“Citius, Altius, Fortius”

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Organizers founded the modern Olympic Games in 1896, and they hadn’t quite got the hang of things by 1904. That year included “Anthropology Days,” in which indigenous people from around the world were borrowed from the World’s Fair to compete against white men in various events, including mud fighting, greased-pole climbing, and rock and spear throwing.

This was so embarrassing that the Olympic committee held “intercalated” games just two years later, in Athens, to help everyone forget about it.

| History

“A Battle on Stilts”

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“In the year 1748 the great Marshal Saxe, who was travelling through the Low Countries, came to the town of Namur in Belgium. There the citizens did everything in their power to make his stay pleasant and to do him honor, and among other things they got up a battle on stilts. These inhabitants of Namur were well used to stilts, for their town, which has a river on each side of it, lay very low, and was subject to overflows, when the people were obliged to use stilts in order to walk about the streets. In this way they became very expert in the use of these slim, wooden legs, and to make their stilts amusing as well as useful they used to have stilt-battles on all holidays and great occasions. …

“Things are different in this country. It is said that in 1859 a man walked across the rapids of the Niagara river on stilts, but I never heard of any of his taxes being remitted on that account.”

— Frank R. Stockton, Round-About Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy, 1910

| History · Oddities

The Underpass

A large truck had become wedged under an underpass. The driver couldn’t move it backward or forward, and traffic was beginning to back up behind it.

He was on the point of desperation when a little boy approached him and offered a suggestion. A few minutes later the truck was on its way. What did the boy tell the driver?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

The New York Zoo Hoax

On Nov. 9, 1874, readers of the New York Herald were startled to learn that wild animals were roaming the city after a mass escape from the Central Park Zoo as city dwellers shot at them from tenement windows:

There is no instance reported of any animals being hit, while it is believed many citizens were struck by the missiles. One policeman, Officer Lannigan of the Seventh Precinct, was wounded in the foot near Grand Street by a shot from a window during a chase after the striped hyena, which was mistaken by the crowd for a panther. This cowardly brute was finally killed by a bartender armed with a club.

The story reported casualties of 27 dead and 200 injured. It sparked a panic, as most readers overlooked the last paragraph, which stated that “the entire story given above is a pure fabrication.” It had been intended to draw attention to inadequate safety precautions at the zoo.

The hoax’s mastermind, Thomas B. Connery, had two consolations: His paper’s circulation “did not drop by so much as one subscriber,” he reported — and he’d got to watch the editor of the rival New York Times leave his home “with a brace of pistols, prepared to shoot the first animals that would cross his path.”

| Hoaxes

The Berners Street Hoax

In 1810, Theodore Hook, a writer of comic operas, bet his friend Samuel Beazley that he could turn any house in London into the most talked-about address in the city within one week. Beazley accepted, and Hook began writing letters.

A few weeks later, on Nov. 10, a Mrs. Tottenham of 54 Berners Street turned away a coal merchant delivering a load of coal that she hadn’t ordered.

She was in for a long day. The Morning Post reported: “Wagons laden with coals from the Paddington wharfs, upholsterers’ goods in cart loads, organs, pioanofortes, linens, jewelry, and every other description of furniture sufficient to have stocked the whole street, were lodged as near as possible to the door of 54, with anxious trades-people and a laughing mob.”

It went on. “There were accoucheurs, tooth-drawers, miniature painters, artists of every description, auctioneers, … grocers, mercers, post-chaises, mourning-coaches, poultry, rabbits, pigeons, etc. In fact, the whole street was literally filled with the motley group.”

The merchants were followed by dignitaries: the governor of the Bank of England, the archbishop of Canterbury, cabinet ministers, dukes, and finally the lord mayor of London.

Hook won his bet, collecting one guinea. He eventually confessed to the prank, but apparently never received any punishment.

| History · Hoaxes

Mary Tofts

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In 1726, 25-year-old English maidservant Mary Tofts began giving birth to rabbits. Despite a miscarriage earlier that year, she apparently went into labor, and local doctor John Howard delivered several stillborn rabbits.

More were coming. Howard summoned other doctors by letter, and Mary’s next litter was witnessed by Nathaniel St. Andre, surgeon-anatomist to King George I, and Sir Richard Manningham, the most famous obstetrician in London.

Amazed, St. Andre published a tract titled A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbits. But Mary’s deliveries stopped when she was put under close supervision, and soon a boy came forward reporting that she had bribed him to supply her with more rabbits. In the end she confessed, saying she had done it “to get so good a living that I should never want as long as I lived.” Ah.

| History · Hoaxes

“The Fuels of the Future”

“With the prospect of coal becoming as rare as the dodo itself, the world, we are told by scientists, may still regard with complacency the failure of our ordinary carbon supply. The natural gases and oils of the world will provide the human race with combustible material for untold ages — such at least is the opinion of those who are best informed on the subject.”

— Glasgow Herald, quoted in Scientific American Supplement No. 717, Sept. 28, 1889

| History · Science & Math · Technology

“Georges Le Gloupier”

Victims of Belgian “entarteur” Noël Godin, who flings cream pies at the self-important:

  • Microsoft CEO Bill Gates
  • French novelist Marguerite Duras
  • Choreographer Maurice Bejart
  • French anchorman Patrick Poivre d’Arvor
  • French politician Nicolas Sarkozy
  • Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard
  • Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy

Godin told The New York Times he’s trying “to function in the service of the capitalist status quo, without really using his intelligence or his imagination.” Touché.

| Humor · Oddities