Search Results for: in a word

Inksmanship

In 1863, the register of the U.S. Treasury, L.E. Chittenden, had to sign 12,500 bonds in a single weekend to stop the delivery of two British-built warships to the Confederacy. He started at noon on Friday and managed 3,700 signatures in the first seven hours, but by Saturday morning he was desperate:

[E]very muscle on the right side connected with the movement of the hand and arm became inflamed, and the pain was almost beyond endurance. … In the slight pauses which were made, rubbing, the application of hot water, and other remedies were resorted to, in order to alleviate the pain and reduce the inflammation. They were comparatively ineffectual, and the hours dragged on without bringing much relief.

He finished, exhausted, at noon on Sunday, completing a mountain of bonds more than 6 feet high. These were rushed to a waiting steamer — and only then did word come that the English warships had been sold to a different buyer. The bonds, in the end, were not needed.

See “Counting a Million in a Month.”

| History

ID by Woolworth

http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/misused.html

In 1938, a wallet manufacturer in Lockport, N.Y., decided to include sample Social Security cards in its products. The company’s vice president thought it would be clever to use the actual Social Security number of his secretary, Hilda Whitcher.

It wasn’t. The sample card was half-size, printed in red, and bore the word SPECIMEN in large letters, but by 1943 more than 5,000 people were using Whitcher’s number as their own. The Social Security Administration voided the card and started a publicity campaign to educate users, but over the years more than 40,000 people reported the number as their own, some as recently as 1977.

“They started using the number,” Whitcher marveled. “They thought it was their own. I can’t understand how people can be so stupid. I can’t understand that.”

| Oddities

Group Study

A Frenchman, while looking at a number of vessels, exclaimed, ‘See what a flock of ships!’ He was told that a flock of ships was called a fleet, but that a fleet of sheep was called a flock. To assist him in mastering the intricacies of the English language, he was told that a flock of girls was called a bevy, that a bevy of wolves is called a pack, but that a pack of cards is never called a bevy, though a pack of thieves is called a gang, and a gang of angels is called a host, while a host of porpoises is termed a shoal. He was told that a host of oxen is termed a herd, and a herd of children is called a troop, and a troop of partridges is termed a covey, and a covey of beauty is called a galaxy, and a galaxy of ruffians is called a horde, and a horde of rubbish is called a heap, and a heap of bullocks is called a drove, and a drove of blackguards is called a mob, and a mob of whales is called a school, and a school of worship is called a congregation, and a congregation of engineers is called a corps, and a corps of robbers is called a band, and a band of locusts is called a crowd, and a crowd of gentlefolks is called the elite. The last word being French, the scholar understood it and asked no more.

— Charles William Bardeen, A System of Rhetoric, 1884

| Language

The Uninvited Guest

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De_Alice's_Abenteuer_im_Wunderland_Carroll_pic_26.jpg

A conundrum by John F. Collins, from the August 1968 issue of Word Ways:

Just then, someone came up from behind and put his hands over the Hatter’s eyes.

‘Guess who!’ said the newcomer in a thin, flat voice.

The Hatter froze for a moment and declared, rather coldly, ‘I have no use for practical jokers.’

‘Ha! Neither have I,’ retorted the stranger, still keeping his hands over the Hatter’s eyes.

At that, the Hatter seemed to accept the challenge of the game and started asking a series of questions in a manner that mingled hope with care.

Question: ‘Ahem. Would you, by chance, be in a black suit this evening?’

Answer: ‘I would, but not by chance, by design.’

Q. ‘I presume you’re a member of all the posh clubs?’

A. ‘Afraid not. Never even been invited.’

Q. ‘Surely you’re better than average?’

A. ‘Yes, indeed!’

Q. ‘Not spotted, I hope?’

A. ‘Knock wood.’

Q. ‘Married?’

A. ‘No, happy.’

Who is behind the Mad Hatter?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Sotto Voce

‘Wordsworth,’ said Charles Lamb, ‘one day told me that he considered Shakespeare greatly overrated. “There is an immensity of trick in all Shakespeare wrote,” he said, “and people are taken in by it. Now if I had a mind I could write exactly like Shakespeare.” So you see,’ proceeded Charles Lamb quietly, ‘it was only the mind that was wanting.’

