Short on human help, England enlisted another species at its Sheffield munitions plant during World War I.
Write your own joke.
Skeptics’ Prizes
The International Zetetic Challenge offered a prize of 200,000 euros to “any person who could prove any paranormal phenomenon.” It ran for 15 years, starting in 1987.
Magician James Randi has offered $1 million to anyone who can show evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event, under test conditions agreed to by both parties.
Both prizes have gone unrewarded.
The Monkey Signalman
For a time in the 1880s, a baboon named Jack was employed as a railroad signalman in South Africa. He was working, apparently successfully, as a voorloper, or ox driver, in the Eastern Cape when he was discovered by James Erwin Wide, a Uitenhage signalman who had recently lost his legs in an accident.
Impressed and needing a helper, Wide bought the baboon and trained him to operate his junction. When a train approached it would identify itself with a whistle; Jack would get the keys, head into the signal box and pull the correct lever to change tracks. Alarmed riders complained, but railway management investigated and were so impressed that they actually put the baboon on a railway allowance and rations, including a small amount of brandy per day.
I know this sounds preposterous, but there are photographs of Jack at work and eyewitness accounts of his abilities. His skull can be seen today in the Albany Museum in Grahamstown.
Nevermore
Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” does not contain the letter Z.
Longest Migration
The arctic tern sees more daylight than any other creature on the planet — it migrates from pole to pole, 12,000 miles.
In its lifetime, that’s equivalent to flying to the moon and back.
Poser
Q: What is the difference between a rhododendron and a cold apple-dumpling?
A: The one is a rhododendron and the other is a cold apple-dumpling.
— Angelo Lewis, Drawing-Room Amusements, 1879
He adds, “You surely wouldn’t wish for a greater difference than that.”
In a Word
quinquiplicate
v. to multiply by five
Sarah Biffen
Self-portrait by Sarah Biffen (1784-1850), a Victorian painter who had no arms.
She painted this with her mouth.
Wrist Compass
If you wear an analog watch, you can use it as a compass:
Hold it flat in the palm of your hand, with the hour hand pointing in the direction of the sun. The point midway between the hour hand and the figure 12 is due south.
(In the Southern Hemisphere, point the figure 12 toward the sun. The midpoint between the 12 and the hour hand points north.)
Who Shaves the King?
The king of hearts has no mustache — he lost it when the original design was copied badly, and the error has persisted.