Podcast Episode 338: A Point of Law
One dark night in 1804, a London excise officer mistook a bricklayer for a ghost and shot him. This raised a difficult question: Was he guilty of murder? In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll consider the case of the Hammersmith ghost, which has been called “one of the greatest curiosities in English criminal law.”
We’ll also worry about British spiders and puzzle over some duplicative dog names.
Horse Sense
That the world-famous ‘thinking horses’ of Elberfeld are not fakes, that they extract cube roots, read and spell by rational processes rather than by means of trick signs from their trainer, is the conclusion reached by one of the leading European authorities on animal psychology …
The cube root of 5832 was proposed by one of the ladies present, written on the board for the horse and the answer, 18, given correctly in a few seconds.
and
were likewise given correctly — 124 and 26 in about ten seconds. Mr. Krall and the attendant groom had left the hall immediately after the exercise was written on the board in each case. …
[
]. Correct reply in a few seconds: 28. The horse was then alone in the room. All the spectators had also gone outside.
[
]. Reply after 30 seconds: 117. Wrong. The horse corrected it himself to 144, but finally gave up rather despairingly.
— “Can Horses Think? Learned Commission Says ‘Perhaps,'” New York Times, Aug. 31, 1913
The Ghost Train
In August 2006, the Newhaven Marine railway station in East Sussex was closed to passengers due to safety concerns. But it remained legally open, and under an 1844 regulation a train was required to call there once a day.
So until its closure in 2020, the station received daily train service, though its platforms were inaccessible to the public. The service was listed in timetables, but passengers who wished to travel to the next station were ferried there by taxi instead.
Surrounded
The territory of Madha is an exclave — it belongs to Oman, but it’s surrounded by the United Arab Emirates.
And Madha itself contains an enclave — the village of Nahwa belongs to the United Arab Emirates.
This makes Nahwa a second-order enclave — it lies within the boundaries of its nation, but it’s surrounded by the territory of another state.
Easter Fare
Wolfram Alpha offers some surprising seasonal equations — a bunny:
max(min(-51/25 abs(-(21 x)/(22 a) – (5 y)/(17 a) + 2/11)^(29/16) – 37/17 abs((5 x)/(17 a) – (21 y)/(22 a) + 15/17)^(35/23) + 1, -75/22 abs(-(12 x)/(17 a) – (12 y)/(17 a) + 19/24)^(34/15) – 105/13 abs(-(12 x)/(17 a) + (12 y)/(17 a) + 1/34)^(123/62) + 1, x/a), min(-51/25 abs((21 x)/(22 a) – (5 y)/(17 a) + 2/11)^(29/16) – 37/17 abs(-(5 x)/(17 a) – (21 y)/(22 a) + 15/17)^(35/23) + 1, -75/22 abs((12 x)/(17 a) – (12 y)/(17 a) + 19/24)^(34/15) – 105/13 abs((12 x)/(17 a) + (12 y)/(17 a) + 1/34)^(123/62) + 1, -x/a), min(max(-(177 x^2)/(13 a^2) – 46/15 (y/a + 1/24)^2 + 1, (690 x^2)/(29 a^2) + 63/4 (y/a + 8/17)^2 – 1), 1/10 – ((79 x^2)/(16 a^2) + 16 (y/a + 1/2)^2 – 1) ((16 x^2)/a^2 + (79 y^2)/(16 a^2) – 1), 6287/17 (x/a – 1/9)^2 + 100 (y/a + 1/16)^2 – 1, 6287/17 (x/a + 1/9)^2 + 100 (y/a + 1/16)^2 – 1), -31550/23 (x/a – 2/19)^2 – 62500/49 (y/a + 1/11)^2 + 1, -31550/23 (x/a + 2/19)^2 – 62500/49 (y/a + 1/11)^2 + 1, -18407811/17 (x/a – 1/25)^4 – 250127/15 (y/a + 13/22)^4 + 1, -18407811/17 (x/a + 1/25)^4 – 250127/15 (y/a + 13/22)^4 + 1, -(x/a – 1/2)^2 – (y/a + 5/4)^2 + 1/30, 11/20 – ((y^4/(63 a^4) – y^3/(11 a^3) – y^2/(7 a^2) + (13 y)/(15 a) + x^2/a^2 + 29/43) ((142 x^2)/(15 a^2) + ((-(304 y)/(23 a) – 878/31) x)/a + (1019 y)/(25 a) + (184 y^2)/(13 a^2) + 349/11) ((142 x^2)/(15 a^2) + (((304 y)/(23 a) + 878/31) x)/a + (1019 y)/(25 a) + (184 y^2)/(13 a^2) + 349/11))/(11/19 – y/(8 a))^2, -x^2/a^2 – x/a – (5 y)/(2 a) – y^2/a^2 – 16/9, -(127 x^2)/(21 a^2) – ((-(118 y)/(23 a) – 47/7) x)/a – (559 y)/(15 a) – (173 y^2)/(22 a^2) – 847/19, -(127 x^2)/(21 a^2) – (((118 y)/(23 a) + 47/7) x)/a – (559 y)/(15 a) – (173 y^2)/(22 a^2) – 847/19)>=0
