verbunkos
n. a dance performed to persuade people to enlist in the Hungarian army
Off Base
1903 in the life of erratic pitcher Rube Waddell, cataloged by Cooperstown historian Lee Allen:
“He began that year sleeping in a firehouse in Camden, New Jersey, and ended it tending bar in a saloon in Wheeling, West Virginia. In between those events he won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, played left end for the Business Men’s Rugby Football Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, toured the nation in a melodrama called The Stain of Guilt, courted, married and became separated from May Wynne Skinner of Lynn, Massachusetts, saved a woman from drowning, accidentally shot a friend through the hand, and was bitten by a lion.”
And that was just 1903. In one game against the Athletics, Waddell was at bat in the eighth inning with two out and a tying run on second. The catcher threw to second, trying to pick off the runner, but overthrew, and the ball went into the outfield. The runner took off for home. As he rounded third, the center fielder hurled the ball in to home plate …
… and Waddell, to everyone’s horror, knocked it out of the park.
He was declared out for interference. “They’d been feeding me curves all afternoon,” he told a flabbergasted Connie Mack, “and this was the first straight ball I’d looked at!”
Pest Control
On Aug. 25, 1965, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Greenlee were sitting on their patio in Dunnellon, Fla., with a neighbor, Mrs. Riggs.
Mrs. Greenlee had just swatted a fly when a ball of lightning the size of a basketball appeared immediately in front of her. The ball was later described as being of a color and brightness comparable to the flash seen in arc welding, with a fuzzy appearance around the edges. Mrs. Riggs did not see the ball itself, but saw the flyswatter ‘edged in fire’ dropping on the floor. The movement of the ball to the floor was accompanied by a report ‘like a shotgun blast.’ The entire incident was over in seconds.
… The explosion was heard by a neighbor about 150 feet away, and it was subsequently learned that another neighbor’s electric range had been shorted out at the same time. There was no damage of any sort at the Greenlees, nor were there any marks on the patio floor where the flyswatter had fallen. With regard to the fly, Mrs. Riggs commented, ‘You sure got him that time.’
— Frederick B. Mohr, “A Truly Remarkable Fly,” Science, Feb. 11, 1966
Math Notes
88 + 88 + 58 + 98 + 38 + 48 + 78 + 78 = 88593477
Remembered
On the morning after Jack Benny died in 1974, his wife, Mary, received a single long-stemmed rose. Another arrived the next day, and the next. For the first few weeks she was too numb to wonder where they were coming from, but eventually she called the florist to inquire.
He told her that Benny had visited the shop some years earlier to send a bouquet of flowers to a friend. As he was leaving, he suddenly turned back and said, “If anything should happen to me, I want you to send Mary a single rose every day.”
She continued to receive them every day until June 30, 1983 — when she herself passed away.
Damned If You Don’t
Marijuana is illegal in North Carolina, but the state still profits from its sale. Under state law, anyone who purchases illegal drugs must buy stamps within 48 hours and affix them to the controlled substance. If you’re caught without stamps, you’re still liable for the tax.
No one expects people actually to do this — since 1990, only a few dozen people have bought the stamps, and many of those are thought to be stamp collectors. But the state has collected more than $68 million for failure to display them.
Dilemma
You’re given a choice between two gifts: $5 and $1,000. You can choose either, but a bystander will give you $1 million if you choose irrationally. Can you do it?
See also Kavka’s Toxin Puzzle.
The Yellowstone Lake Whispers
For more than a century, people have been hearing strange sounds in the sky over the lakes of Yellowstone National Park:
- “While getting breakfast, we heard every few moments a curious sound, between a whistle and a hoarse whine, whose locality and character we could not at first determine …” (F.H. Bradley, 1872)
- “[I]t seemed to begin at a distance [and] grow louder overhead where it filled the upper air, and suggested a medley of wind in the tops of pine trees and in telegraph wires, the echo of bells after being repeated several times, the humming of a swarm of bees, and two or three other less definite sources of sound …” (Edwin Linton, 1892)
- “It put me in mind of the vibrating clang of a harp lightly and rapidly touched high up above the tree tops, or the sound of many telegraph wires swinging regularly and rapidly in the wind, or, more rarely, of faintly heard voices answering each other overhead.” (S.A. Forbes, 1893)
- “They resemble the ringing of telegraph wires or the humming of a swarm of bees, beginning softly in the distance, growing rapidly plainer until directly overhead, and then fading as rapidly in the opposite direction.” (H.M. Chittenden, 1915)
Evidently the sound is very difficult to describe in words — one of Linton’s party called it “a twisting sort of yow-yow vibration.” Forbes calls it “really bewitching,” and Linton’s guide, Elwood Hofer, called it “the most mysterious sound heard among the mountains.”
Possibly it’s produced by the surrounding mountains under seismic stress, or it could be standing sound waves produced by the wind. No one knows.
A Man of Letters
“L E G on the Death of L X and R N S, Squire of the Coun T of S X”
In S X once there lived M N,
Who was Xceeding Y Y;
But with so much O B C T
It almost closed his I I.
When from his chair E would R I I,
U would have laughed to C
The awkwardness his fat did cause
To this old O D T.
But barring that E was so fat,
E was a right good fell O,
And had such horror of X S
U never saw him mell O.
N O O so red E did not like,
As that which wine will give,
So did S A to keep from drink
As long as E did live.
Two daughters fair this old man had,
Called Miss M A and L N,
Who, when the old chap took his E E,
Would try to T T the men.
Over the C C, these maids to please,
There came two gallants gay;
M A and L N ceased to T T,
And with them ran away.
These gallants did them so M U U,
And used such an M N C T
Of flattery, U must X Q Q
Their fugitive propensity.
The poor old man heaved many S I I
For frail M A and L N;
E called each gallant gay a rogue,
A rascal, and a villain.
And all with half an I might C
His gradual D K,
Till M T was his old arm-chair,
And E had passed away.
— William T. Dobson, Literary Frivolities, Fancies, Follies and Frolics, 1880
Two and Two
In 1977, a gravely ill 19-month-old Qatari girl was flown to a London hospital, where her condition continued to worsen, baffling her doctors.
On the sixth day, the observing nurse was startled to see that the girl began to lose her hair. She realized that the patient’s symptoms were strikingly similar to those in Agatha Christie’s novel The Pale Horse, which she had been reading.
In Christie’s novel, the murder victims had been killed by thallium poisoning. Tests confirmed elevated levels of thallium in the girl’s urine, and doctors treated her accordingly. Three weeks later she was well enough to go home.