Po’ Poe

A desperate letter from Edgar Allan Poe to his Philadelphia publishers, Aug. 13, 1841:

Gentlemen, — I wish to publish a new collection of my prose Tales with some such title as this —

“The Prose Tales of Edgar A. Poe, Including ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ The ‘Descent into the Maelstrom,’ and all his later pieces, with a second edition of the ‘Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.'”

The “later pieces” will be eight in number, making the entire collection thirty-three — which would occupy two thick novel volumes.

I am anxious that your firm should continue to be my publishers, and, if you would be willing to bring out the book, I should be glad to accept the terms which you allowed me before — that is — you receive all profits, and allow me twenty copies for distribution to friends.

They turned him down in three days flat. A century later, at a 1944 auction, the letter itself fetched $3,000.

| Literature

What’s in a Name?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Liver-Eating_Johnson.jpg

“Liver-Eating Johnson” had the coolest nickname in the Old West — cooler, perhaps, than the truth warranted.

The “mountain man” was actually born in New Jersey around 1824. He deserted the Navy after the Mexican-American War and lit out for Wyoming, where he trapped, hunted and supplied cordwood to steamboats.

The legend starts in 1847, when the Crow tribe killed his Indian wife and he launched a personal war that lasted 20 years, in which, supposedly, he would cut out and eat the liver of each man he killed.

Did he really? Who knows? But it made a good story, and Johnson’s stature began to grow — literally and figuratively. His Civil War records put him at less than 6 feet tall, but local yarns soon said he was 6 foot 6.

After serving the Union Army as a sharpshooter, he spent the 1880s as a deputy sheriff in Leadville, Colo., and a town marshal in Red Lodge, Mont. He died in 1900.

But a century later the nickname was still working. The 1972 Robert Redford film Jeremiah Johnson was based in part on his life — and Redford even served as one of the pallbearers when Johnson’s body was reburied in Cody, Wyo., in 1974.

| History · Oddities

Good to Know

Hangmen have determined that it takes 1,260 foot-pounds to dislocate the human cervical vertebrae. They calculate the necessary drop by simple division: A person weighing 112 pounds (50.8 kg) must fall 11’4″ (3.43 m).

| Death

Arf!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dog_mine.jpg

Yes, that’s a real dog, and no, the photo isn’t doctored. During World War II the Soviets experimented with “anti-tank dogs,” dogs that were trained to run under enemy tanks with explosives strapped to their backs.

Unfortunately, the Soviets trained the dogs by putting food under their own tanks, which led to some Three-Stooges-style hijinks on the battlefield. In 1942, an entire Soviet tank division was chased into retreat by its own dogs. Serves ’em right.

| History · Oddities

Rimshot

A man goes to an exotic tropical island for a vacation.

As his boat nears the island, he notices the constant sound of drumming. As he gets off the boat, he asks one of the natives how long it will go on.

The native looks about nervously and says, “Very bad when the drumming stops.”

At the end of the day, the drumming is still going, and it’s starting to get on the man’s nerves. So he asks another native when the drumming will stop.

The native looks as if he’s just been reminded of something very unpleasant. “Very bad when the drumming stops,” he says, and hurries off.

After a couple of days with little sleep, the traveler is finally fed up. He grabs the nearest native, slams him up against a tree, and shouts, “What happens when the drumming stops?!!”

The native says, “Bass solo.”

| Humor

Hey, Wait a Minute …

Identities assumed by Ferdinand Waldo Demara (1921-1982), “The Great Impostor”:

  • sailor
  • civil engineer
  • sheriff’s deputy
  • assistant prison warden
  • doctor of applied psychology
  • hospital orderly
  • lawyer
  • child-care expert
  • monk (Benedictine and Trappist)
  • editor
  • cancer researcher
  • teacher
  • surgeon
  • hospital priest

When asked for his motivation, he said, “Rascality, pure rascality.”

| Hoaxes

“Some Geese”

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schopenhauer.jpg

Every child who has the use
Of his senses knows a goose.
See them underneath the tree
Gather round the goose-girl’s knee,
While she reads them by the hour
From the works of Schopenhauer.
How patiently the geese attend!
But do they really comprehend
What Schopenhauer’s driving at?
Oh, not at all; but what of that?
Neither do I; neither does she;
And, for that matter, nor does he.

— Oliver Herford

| Humor · Poems