In June 1768, bedridden tailor Owen Parfitt was put into a chair at the door of his Somerset cottage while his sister made his bed. She emerged after 15 minutes to find only the empty chair.
A search continued throughout the rural village through the night and all the following day. No trace of him was ever found.
“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.” — Shirley Temple
Virginia Centurione Bracelli died in 1651, but her body was found largely uncorrupted when her grave was opened 150 years later.
She was canonized in 2003.
Whilst sitting quietly in [Bank House], the inmates have been frequently alarmed — sometimes two or three times a day — by the descent of showers of water, apparently from the ceiling. These showers have drenched them, flooding the floor and covering the furniture with water, rendering the house almost uninhabitable. … The water comes straight down from the ceiling, and shows not the slightest indication of its being thrown into the apartment. So singular is the affair that people have concluded that it is some spiritual influence, and is a sort of judgment upon the good ladies of the house for some dereliction, who, naturally enough, are much affrighted.
— Preston Herald, Feb. 15, 1873
“When young Sten was bar-mitzvahed, Sten Sr. took him on safari, as a present, during the course of which Mrs. Sten received this jubilant telegram”:
YOUNG STEN NETS GNU! OY!
— John McClellan
Each term in the Fibonacci sequence is derived by adding the two preceding terms:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 …
Remarkably, you can use successive terms to convert miles to kilometers:
8 miles ≈ 13 kilometers
13 miles ≈ 21 kilometers
This works because the two units stand in the golden ratio (to within 0.5 percent).
George Selwyn once declared in company that a lady could not write a letter without adding a postscript. A lady present replied, ‘The next letter that you receive from me, Mr. Selwyn, will prove that you are wrong.’ Accordingly he received one from her the next day, in which, after her signature was the following:–
‘P.S. Who is right, now, you or I?’
— Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1890
There’s a sculpture of Darth Vader on Washington’s National Cathedral.
During construction, a competition was held among children to suggest a carved grotesque, and Christopher Rader of Kearney, Neb., submitted a drawing of Darth Vader’s head.
It’s visible on the cathedral’s northwest tower — but you’ll need binoculars to see it.
Here’s a poser adapted from a 1923 intelligence test:
“I was so sorry to hear of Harold’s death, Mary.”
“Thank you, Mildred.”
“May I ask the circumstances?”
“Of course. He had fallen asleep in church during the sermon and was dreaming that an executioner was approaching to cut off his head. He had witnessed some rather gruesome things during the Boxer Rebellion in China some years ago, you know. Just as the sword was falling, I happened to touch him on the back of his neck with my fan, to awaken him. The shock was too great, and he fell forward dead.”
What’s wrong with this story?
(3 + 4)3 = 343