A Nap Disturbed

http://books.google.com/books?id=_g8wAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false

In February 1857 a Dr. Biccard was visiting Green Point in Cape Town when the lighthouse keeper asked him to “come and see a sea monster.” Biccard followed him and was astonished to see the creature illustrated above (“No. 1”) at a distance of about 150 yards. He borrowed a rifle and fired twice; the second ball apparently startled the animal, which straightened and submerged, but it reappeared 10 minutes later at about 200 yards and swam back to its original location, where it assumed position No. 2.

Biccard estimates the animal was about 200 feet long, but he could not estimate its thickness. He thinks the protuberance at one end, which was maculated with white spots, is the upper part of the head. The creature swam into Table Bay shortly afterward and was lost to sight; whatever it was, eight people saw it that day.

| Oddities

Just FYI

Under the terms of an 1845 treaty, Texas has the right to divide itself at any time into five new states.

That was part of the deal when the Lone Star State was first annexed to the Union, and, according to University of Minnesota law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen, it’s still valid and constitutional.

Such a move would create eight new senators and four new governors — and it would add eight votes to the Electoral College.

| History · Oddities

Unsuitable Footwear

There was a young lady of Twickenham
Whose shoes were too tight to walk quick in ’em;
She came back from her walk
Looking white as a chalk
And took ’em both off and was sick in ’em.

— Oliver Herford, collected in Carolyn Wells, The Book of Humorous Verse, 1920

| Humor · Poems

Spent Tears

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edouard_Manet_Georges_Moore.jpg

George Moore was writing in his study when his aunt entered.

“I have sad news for you, Mr. Moore,” she said. “I regret to inform you that your friend Martin Ross is dead.”

Moore lowered his pen, sighed, and gazed quietly around him at the trappings of his long literary life. “How sad,” he said, “how sad. Here I am in the midst of this, alive … and my friend, my dear friend, Edmund Gosse, dead.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Moore,” the lady put in gently. “It is Martin Ross who is dead, not Edmund Gosse.”

Moore said, “Surely you don’t expect me to go through all that again?”

| Literature

History Denied

In 1997, University of Edinburgh linguistics professor Geoffrey K. Pullum submitted the following letter to the Economist:

‘Connections needed’ (March 15) reports that Russia’s Transneft pipeline operator is not able to separate crude flows from different oil fields: ‘they all come out swirled into a single bland blend.’ This is quite true. And worse yet, the characterless, light-colored mix thus produced is concocted blindly, without quality oversight, surely a grave mistake. In fact, I do not recall ever encountering a blinder blander blonder blender blunder.

It “would have been a true first in natural language text,” Pullum wrote, “a grammatical and meaningful sequence of five consecutive words in a natural context that are differentiated from each other by just a single character.” Alas, the Economist chose not to print it.

| Language

“Sir Theophilus Gooch … Is Being Roasted Alive”

On Jan. 16, 1926, a speech from Edinburgh on the BBC was interrupted with a shocking eyewitness report:

The Houses of Parliament are being demolished by an angry mob equipped with trench mortars. The clock tower 320 feet in height has just fallen to the ground, together with the famous clock, Big Ben, which used to strike the hours on a ball weighing nine tons. One moment, please. Fresh reports announce that the crowd has secured the person of Mr. Wurtherspoon, the minister of traffic, who was attempting to make his escape in disguise. He has now been hanged from a lamppost in Vauxhall. London calling. That noise you heard just now was the Savoy Hotel being blown up by the crowd.

Millions of Englishmen placed calls and wires to learn more about the calamity. Finally the radio company explained that the program they’d overheard had been intended by broadcaster Ronald Knox as a parody. One detail that should have tipped them off: According to the radio announcement, the riot in Trafalgar Square was led by one Mr. Popplebury, secretary of the National Movement for Abolishing Theatre Queues.

| Hoaxes

Papered Over

http://books.google.com/books?id=vlkqAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false

‘That’s another thing we’ve learned from your Nation,’ said Mein Herr, ‘map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?’

‘About six inches to the mile.’

‘Only six inches!‘ exclaimed Mein Herr. ‘We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!‘

‘Have you used it much?’ I enquired.

‘It has never been spread out, yet,’ said Mein Herr: ‘the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.’

— Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno, 1889

| Literature · Oddities

The Treachery of Images

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PicassoGuernica.jpg

Picasso’s Guernica depicts the suffering wrought by a German bombing in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

Three years later, when the artist was living in Nazi-occupied Paris, a Gestapo officer saw a photo of the painting in his apartment. “Did you do that?” he asked.

“No,” Picasso said. “You did.”

| Art · History