Blue Peacock was the sexy code name of a secret British plan to salt the Rhine with nuclear mines in the 1950s, in case of war.
Less sexily, they planned to put a live chicken in each one, to keep the electronics from getting cold.
When the file was declassified on April 1, 2004, this was taken to be an April Fool’s joke, but it’s true. Fortunately, the project was canceled.
No time to relax? Try speed golf. Sprint through 18 holes without a caddy and you can finish a round in 45 minutes.
Gerald Ford said, “I know I am getting better at golf because I’m hitting fewer spectators.”
Cures, from John Aubrey, Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects, 1696:
Gottfried von Leibniz was convinced of the existence of unicorns by this skeleton, found in Germany’s Harz Mountains in 1663.
Why does it have only two legs? Well, supporters said, that’s because souvenir hunters plundered it.
Then why did they take the legs but leave the horn? Um …
“Finally I am becoming stupider no more.” — Mathematician Paul Erdös, suggested epitaph for himself
Suppose you put a coin into an empty bottle and then insert a cork in the bottle’s opening. How could you retrieve the coin without breaking the bottle or pulling out the cork?
At a 1987 party, Oxford philosopher A.J. Ayer confronted Mike Tyson and demanded he stop harassing Naomi Campbell.
Tyson said, “Do you know who the fuck I am? I’m the heavyweight champion of the world.”
Ayer replied, “And I am the former Wykeham professor of logic! We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.”
No word on whom Campbell left with.
If you’re going to exhibit a talking cat in Georgia, you need a business license, according to a court ruling in 1981. Carl and Elaine Miles had been presenting Blackie the Talking Cat to passersby in Augusta; Blackie would meow “I love you” or “I want my mama,” and the onlookers would give small change to the Mileses.
They objected to the license requirement, saying that the law violated their right to free speech and that it didn’t mention talking animals. But they lost the case in district court in 1982, and an appeals court upheld the decision:
This Court will not hear a claim that Blackie’s right to free speech has been infringed. First, although Blackie arguably possesses a very unusual ability, he cannot be considered a “person” and is therefore not protected by the Bill of Rights. Second, even if Blackie had such a right, we see no need for appellants to assert his right jus tertii.
The court added, “Blackie can clearly speak for himself.”
The land regions of Mars can be distinguished from the seas by their ruddy color, the seas being greenish. But here, perhaps, you will be disposed to ask how astronomers can be sure that the greenish regions are seas, the ruddy regions land, the white spots either snow or cloud. Might not materials altogether unlike any we are acquainted with exist upon that remote planet?
The spectroscope answers this question in the clearest way. You may remember what I told you in October, 1876, about Venus, how astronomers have learned that the vapor of water exists in her atmosphere. The same method has been applied, even more satisfactorily, to the planet of war, and it has been found that he also has his atmosphere at times laden with moisture. This being so, it is clear we have not to do with a planet made of materials utterly unlike those forming our earth. To suppose so, when we find that the air of Mars, formed like our own (for if it contained other gases the spectroscope would tell us), contains often large quantities of the vapor of water, would be as absurd as to believe in the green cheese theory of the moon, or in another equally preposterous, advanced lately by an English artist — Mr. J.T. Brett — to the effect that the atmosphere of Venus is formed of glass.
— Richard A. Proctor, St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, November 1877
The sum of the numbers 1 through 10 is 55.
The sum of the numbers 1 through 100 is 5,050.
The sum of the numbers 1 through 1,000 is 500,500.