… and an egg:
min(1/5 – sin(16 p sqrt(x^2/(a^2 (1 – y/(10 a))^2) + (9 y^2)/(16 a^2)) (1 – 1/10 (1 – sqrt(x^2/(a^2 (1 – y/(10 a))^2) + (9 y^2)/(16 a^2))) cos(12 tan^(-1)(x/(a (1 – y/(10 a))), (3 y)/(4 a))))), -x^2/(a^2 (1 – y/(10 a))^2) – (9 y^2)/(16 a^2) + 1)>=0
In Poland, Easter Monday is Śmigus-dyngus, in which boys throw water over girls they like and spank them with pussy willow branches. Traditionally, Wikipedia says, “Boys would sneak into girls’ homes at daybreak on Easter Monday and throw containers of water over them while they were still in bed. After all the water had been thrown, the screaming girls would often be dragged to a nearby river or pond for another drenching. Sometimes a girl would be carried out, still in her bed, before both bed and girl were thrown into the water together. Particularly attractive girls could expect to be soaked repeatedly during the day.”
(Thanks, Danesh and Wade.)
Wine and Roses
The oldest living rose bush grows on the apse of the Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany — documentation confirms its age at approximately 700 years (it’s visible in the engraving at right above, which dates from about 1845).
Allied bombers destroyed the cathedral in 1945, but the rose’s roots survived, and it flowered again among the ruins.
The oldest known bottle of wine is the Speyer wine bottle, unearthed from the tomb of a Roman nobleman in 1867 and dated to 350 A.D. Though it remains sealed, it’s presumed to contain liquid wine.
The ethanol will be gone, but the remaining liquid has been preserved by olive oil and wax that the Romans used to protect it from the air. For safety’s sake, its curators have forborne from opening it.
Two Birds
Ben Franklin used chess to learn Italian. From his autobiography:
I had begun in 1733 to study languages; I soon made myself so much a master of the French as to be able to read the books with ease. I then undertook the Italian. An acquaintance, who was also learning it, us’d often to tempt me to play chess with him. Finding this took up too much of the time I had to spare for study, I at length refus’d to play any more, unless on this condition, that the victor in every game should have a right to impose a task, either in parts of the grammar to be got by heart, or in translations, etc., which tasks the vanquish’d was to perform upon honour, before our next meeting.
“As we play’d pretty equally,” he wrote, “we thus beat one another into that language.”
Expansive
In 1996, artists Jeff St. Pierre and Philip Antoniades released A Rubber Band Christmas, a collection of Christmas songs played on rubber bands.
Kyle Brown of Rubber and Plastic News wrote that “The snaps and twangs aren’t always pitch-perfect, but a lot of spirit comes through.”
Better Safe
The Pentagon has a detailed strategy for surviving a zombie apocalypse.
CONOP 8888, “Counter-Zombie Dominance,” arose when military planners needed to create a planning document that the public could not mistake for a real scenario. They imagined a “clearly impossible” emergency in which planners needed to “undertake military operations to preserve ‘non-zombie’ humans from the threats posed by a zombie horde.”
“The document is identified as a training tool used in an in-house training exercise where students learn about the basic concepts of military plans and order development through a fictional training scenario,” spokeswoman Pamela Kunze told Foreign Policy. “This document is not a U.S. Strategic Command plan.” But, a disclaimer reads, “this plan was not actually designed as a joke.”