- fifteen Es
- seven Fs
- four Gs
- six Hs
- eight Is
- four Ns
- five Os
- six Rs
- eighteen Ss
- eight Ts
- four Us
- three Vs
- two Ws
- three Xs
Month: February 2009
The Cardrona Bra Fence
If aliens are studying us, they must be baffled sometimes.
In late 1999 four women’s bras appeared on a wire fence in southern New Zealand. That’s innocent enough, but by February the number had grown to 60. In October it reached 200, and by the following February nearly 800.
Why? Who knows? The local council waited until September to clear the fence — by which time it had accumulated more than 1,500 bras.
See also Love Padlocks and Shoe Trees.
“Extraordinary Prediction”
It is recorded of the poet Dryden, by Charles Wilson, in his ‘Life of Congreve,’ that having, strange to say, belief in astrology, he was careful to ascertain to the second the time at which his son Charles was born. He then calculated the boy’s nativity, and was alarmed to discover that evil influences prevailed in the heavens. … He concluded that in his eighth year, and on the day of birth, his son’s life would be seriously endangered if not lost; and that if he lived, the same danger would exist when he attained his twenty-third birthday, and again on his thirty-third or fourth. On the boy’s eighth birthday, despite every precaution to keep the boy from every possible danger, he was nearly killed by the fall of a wall. On his twenty-third birthday he was seized with giddiness and fell from an old tower belonging to the Vatican at Rome; and he was drowned at Windsor while swimming across the Thames in his thirty-third year.
— The World of Wonders, 1883
A Pangrammatic Highway
A 0.8-mile stretch of northbound Interstate 287 in New Jersey contains these signs:
WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS
NO TRUCKS IN LEFT LANE
LAFAYETTE AVE.
EXIT 20 MPH
BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE ROAD SURFACE
INTERSTATE NEW JERSEY 287
To date this is the shortest reported stretch of U.S. highway whose permanent, official signs contain all 26 letters of the alphabet. Do you know a shorter one?
Unquote
“There is only one success — to be able to spend your life in your own way.” — Christopher Morley
“The Farmer’s Life”
The farmer leads no E Z life;
The C D sows will rot;
And when at E V rests from strife
His bones all A K lot.
In D D has to struggle hard
To E K living out:
If I C frosts do not retard
His crops there’ll B A drought.
The hired L P has to pay
Are awful A Z, too;
They C K rest when he’s away,
Nor N E work will do.
Both N Z can not make to meet,
And then for A D takes
Some boarders who so R T eat
& E no money makes.
Of little U C finds this life;
Sick in old A G lies.
The debts he O Z leaves his wife.
And then in P C dies.
— Anonymous, The Indiana School Journal, August 1886
Reversible Cursive
Written in script, the word chump reads largely the same upside down.
Color Commentary
British radio listeners received some unlooked-for entertainment in 1937 when they tuned in to hear Lieutenant Commander Tommy Woodroofe give a radio commentary on the illumination of the fleet at Spithead. It appears Woodroofe had fortified himself a bit before the broadcast:
At the present moment … the whole fleet is lit up. When I say ‘lit up’ I mean lit up by fairy lamps. It’s fantastic. It isn’t a fleet at all. It’s just … it’s fairyland. The whole fleet is in fairyland. Now if you’ll follow me through … if you don’t mind … the next few moments you’ll find the fleet doing odd things.
There followed a pause of 11 seconds, after which Woodroofe said, “I’m sorry, I was telling people to shut up talking.”
In a Word
nosocomial
adj. (of an infection) acquired in a hospital
iatrogenic
adj. (of a medical disorder) caused by a doctor
The Saddest Thing You’ve Ever Seen
In 1985 Ralph Piro patented this “self-congratulatory apparatus … which is useful for providing a self-administered pat on the back or a congratulatory gesture.”
(Using one’s own hand for this “places one in a somewhat uncomfortable posture and additionally lacks the placement of a pat in the most desired middle portion of the back.”)