs broken near their junction, with their cartilages. The second, fourth, fifth, and sixth broken also near their junction with the vertebrae. The second, fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs also broken at their greatest convexity.
On the left side.–The second, third, fourth, and sixth ribs broken near their cartilages, and also near their angles.
The clavicle on the right side fractured at the junction of the external with the middle third.
The second lumbar vertebra fractured through its body; the transverse processes of several of the lumbar vertebrae broken.
Comminuted fracture and separation of the bones of the pelvis at the sacro-iliac symphyses.
The ossa nasi fractured.
The right ankle dislocated inwards; the astragalus and os calcis fractured.
The viscera of the head, chest, and abdomen free from any morbid appearances.

F.C. Finch, G. Macilwain, W. Maugham, T. Greenwood, W. Thompson, surgeons

— Lancet, Aug. 5, 1837

January 28, 2012January 28, 2012 | Death · Technology

Black and White

By T.M. Brown. White to mate in two moves.

	Select Click for Answer
1. Bd1 Kxb1 2. Bb3#

January 28, 2012January 31, 2013 | Puzzles