Nice Kitty

http://books.google.com/books?id=orMGAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&rview=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

French sculptor Louis Vidal was blind since youth, but he produced startlingly faithful renderings of animals: a bull, a wounded stag, a horse, a cow, a dog.

With domestic creatures he could do this by feeling their anatomy directly, or by referring to skeletons or to stuffed specimens. But how did he create The Roaring Lion, the masterpiece first shown at the Salon in 1868?

Legend has it that he did it the hard way: by running his hands over a live lion at the Jardin des Plantes.

“Convinced he would not succeed without having recourse to the living ‘king of beasts,'” reported The English Illustrated Magazine in 1900, “he entered the cage without the least hesitation, accompanied by the lion-tamer. The animal allowed itself to be caressed for some time, and Vidal was thus enabled to study its anatomy. As a result, he produced that most wonderful example of his art, ‘The Roaring Lion.'”

If that’s just a story … then how did he manage it?

| Art · Oddities

Tempus Edax Rerum

Visiting Rome in The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain reflects on “the unsubstantial, unlasting character of fame.” He imagines how the people of 5868 A.D. will remember Ulysses S. Grant:

URIAH S. (or Z.) GRAUNT — popular poet of ancient times in the Aztec provinces of the United States of British America. Some authors say flourished about A.D. 742; but the learned Ah-ah Foo-foo states that he was a contemporary of Scharkspyre, the English poet, and flourished about A.D. 1328, some three centuries after the Trojan war instead of before it. He wrote ‘Rock me to Sleep, Mother.’

“These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed.”

| History · Literature

Stumper

Laid up in the hospital, James Thurber passed the time doing crossword puzzles.

One day he asked a nurse, “What seven-letter word has three u’s in it?”

She said, “I don’t know, but it must be unusual.”

| Language · Literature

Light Infantry

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Military_goat.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Since 1844, the Royal Welch Fusiliers have had a regimental goat. He’s not a mascot, but a ranking member of the unit — he marches at the head of the battalion during ceremonial duties, and fusiliers must stand to attention when he walks past.

They’re not always model soldiers. The most recent goat — Lance Corporal William Windsor, inevitably known as Billy — was once demoted for butting a drummer at the queen’s birthday celebration. But he was promoted again three months later, after taking the summer “to reflect on his behavior.” Boys will be boys.

See Reviewing the Troops.

| Oddities

Hello?

From the examination of William Henry Preece, electrician to the British General Post Office, before the House of Commons’ select committee on lighting by electricity, May 2, 1879:

Q: … Do you consider that the telephone will be an instrument of the future which will be largely adopted by the public?

A: I think not.

Q: It will not take the same position in this country as it has already done in America?

A: I fancy that the descriptions we get of its use in America are a little exaggerated; but there are conditions in America which necessitate the use of instruments of this kind more there than here. Here we have a superabundance of messengers, errand boys, and things of that kind.

| Technology

Right of Way

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1928-HenryBobbyPearce.jpg

In the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, Australian rower Bobby Pearce was leading in the quarter-final when he looked ahead and saw a family of ducks crossing his lane.

He leaned immediately on his oars and let them pass. This let Frenchman Victor Saurin catch up and then pull away to a five-length lead.

But Pearce rocketed after him and won by 20 lengths — setting a new course record and making him a favorite with Dutch schoolchildren.

| Entertainment

Short Subjects

While adapting The Big Sleep for the screen, a confused Howard Hawks wired Raymond Chandler asking who was supposed to have killed General Sternwood’s chauffer in the novel. Chandler responded:

NO IDEA

When a Paris news editor asked Ernest Hemingway for an accounting of his expenses, he cabled:

SUGGEST YOU UPSTICK BOOKS ASSWARDS

A movie studio once approached Eugene O’Neill to write a screenplay for a Jean Harlow film. They asked him to reply in a collect telegram of no more than 20 words. He wrote:

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO O’NEILL

When Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize in in 1969, he received a telegram from a Parisian named Georges Godot … apologizing for keeping him waiting.

| Literature

Long Addition

http://books.google.com/books?id=TLoNAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA38&dq=snark+butcher+beaver&as_brr=1&ei=2nBXSb_pE5fUzATGnoA_#v=onepage&q=snark%20butcher%20beaver&f=false" title="2009-10-23-long-addition

In The Hunting of the Snark, the Butcher confirms for the Beaver that Two and One are Three:

Taking Three as the subject to reason about–
A convenient number to state–
We add Seven, and Ten, and then multiply out
By One Thousand diminished by Eight.

The result we proceed to divide, as you see,
By Nine Hundred and Ninety and Two:
Then subtract Seventeen, and the answer must be
Exactly and perfectly true.

Fittingly for Carroll, the math works:

snark math

| Literature · Science & Math