Besieged by Prussians in 1870, Paris found a clever way to get mail to the outside world. For 20 centimes you could write a letter on a thin piece of green paper; these were collected and sent hopefully upward on unguided mail balloons. Each 4-gram postcard carried an address; the Parisians hoped that the balloons would drift to earth somewhere and that whoever found the messages would forward them.
It worked. During the four-month siege they sent up 65 balloons, and only two went missing.
Rudolph Valentino’s real name was Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antoguolla.
You can write a message to future generations at the KEO project. It’ll be launched on a satellite that won’t return to Earth for 50,000 years.
Even more ambitious is the LAGEOS satellite, which will re-enter our atmosphere in 8.4 million years bearing a plaque that shows the arrangement of the continents. Let’s hope our descendants still have catcher’s mitts.
“By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” — Socrates
In the 16th century, the English navy would put messages in bottles to send information ashore about enemy positions.
Queen Elizabeth I even created the official position “Uncorker of Ocean Bottles.” Anyone else caught opening them faced the death penalty.
Making toast at the fireside,
Nurse fell in the grate and died;
And, what makes it ten times worse,
All the toast was burned with Nurse.
— Col. D. Streamer
spatchcock
v. to insert into a text too hurriedly
Early space missions that passed over the featureless Sahara were surprised to see a 30-mile eye staring up at them. No one’s quite sure what it is. It’s too flat to be a crater or a volcano. If it’s simply an uplift laid bare by erosion, why is it so nearly circular? For now they’re just calling it the Richat Structure.
People who have been cremated:
In 2004, Ashley Revell of London sold all his possessions, including his clothing, went to the roulette table at the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, and put down $135,300 in a double-or-nothing bet on red.
The ball landed on red 7. Revell collected $270,600 and walked away.