U.S.S. Saratoga

In March 1781, the Continental Navy sloop Saratoga was escorting a convoy of merchant ships off Haiti when it spotted two British sails to the west. It overtook and captured the first ship, put an American crew aboard, and set out after the second.

Midshipman Penfield, commander of that crew, was watching the chase when a strong wind arose, requiring his attention. When he raised his eyes again, the Saratoga had vanished. No trace of her was ever found.

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Tommy Jones

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pen_y_Fan_from_Cribyn.jpg

On the evening of Aug. 4, 1900, 5-year-old Tommy Jones went missing near his grandfather’s farm in Brecon, South Wales. A 29-day search of the surrounding country found no trace of him.

His body was finally discovered on Pen y Fan, the highest mountain in South Wales, at an altitude of 1,300 feet. He had died of exhaustion and exposure. No one knows what led him there.

Strangely, almost the same thing had happened 10 years earlier in Virginia.

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“Alliterative Love Letter”

Adored and angelic Amelia, accept an ardent and artless amourist’s affection, alleviate an anguished admirer’s alarms, and answer an amorous applicant’s ardour. Ah, Amelia! all appears an awful aspect. Ambition, avarice, and arrogance, alas! are attractive allurements, and abuse an ardent attachment. Appease an aching and affectionate adorer’s alarms, and anon acknowledge affianced Albert’s alliance as acceptable and agreeable. Anxiously awaiting an affectionate and affirmative answer, accept an admirer’s aching adieu. Always angelic and adorable Amelia’s affectionate amourist, Albert.

— William T. Dobson, Literary Frivolities, Fancies, Follies and Frolics, 1880

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The Snail Telegraph

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/752569

In the early 19th century, French occultist Jacques Toussaint Benoit became convinced that when two snails touch they form a “sympathetic bond” so that, ever afterward, when one is touched the other will respond.

He got financing to build a “snail telegraph,” a dish in which 24 lettered snails were glued in place. Messages could be sent by touching snails in sequence; their partners, glued to an identical dish elsewhere, would then wriggle, conveying the message.

After a demonstration in October 1851, La Presse hailed the invention as a revolution. Benoit’s backers, however, demanded a stricter test — and found that the inventor had disappeared.

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