— Frank Leslie’s Ten Cent Monthly, December 1863

| Literature

To Do

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While editing The Sun Also Rises, Maxwell Perkins had to decide how to handle the many obscenities in Hemingway’s text. He planned a lunch with the author and kept a list of words to discuss with him.

While Perkins was at lunch, Charles Scribner came looking for him and, finding his office empty, consulted his calendar. It read “shit piss fuck bitch.”

When Perkins returned, Scribner said, “You must be exhausted.”

| Literature

Nearer My God

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Buzz Aldrin celebrated communion on the moon. From his 2009 book Magnificent Desolation:

So, during those first hours on the moon, before the planned eating and rest periods, I reached into my personal preference kit and pulled out the communion elements along with a three-by-five card on which I had written the words of Jesus: ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me.’ I poured a thimbleful of wine from a sealed plastic container into a small chalice, and waited for the wine to settle down as it swirled in the one-sixth Earth gravity of the moon. My comments to the world were inclusive: ‘I would like to request a few moments of silence … and to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way.’ I silently read the Bible passage as I partook of the wafer and the wine, and offered a private prayer for the task at hand and the opportunity I had been given.

“Perhaps, if I had it to do over again, I would not choose to celebrate communion,” he wrote. “Although it was a deeply meaningful experience for me, it was a Christian sacrament, and we had come to the moon in the name of all mankind — be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists. But at the time I could think of no better way to acknowledge the enormity of the Apollo 11 experience that by giving thanks to God.”

| History · Religion

Mailbag

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To the Editor of the Herald:

I am anxious to find out the way to figure the temperature from centigrade to Fahrenheit and vice versa. In other words, I want to know, whenever I see the temperature designated on the centigrade thermometer, how to find out what it would be on Fahrenheit’s thermometer.

Old Philadelphia Lady
Paris, December 24, 1899

That’s reasonable enough, right? It ran in the Paris Herald on Dec. 27, 1899.

The curious thing is that it also ran on Dec. 28, and Dec. 29 … and every day thereafter for 18 years, a total of 6,718 times.

Publisher James Gordon Bennett never gave a reason — he only told colleague James B. Townsend that “just so long as there was an average income of jocose but more often indignant and abusive letters about this letter at the Paris Herald office he would continue to publish it.”

| Oddities

“The Story of Esaw Wood”

Esaw Wood sawed wood.

Esaw Wood would saw wood!

All the wood Esaw Wood saw Esaw Wood would saw. In other words, all the wood Esaw saw to saw Esaw sought to saw.

Oh, the wood Wood would saw! And oh, the wood-saw with which Wood would saw wood.

But one day Wood’s wood-saw would saw no wood, and thus the wood Wood sawed was not the wood Wood would saw if Wood’s wood-saw would saw wood.

Now, Wood would saw wood with a wood-saw that would saw wood, so Esaw sought a saw that would saw wood.

One day Esaw saw a saw saw wood as no other wood-saw Wood saw would saw wood.

In fact, of all the wood-saws Wood ever saw saw wood Wood never saw a wood-saw that would saw wood as the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood would saw wood, and I never saw a wood-saw that would saw as the wood-saw Wood saw would saw until I saw Esaw Wood saw wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood.

Now Wood saws wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood.

Oh, the wood the wood-saw Wood saw would saw!

Oh, the wood Wood’s woodshed would shed when Wood would saw wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood!

Finally, no man may ever know how much wood the wood-saw Wood saw would saw, if the wood-saw Wood saw would saw all the wood the wood-saw Wood saw would saw.

— W.E. Southwick

Anthologist Carolyn Wells writes, “Well, you don’t have to read it.”

| Language · Poems