Some Lost Snowmen

In his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550), Giorgio Vasari notes that in January 1494, while Michelangelo was working on his first full-scale stone figure, “there was a heavy snowfall in Florence and Piero de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s eldest son … wanting, in his youthfulness, to have a statue made of snow in the middle of his courtyard, remembered and sent for Michelangelo and had him make the statue.”

A heavy snowfall did occur that month: One chronicler wrote, “There was the severest snowstorm in Florence that the oldest people living could remember.” And it was a tradition on such occasions for outstanding artists to sculpt large snow figures, including the Marzocco, the heraldic lion that is the city’s symbol. But “What snow figure Michelangelo fashioned is not known,” writes critic Georg Brandes, “only that it stood in the courtyard of the Palazzo Medici.”

Seventeen years later, Brussels residents protested the wealthy Habsburgs by building 110 satirical snowmen, more than half of which were said to be pornographic. There’s no visual record of that, either. It’s known as the Miracle of 1511.

Academia

Caprices of Oxford dons, recounted in Maurice Bowra’s Memories: 1898-1939:

“In his quiet way [Wadham College Warden Joseph Wells] had an impressive authority, and it was told that once, when he heard a fearful row in the back quad, he walked up in the dark and said, ‘If you don’t stop at once, I shall light a match.’ They stopped.”

“[Oxford administrator Benjamin Parsons] Symons never admitted that he was wrong. An undergraduate was found drunk, and Symons abused another, quite innocent man for it, who said that his name was not that by which Symons had called him, but Symons would not admit it. ‘You’re drunk still. You don’t even know your own name. Go to your room at once.'”

“[Philosophy tutor Frank] Brabant kept a car and drove it badly, even by academic standards, which, from myopia, or self-righteousness, or loquacity, or absorption in other matters, are notoriously low. Once when I was with him, he drove straight into a cow and knocked it down, fortunately without damage. When the man in charge of it said quite mildly, ‘Look out where you are going,’ Brabant said fiercely, ‘Mind your own business,’ and drove on.”

See Metathesis.

“A ‘Religious’ Fish”

https://books.google.com/books?id=P_6Z7ooR98IC&pg=PA1124

Describing this fish (Holocanthus Alternaus), which was caught off Zanzibar, a correspondent of the ‘Times of India’ wrote: ‘… On the one side of the tail are the words, La-ilaha-illa Allah’ — ‘There is no God but God.’ On the other side, ‘Shan Allah’ — ‘God’s Work,’ or ‘An Act of God.’ … Many of our readers who know Arabic will be able to see for themselves from this untouched photograph that the fish is a devout Moslem.’ We have shown the photographs to an expert in this country, who informs us that the letters are certainly intended to represent Arabic characters, but that there is nothing sufficiently distinguishable to enable it to be said that they mean what they are alleged to mean. A further opinion is expressed that the ‘inscriptions’ may not be genuine.

Illustrated London News, Dec. 28, 1929

Pigs Penned

In 1899 the Strand invited 13 British celebrities to draw a pig with their eyes closed.

Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Judge Sir Francis Jeune:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Mary Jeune, Baroness St Helier:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Hugh Jermyn, Bishop of Brechin:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Astronomer Sir Robert Ball:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Chemist William Ramsay:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Stage actor Henry Irving:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Illustrator Sir John Tenniel:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Novelist Walter Besant:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Organist Sir Frederick Bridge:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Inventor Hiram Maxim:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

Magician Nevil Maskelyne:

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/337/mode/2up?view=theater

(Illustrator Harry Furniss says the trick is to use your free hand as a guide.)

Too Tired

Freezing in the Canadian arctic in 1821, John Franklin noted some telling effects of fatigue in his companions:

I observed, that in proportion as our strength decayed, our minds exhibited symptoms of weakness, evinced by a kind of unreasonable pettishness with each other. Each of us thought the other weaker in intellect than himself, and more in need of advice and assistance. So trifling a circumstance as a change of place, recommended by one as being warmer and more comfortable, and refused by the other from a dread of motion, frequently called forth fretful expressions, which were no sooner uttered than atoned for, to be repeated, perhaps, in the course of a few minutes. The same thing often occurred when we endeavoured to assist each other in carrying wood to the fire; none of us were willing to receive assistance, although the task was disproportioned to our strength.

From Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, 1823.

Outwitted

https://archive.org/details/strand-1898-v-16/page/27/mode/2up?view=theater

Two “tricky” animal traps, described in the Strand, July 1898:

Attracted by bait placed on a tree limb, a bear finds its way blocked by a hanging stone and pushes it aside with its paw. “But, alas! the bear has no knowledge of mechanics, and suffers in consequence, for the weight swings back and strikes him heavily.” Angered, the bear strikes the stone a harder blow, and the contest escalates until he’s knocked off the limb.

Below, a python can allegedly be caught by boring a 6-inch hole in the base of a wall and tying up a pig on either side. “The python comes, sees the first pig, and swallows it; then noticing the through the hole that there is another pig on the other side, puts its head through and swallows that also.” Now it’s trapped, unable to advance or retreat.

The author suggests that both of these techniques are used by villagers in India, but doesn’t say where.

(A. Sarathkumar Ghosh, “Tricky Traps,” Strand 16:91 [July 1898], 27-32.)

https://archive.org/details/strand-1898-v-16/page/27/mode/2up?view=theater

Pigcasso

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pigcasso_with_painting.jpg

The first nonhuman artist to be given her own art exhibition was a female pig rescued from a South African slaughterhouse in 2016. When her keeper, Joanne Lefson, noticed that the pig ate everything in her stall except some paintbrushes, she taught her to hold a brush in her mouth and apply paint to an easel, and Lefson could sell the resulting works to raise funds for the sanctuary.

Pigcasso’s works have been exhibited in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, and China. In 2021 German collector Peter Esser paid £20,000 for her painting Wild and Free, a record price for an artwork created by an animal. Altogether the pig’s sales have raised more than $1 million. She died in March 2024, one day before Jane Goodall could arrive to meet her.

In Other News

Peterborough Standard misprint

From the Peterborough Standard, 1979:

CROWLAND’S Silver Jubilee committee was finally wound up on Thursday evening with a presentation ceremony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as ‘one of the finest efforts in Lincolnshire’, fremony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as ‘one remony atremony aremony at the library.

The jubremony at the library.

Tremony at remony at the library.

Thrremony at tremony at the liremony at the libraremony at the library.

Theremony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Premony rremony at the liremony aremony at the libremony atremony at the tremony at the library.

Tremorremony at the library remony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as ‘one of the finest efforts in Lincolnshire’, fn he latched onto a through ball. Although he was hauled down by the ‘keeper he still managed to stroke the ball home.

But for the second week running Durant had to leave the field injured, this time suffering eye trouble.

The winning goal was another 25-yard shot — again from Blackstones’ central defender — coming from their second chance of the game.

Gary Cooper, recently signed from Queens Old Boys, had a good debut.

12/06/2024 UPDATE: Reader Alan Mandel recalls this article from the Santa Ana (Calif.) Register, noted in the New Yorker on Nov. 17, 1980:

LONDON (AP) — The Soviet Union has welded a massive naval force ‘far beyond the needs of defence of the Soviet sea frontiers,’ and is beefing up its armada with a powerful new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and two giant battle cruisers, the authorative ‘Jane’s Fighting Ships’ reported Thursday.

‘The Soviet navy at the start of the 1980s is truly a formidable force,’ said the usually-truly is a unique formidable is too smoothy as the usually are lenience on truly a formidable Thursday’s naives is frames analysis of the world’s annual reference work, said the first frames of the worlds’ navies in its 1980-81 edition.

‘The Soviet navy at the start usually-repair-led Capt. John Moore, a retired British Royal News Services.

‘The Soviet navy as the navy of the struggle started,’ she reportable Thursday.

‘The Soviet navy at the start of the 1980s is truly a formidable force,’ said beef carry on the adults of defense block identical analysis 1980s is truly formidable force, said the usually-reliable of the 1980s is unusually reliable, lake his off the world’s reported Thursday.

(Thanks, Alan.)

Traffic

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_camille_gaston_cariot_pont_neuf_laurore_122559).jpg

Remarked by Robert Southey in 1850:

“If you wait half an hour on the Pont Neuf, it was said, you were sure to see an Abbé, a Benedictin, a Genovesin, a Capuchin, a Knight of St. Louis, a French Guardsman, a woman of the town, and a white horse cross during that time. This has been often tried and verified.”