The Platypus

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Gould_John_Duckbilled_Platypus_1845-1863.png

The Platypus

My child, the Duck-billed Platypus
A sad example sets for us:
From him we learn how Indecision
Of character provokes Derision.
This vacillating Thing, you see,
Could not decide which he would be,
Fish, Flesh or Fowl, and chose all three.
The scientists were sorely vexed
To classify him; so perplexed
Their brains, that they, with Rage at bay,
Call him a horrid name one day,–
A name that baffles, frights and shocks us,
Ornithorhynchus paradoxus.

— Oliver Herford

| Humor · Poems

Unquote

“Winfield goes back to the wall. He hits his head on the wall and it rolls off! It’s rolling all the way back to second base! This is a terrible thing for the Padres!” — Sportscaster Jerry Coleman

| Humor · Quotations

Useful Knots

http://www.mspong.org/cyclopedia/

THE TWENTY MOST USEFUL KNOTS.

  1. Thumb or over-hand knot, tied at the end of a rope to prevent it from opening out, &c.
  2. Right or reef-knot, for securing all lashings where the ends of the rope meet together.
  3. Draw-knot, which offers great facility in undoing.
  4. Running-knot, used to bind or draw anything close.
  5. Sheepshank, serving to shorten a rope without cutting it or unfastening the ends.
  6. Clove-hitch, which binds with excessive force, and by which alone a weight can be hung to a smooth pole.
  7. Timber-hitch, very useful in hauling to move a weight.
  8. Single bowline-knot, difficult to undo, useful to throw over a post &c., to haul on, used for the draw-loop of a slip noose.
  9. Double bowline-knot, for slinging a cask.
  10. Running bowline-knot.
  11. Woolding or packing-stick hitch, used to tighten ropes.
  12. Men’s harness hitch, passing over the shoulder and under the opposite arm of men drawing a carriage, &c.
  13. Stopper hitch, for stoppering the fall of a tackle, &c.
  14. Inside clinch, for fastening a cable to the anchor ring, &c.
  15. Common or sheet bend, a very secure method of joining two ropes, or fastening a rope to a loop.
  16. Hawser bend, for joining two ropes, easily undone.
  17. Cat’s paw, the turn in the bight of a rope, for hooking a tackle to it.
  18. Dragrope or lever-hitch, used for fixing hand-spikes or capstanbars to the ropes attached to heavy carriages, &c., which have to be moved by men.
  19. Half-hitch, cast on the bight of a rope.
  20. Carrick bend. A wall-knot is a knot made at the end of a rope to prevent it from passing through a hole.

— The Household Cyclopedia of General Information, 1881

| Trivia

“Reports of My Death …”

Some premature obituaries:

  • An unidentified New York newspaper once carried the front-page headline POPE BENEDICT XV IS DEAD. A later edition announced POPE HAS REMARKABLE RECOVERY.
  • Melody Maker magazine once announced that Alice Cooper was dead. Cooper reassured his fans: “I’m alive, and drunk as usual.”
  • When a magazine reported that Rudyard Kipling had died, he wrote, “Don’t forget to delete me from your list of subscribers.”
  • English fiddle player Dave Swarbrick forgave the Daily Telegraph for reporting his death in April 1999: “It’s not the first time I have died in Coventry.”
  • In 1982 People magazine reported that Abe Vigoda had died. He posed for a photo sitting up in a coffin, holding the magazine.
  • After a heart attack, painter James McNeill Whistler wrote to a Dutch newspaper, saying that reading his own obituary had induced a “tender glow of health.”
| Death

“The Human Lightning Rod”

http://www.sxc.hu

A U.S. forest ranger in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, Roy Cleveland Sullivan (1912-1983) survived being hit by lightning seven different times:

  1. In a lookout tower in 1942, the first bolt struck him in the leg. He lost a nail on his big toe.
  2. In 1969, a second bolt struck him in his truck, knocking him unconscious and burning his eyebrows.
  3. The third strike, in 1970, hit him in his front yard, burning his left shoulder.
  4. The next bolt struck in a ranger station in 1972 and set his hair on fire. After that, he began carrying a pitcher of water with him.
  5. In 1973, a bolt hit Sullivan in the head, blasting him out of his car and again setting his hair on fire.
  6. The sixth bolt struck him in a campground in 1974, injuring his ankle.
  7. The final bolt hit him in 1977, when he was fishing. He was hospitalized for burns on his chest and stomach.

Sullivan shot himself in 1983 … reportedly over a rejected love.

| Oddities