“Cat-Concert”

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

| Oddities

The Hopeh Incident

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hopeh_incident_1.jpeg

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.

| Oddities

Unquote

“See what will happen if you don’t stop biting your fingernails?” — Will Rogers, to his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo

| Art · Quotations

A Modest Proposal

Okay, I’ll ask three questions, and if you miss one I get your house. Fair enough? Here we go:

  1. A clock strikes six in 5 seconds. How long does it take to strike twelve?
  2. A bottle and its cork together cost $1.10. The bottle costs a dollar more than the cork. How much does the bottle cost?
  3. A train leaves New York for Chicago at 90 mph. At the same time, a bus leaves Chicago for New York at 50 mph. Which is farther from New York when they meet?

Don’t be hasty — your house is on the line.

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Rimshot

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.

| Language · Poems

“The Famous ‘Wheel Question'”

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?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles