When you my friends are passing by,
And this inform you where I lie,
Remember you ere long must have,
Like me, a mansion in the grave,
Also 3 infants, 2 sons and a daughter.
— Tombstone in Pittsfied, Mass., cited in English as She Is Wrote, 1884
Occupational Handicaps
Monet lost his vision, but not his hearing.
Beethoven lost his hearing, but not his vision.
Bedrock Faith
The Church of St. George in Lalibela, Ethiopia, was cut from a single block of stone in the 12th century.
See also Rock-Cut Architecture.
Oh Well
In the early 1960s, a computer analysis showed that six different authors had written the Epistles of St. Paul.
That would be big news, but it also showed that James Joyce’s Ulysses had been written by five people — none of whom had composed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Burying the Hatchet
The Third Punic War didn’t end until 1985.
Begun in 149 B.C., the contest never reached a peace treaty because Rome utterly destroyed Carthage. 2,134 years passed before the cities’ mayors “officially” ended the conflict.
“Battle of the Bees”
In Africa, World War I dawned with a buzz and a howl. The British Indian Army was trying to sneak up on an eastern seaport held by the Germans when they disturbed huge hives of aggressive African bees, which drove them into the sea. “I would never have believed that grown-up men of any race could have been reduced to such shamelessness,” said a British officer. One engineer was stung 300 times.
The Times wrote that the bees had been sprung by the German commander, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. When asked about this, he merely smiled and said, “Gott mitt uns.”
Unquote
“What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?” — The Quarterly Review, March 1825
Better Safe
Johann Taberger designed this “safety coffin” in 1829, to preserve people who had been mistakenly buried alive. Strings were attached to the body’s head, hands, and feet, connected to a bell that would alert the cemetery’s nightwatchman, who could use a bellows to pump air into the coffin until it could be dug up.
Such devices were popular during the cholera epidemics of the 18th and 19th centuries — European graves were rigged variously with bells, flags, ladders, and escape hatches. There’s no evidence that they ever saved anyone, and they nearly killed some of their inventors: During a demonstration in 1897, a chamberlain to the tsar of Russia buried his assistant, waited, and finally realized that the signaling system had failed. The assistant was saved, but the marketing campaign was DOA.
Poetic Justice
Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausen-bergerdorffvoralternwarengewissenhaftschaferswessenschafewarenwohlgepflegeundsorgfaltigkeitbeschutzen- vonangreifendurchihrraubgierigfeindewelchevoralternzwolftausendjahresvorandieerscheinenwanderersteer- demenschderraumschiffgebrauchlichtalsseinursprungvonkraftgestartseinlangefahrthinzwischensternartigraum- aufdersuchenachdiesternwelchegehabtbewohnbarplanetenkreisedrehensichundwohinderneurassevonver- standigmenschlichkeitkonntefortplanzenundsicherfreuenanlebenslanglichfreudeundruhemitnichteinfurcht- vorangreifenvonandererintelligentgeschopfsvonhinzwischensternartigraum, Senior, was born in Hamburg in 1904.
It’s not known whether he worked at the Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizittenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeam- tengesellschaft — an office that governed steamboat passage on the Danube — but he certainly should have.
What’s in a Name?
Condoleezza Rice’s name is derived from the Italian musical expression con dolcezza.
It means “with sweetness.”