More nouns of assemblage:
My sources insist that a group of gnus is called an implausibility. Should I believe them?
“Two apparent prints or impressions of the human foot in a tabular mass of limestone,” discussed in Schoolcraft’s Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley, 1825:
The rock containing these interesting impressions is a compact limestone of a grayish blue color. It was originally quarried on the left bank of the Mississippi at St. Louis, and is a part of the extensive range of calcareous rocks upon which that town is built. Foundations of private dwellings, and the military works erected by the French and Spaniards, from this material, sixty years ago, are still as solid and unbroken as when first laid.
“The probability … of their having been imparted by some individual of a race of men who were unacquainted with the art of tanning skins, and at a period much anterior to that to which any tradition of the present race of Indians reaches, derives additional weight from this peculiar shape of the feet.”
Higgamus hoggamus
“Anton Von Leewenhoek
Has a small problem,” con-
Fided his wife.
“Microbiology
Doesn’t disturb me; his
Microanatomy’s
Blighting my life!”
— Theodore L. Drachman
2025 = (20 + 25)2
3025 = (30 + 25)2
9801 = (98 + 01)2
When the Russian prince Dimitri, the son of Ivan II, was assassinated on May 15, 1591, at Uglich, his place of exile, the great bell of that town rang the signal of insurrection. For this serious political offence the bell was sentenced to perpetual banishment in Siberia, and conveyed with other exiles to Tobolsk. After a long period of solitary confinement it was partially purged of its iniquity by conjuration and re-consecration and suspended in the tower of a church in the Siberian capital; but not until 1892 was it fully pardoned and restored to its original place in Uglich. A like sentence was imposed by a Russian tribunal on a butting ram in the latter half of the seventeenth century.
— E.P. Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, 1906
Countries with the lowest high points:
The Maldives may eventually disappear altogether — sea levels have risen about 20 centimeters in the last century.
“To be agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you already know.” — Talleyrand
Confined in Colchester Castle during the English civil war, the royalist officer Sir John Trevanion was awaiting execution when he received this letter:
Worthie Sir John:- Hope, that is ye beste comfort of ye afflicted, cannot much, I fear me, help you now. That I would saye to you, is this only: if ever I may be able to requite that I do owe you, stand not upon asking me. ‘Tis not much that I can do: but what I can do, bee ye verie sure I wille. I knowe that, if dethe comes, if ordinary men fear it, it frights not you, accounting it for a high honor, to have such a rewarde of your loyalty. Pray yet that you may be spared this soe bitter, cup. I fear not that you will grudge any sufferings; only if bie submission you can turn them away, ’tis the part of a wise man. Tell me, an if you can, to do for you anythinge that you wolde have done. The general goes back on Wednesday. Restinge your servant to command. — R.T.
Sir John studied the message for several hours, and then, apparently despairing, asked to spend some time alone in prayer. His captors agreed — and never saw him again.
Read the third letter after each punctuation mark.
Under a waterfall in New York’s Chestnut Ridge Regional Park there’s a grotto that emits natural gas.
It can be lit to produce a flame.
In the seventeenth century, André Pujom, finding that his name spelled Pendu à Riom, fulfilled his destiny by cutting somebody’s throat in Auvergne, and was actually hung at Riom, the seat of justice in that province.
— William Dobson, Poetical Ingenuities and Eccentricities, 1882
