A well-known story is that of the showman who had a big placard on his tent, announcing that he was exhibiting a horse with his tail where his head ought to be. The inquisitive paid their money, were admitted within, beheld a horse turned around so that his tail was in the oat-bin, laughed shamefacedly, and then lingered outside the tent to watch their fellow-creatures get victimized in the same way.
— William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892
WELL-EXPRESSED is dialed using only the odd numbers on a telephone keypad.
NONCOMMUNICATING uses only even numbers.
Surely this means something.
Rutherford B. Hayes took the oath of office two days ahead of schedule, in a secret ceremony at the White House on March 3, 1877, attended by President Grant.
Hayes’ opponent, Samuel Tilden, had won the popular vote but lost the electoral college, and rumors were circulating that he planned to claim the presidency for himself.
That didn’t happen, and Hayes was inaugurated peacefully on March 5.
But, arguably, for those two days in March the United States had two presidents.
From The Strand, August 1909:
“This is a photograph, taken by myself last year, of an old London horse omnibus that I found on the prairie on the outskirts of the City of Calgary, Alberta, Western Canada. It had been stripped of its outside seats, and bore such announcements as: ‘Over Waterloo Bridge,’ ‘Camden Town,’ ‘Old Kent Road,’ ‘The Dun Cow,’ etc. It still bore the name of the original owner, a Mr. French, of London. I have come across many discarded London omnibuses in out-of-the-way villages, etc., in this country, but I never expected to find one six thousand miles away from the Metropolis. — Mr. Henry Pope, 437, Fulham Palace Road, London, S.W.”
The National Weather Service issued a worrisome advisory on Dec. 17, 2003:
Unusually hot weather has entered the region for December … as the Earth has left its orbit and is hurtling towards the sun. Unusually hot weather will occur for at least the next several days as the Earth draws ever nearer to the sun. Therefore, an excessive heat watch has been posted.
The alert, which appeared on NOAA’s website, turned out to be a test message posted accidentally during a training session. By midafternoon it had been removed and a correction posted.
Construct equilateral triangles on the sides of any triangle, and their centers will form an equilateral triangle. (This also works if you construct the triangles inward rather than outward. This triangle has the same center as the outward triangle, and the difference in their areas is the area of the original triangle.)
This discovery is traditionally credited to Napoleon, but there’s no evidence supporting that contention. Indeed, this theorem is said to be one of the most frequently rediscovered results in mathematics.
See A Better Nature.
griffonage
n. careless handwriting
Of all editorial writers, Horace Greeley was most noted for illegible copy. On one occasion the ‘modern Franklin’ penned something about ‘Suburban journalism advancing,’ but the typesetter, thinking it one of his famous agricultural articles, launched out wildly with the words, ‘Superb Jerusalem artichokes.’ The stories of the wild work made by compositors with Mr. Greeley’s writing are endless, and probably most of them inventions; but the fiction cannot possibly outdo the reality. One of his editorial headings, ‘William H. Seward,’ was turned into ‘William the Third’; and the quotation from Shakespeare, ”Tis true, ’tis pity, and pity ’tis ’tis true,’ came out ”Tis two, ’tis fifty and fifty, ’tis fifty-two.’ That a sign-painter turned the placard ‘Entrance on Spruce’ to put up on the Nassau Street door during repairs, into ‘Editors on a Spree,’ is probably apocryphal; but the familiar legend that a discharged printer took his note of dismissal and used it for a letter of recommendation, securing a place on the strength of the signature, which was all anybody could read, is likely enough to have been true.
— Travelers’ Record, April 1889
See Pen Mystique.
Periander ordered two young men to go out by night along a certain road, to kill the first man they met there, and to bury him.
Then he ordered four more men to find those two and kill them. And he sent an even greater number to murder those four.
Periander then set off down the road himself to wait for them.
In this way he ensured that the location of his grave would never be known.
You are to choose exactly one of two opaque boxes, A and B. A mean demon has put $1,000 in the box he predicted you would not take and nothing in the other. Since you know that the predictions are quite reliable, you can be sure you will pick the wrong box. … [Now suppose] we add a small bonus for taking box B. Some of us are now inclined to say that this modification renders the A option irrational. For it seems that the bonus tips the balance that previously existed between two equally good choices. If taking box A is as rational as taking box B, then the package deal of taking B plus the bonus must be more rational than taking Box A. Yet … if the bonus makes taking B the uniquely rational choice, then you would know that the money was in box A. This knowledge would force you to change your mind in favour of taking box A.
— Roy A. Sorensen, Blindspots, 1988, after Brian Skyrms
Sorensen adds: “Perhaps this reply has some persuasiveness when the bonus is small. But now suppose that the bonus is almost as great as the prize itself, say $900. Wouldn’t it be irrational to forgo a sure $900 by taking box A?”
See Newcomb’s Paradox.
In December 2005, tired of endless credit-card offers, West Hollywood realtor Gary More scrawled NEVER WASTE A TREE across one application and mailed it in.
Chase Visa issued a card to “Never Waste Tree.”
He cut it up.
