The longest word in the English language is FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION.
It means “the act of estimating (something) as worthless.”
No Mickey Mouse Outfit
Disneyland would fit in Disney World’s parking lot.
Longest Elevator Fall
In 1945, Betty Lou Oliver plunged 75 stories inside an elevator when a B-25 bomber struck the Empire State Building.
Fourteen people died in the plane crash, but Oliver survived.
“IP Over Avian Carriers”
Someone make a note, in case we ever run out of power:
In 1990 the Internet Engineering Task Force proposed a way to send Internet messages by homing pigeon.
It was used — once — to transmit a message in Bergen, Norway.
A New Theory
Why do landmasses “sag” toward the south pole, as on the Sherwin-Williams paint logo? In 1973 Ormonde de Kay Jr., a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, proposed a “theory of continental drip”:
“Let’s look at the world map. Africa and South America … are textbook examples of drip, with their broad tops and tapering lower extremities. But so is North America, with Baja California and Florida dangling down at its sides, and Greenland, too, clearly shows the characteristics of drip.”
“What causes continental drip? A few possible explanations come to mind: some palaeomagnetic force, for example, unsuspected and therefore undetected, centered in massive, mountainous Antarctica and perpetually tugging at the lower hems of land masses. Or drip might somehow be the result of the Earth’s rotation, or of lunar attraction. One conclusion, however, would seem inescapable: contrary to the teachings of science, but as every schoolchild has always known, north really is up, and south down!”
Hapax Legomenon
A hapax legomenon is a word that occurs only once in a given body of text:
- NORTELRYE (“education”) was used only by Chaucer, and only once.
- AUTOGUOS, an ancient Greek word for “plow,” was used only once, in Hesiod.
- FLOTHER, a charming synonym for “snowflake,” appears only once in written English before 1900 (in a manuscript from around 1275).
- PIM, a stone weight of about a quarter ounce, appears only once in Biblical Hebrew (1 Samuel 13:20).
HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS appears only once in Shakespeare’s works (in Love’s Labour’s Lost). Probably a good thing.
Living Former Presidents
There have been only three periods when five former American presidents were alive at the same time:
- March 4, 1861-Jan. 18, 1862: Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan
- Jan. 20, 1993-April 22, 1994: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush
- Jan. 20, 2001-June 5, 2004: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton
Herbert Hoover lived for 31 years after leaving office; James Polk lasted only three months.
The “Infinite Monkey Theorem”
A monkey has one chance in 19,928,148,895,209,409,152,340,197,376 of correctly typing the first 20 letters of Hamlet (ignoring punctuation, spacing, and capitalization).
And Hamlet contains more than 130,000 letters.
Aileen Pringle
In the 1924 silent film Three Weeks, Conrad Nagel tenderly picks up Aileen Pringle to carry her into the bedroom.
Lip readers noted that she appears to be saying, “If you drop me, you bastard, I’ll break your neck.”
Riddle of the Sphinx
For most of its history, Egypt’s Great Sphinx lay buried up to its neck in sand. This photo was taken in 1867; the sphinx wasn’t fully dug out until 1925.
Strangely, we know very little about it. It’s one of the world’s largest statues, but no one knows who built it, or when, or whose likeness it bears. We’re not even sure what it is — we call it a sphinx, but we borrow that term from Greek mythology. A true sphinx would have the head of a woman.
No one knows what the ancient Egyptians called it, but its Arabic name, Abu al-Hôl, translates as “Father of Terror.” Maybe we should cover it up again.