Some years ago there was a cat-concert held in Paris. It was called ‘Concert Miaulant,’ from the mewing of the animals. They were trained by having their tails pulled every time a certain note was struck, and the unpleasant remembrance caused them to mew each time they heard the sound again.
— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882
Japanese student Masujiro Kiru found this photo in a scrapbook left by his father. Apparently the scene is Tsientsien Street in Hopeh, China, around 1942. UFO enthusiasts note that two people appear to be pointing to an object in the sky. It could be a bird, it could be a hat, it could be man-lizards from Aldebaran. You decide.
“See what will happen if you don’t stop biting your fingernails?” — Will Rogers, to his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo
Okay, I’ll ask three questions, and if you miss one I get your house. Fair enough? Here we go:
Don’t be hasty — your house is on the line.
Maine is the only state with a one-syllable name.
There was a young lady named Psyche
Who was heard to ejaculate, “Pcryche!”
For, riding her pbych,
She ran over a ptych,
And fell on some rails that were pspyche.
The 1933 a thoroughbred stallion named Brokers Tip won the Kentucky Derby.
It was the only win of his career.
This question was proposed in the Scientific American, in 1868: ‘How many revolutions upon its own axis, will a wheel make in rolling once around a fixed wheel of the same size?’
The question brought to the editor of that paper many replies all claiming to have solved it. Yet the replies were about equally divided as to the number of revolutions, one part claiming one revolution and the other two revolutions. So much interest was manifested in it that Munn & Co. published The Wheel, June, 1868. It contains 72 pages, giving many of the solutions, illustrated by many diagrams.
— Miscellaneous Notes and Queries, August 1889
So who’s right?
New York’s Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is the largest suspension bridge in the United States.
Its towers are 1-5/8 inches farther apart at their tops than at their bases — to accommodate the curvature of the earth.