“He was a very valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters.” — James I
Rimshot
A Country Farmer, riding to a merry Meeting on an easy Horse, drank very plentifully ’till Night came on, and his Senses fled. One of the Company resolved to pass a Joke upon him, by perswading the rest to mount him on his Horse, with his Face to the Tail, and turn the Horse loose, who knew very well the Way Home. So up they mounted him, and away went the Horse a Foot-pace, ’till the Farmer fell fast asleep. In an Hour’s Time the Horse was at Home, and presently fell a neighing. His Wife came with a Candle in her Hand and, seeing her Husband in that Condition, began to take on bitterly, and waking him, told him the Greatness of his Sin, &c. Upon which he rubs his Eyes; and, looking about, cries out in a great Passion, Puh! hold your Tongue, Woman: Nothing vexes me so much, as that the plaguy Rogues should cut my Horse’s Head off.
— The Jester’s Magazine, April 1766
Urban Planning
The city of Buenos Ayres, S. A., has received a singular proposition from two German mechanical engineers. They offer to cover the city with a huge umbrella, the base of which is to be 670 feet in diameter, the height 1500 feet, ribs of cast-iron 31 inches in circumference and 8 feet apart, and lining of wrought-iron one and a half inches thick. The great thing when raised will be one mile and a half wide. Around it will be a canal communicating with the Plate River, to carry away the water that might overflow the city. The work is estimated at the modest sum of $5,750,000.
— Albert Plympton Southwick, Handy Helps, No. 1, 1886
Trivium
Amsterdam, Antwerp, Athens, Berlin, Cairo, Dresden, Dublin, Geneva, Lisbon, London, Marseilles, Milan, Moscow, Rome, Seville, Toronto, and Warsaw … are all towns in Ohio.
The Potsdam Giants
Friedrich Wilhelm I believed in stretching his military — when the Prussian king took the throne in 1713, he founded a special infantry regiment made up of taller-than-average soldiers.
“The men who stood in the first rank in this regiment were none of them less than seven feet high,” wrote Voltaire, “and he sent to purchase them from the farthest parts of Europe to the borders of Asia.” The diminutive king once told a French ambassador, “The most beautiful girl or woman in the world would be a matter of indifference to me, but tall soldiers — they are my weakness.”
They would have made an impressive force on the battlefield, but the “long guys” never saw action — and when Friedrich died in 1740 the crown prince dismissed the regiment.
War
By Charles Tomlinson. White to play and mate in 4 moves, giving check on every move and forcing Black to do the same.
Rock Music
A correspondent of Nature writes that, in roaming over the hills and rocks in the neighborhood of Kendal, near Lancaster, England, which are composed chiefly of limestone, he had often found what are called “musical stones.” They are generally thin, flat, weather-beaten stones, of different sizes and peculiar shapes, which, when struck with a piece of iron or another stone, produce a musical tone, instead of the dull, heavy, leaden sound of an ordinary stone. The sound of these stones is, in general, very much alike, but sets of eight stones have been collected which produce, when struck, a distinct octave.
— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882
See also The Musical Stones of Skiddaw.
The Judge’s Conundrum
In the desert, a bandit shoots a sheriff. The wounded sheriff rides into town, where the outraged townspeople form a mob. They track the bandit to his desert hideout and hang him. The sheriff dies a few days later.
Now: Did the bandit kill the sheriff? If so … when and where?
Lightning Addition
A (probably apocryphal) story tells that, as a 10-year-old schoolboy, Carl Friedrich Gauss was asked to find the sum of the first 100 integers. The tyrannical schoolmaster, who had intended this task to occupy the boy for some time, was astonished when Gauss presented the correct answer, 5050, almost immediately.
How did Gauss find it?
“First Greenback Note”
A man in Allegan county, Mich., has in his possession the first legal-tender greenback note struck off and issued by the United States. It is dated August 1, 1862, and is marked ‘Series A, No. 1.’ Mr. Slocum, the possessor, was a soldier in the army, and the bill was paid to him by the Paymaster as a part of his wages as a boy in blue.
— Bizarre Notes & Queries, August 1886