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“Remarkable Inscription”

“The following singular inscription is to be seen carved on a tomb situated at the entrance of the church of San Salvador, in the city of Oviedo. The explanation is that the tomb was erected by a king named Silo, and the inscription is so written that it can be read 270 ways by beginning with the large S in the center. The words are Latin, SILO PRINCEPS FECIT.”

T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T
I C E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I
C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P S F E C
E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E
F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F
S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S
P C C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P
E E N I R P O L I S I L O P R I N C E
P E C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P
S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S
F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F
E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E
C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P S P E C
I C E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I
T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T

“Besides this singular inscription, the letters H. S. E. S. S. T. T. L. are also carved on the tomb, but of these no explanation is given. Silo, Prince of Oviedo, or King of the Asturias, succeeded Aurelius in 774, and died in 785. He was, therefore, a contemporary of Charlemagne. No doubt the above inscription was the composition of some ingenious and learned Spanish monk.”

— Barkham Burroughs’ Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889

11/02/2014 UPDATE: A reader points out that S.T.T.L. is the Roman equivalent of R.I.P.: Sit tibi terra levis means “may the earth rest lightly upon you.” “H.S.E.S. is a little less clear, but my conjecture is it stands for Hic Sepultus Est Silo = here Silo has been buried. H.S.E. is a not-uncommon abbreviation on tombstones.” (Thanks, Noah.)

| Language · Oddities

The Pull of Four

Think of any number and write it out in words. Count the number of letters and write that out in words. And so on:

  • SEVENTY-SEVEN (12 letters)
  • TWELVE (six letters)
  • SIX (three letters)
  • THREE (five letters)
  • FIVE (four letters)
  • FOUR (four letters)

If your spelling is good, you’ll always arrive at FOUR.

| Language

Cadaeic Cadenza

Opening excerpt from “Cadaeic Cadenza,” a short story written in 1996 by Mike Keith:

One

A Poem: A Raven
Midnights so dreary, tired and weary,
Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap — the weirdest tap!
An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber’s antedoor.
“This,” I whispered quietly, “I ignore.” …

If you write out the number of letters in each word, they form the first 3,834 digits of pi.

| Poems · Science & Math

Able Was I …

A man, a plan, a caret, a ban, a myriad, a sum, a lac, a liar, a hoop, a pint, a catalpa, a gas, an oil, a bird, a yell, a vat, a caw, a pax, a wag, a tax, a nay, a ram, a cap, a yam, a gay, a tsar, a wall, a car, a luger, a ward, a bin, a woman, a vassal, a wolf, a tuna, a nit, a pall, a fret, a watt, a bay, a daub, a tan, a cab, a datum, a gall, a hat, a fag, a zap, a say, a jaw, a lay, a wet, a gallop, a tug, a trot, a trap, a tram, a torr, a caper, a top, a tonk, a toll, a ball, a fair, a sax, a minim, a tenor, a bass, a passer, a capital, a rut, an amen, a ted, a cabal, a tang, a sun, an ass, a maw, a sag, a jam, a dam, a sub, a salt, an axon, a sail, an ad, a wadi, a radian, a room, a rood, a rip, a tad, a pariah, a revel, a reel, a reed, a pool, a plug, a pin, a peek, a parabola, a dog, a pat, a cud, a nu, a fan, a pal, a rum, a nod, an eta, a lag, an eel, a batik, a mug, a mot, a nap, a maxim, a mood, a leek, a grub, a gob, a gel, a drab, a citadel, a total, a cedar, a tap, a gag, a rat, a manor, a bar, a gal, a cola, a pap, a yaw, a tab, a raj, a gab, a nag, a pagan, a bag, a jar, a bat, a way, a papa, a local, a gar, a baron, a mat, a rag, a gap, a tar, a decal, a tot, a led, a tic, a bard, a leg, a bog, a burg, a keel, a doom, a mix, a map, an atom, a gum, a kit, a baleen, a gala, a ten, a don, a mural, a pan, a faun, a ducat, a pagoda, a lob, a rap, a keep, a nip, a gulp, a loop, a deer, a leer, a lever, a hair, a pad, a tapir, a door, a moor, an aid, a raid, a wad, an alias, an ox, an atlas, a bus, a madam, a jag, a saw, a mass, an anus, a gnat, a lab, a cadet, an em, a natural, a tip, a caress, a pass, a baronet, a minimax, a sari, a fall, a ballot, a knot, a pot, a rep, a carrot, a mart, a part, a tort, a gut, a poll, a gateway, a law, a jay, a sap, a zag, a fat, a hall, a gamut, a dab, a can, a tabu, a day, a batt, a waterfall, a patina, a nut, a flow, a lass, a van, a mow, a nib, a draw, a regular, a call, a war, a stay, a gam, a yap, a cam, a ray, an ax, a tag, a wax, a paw, a cat, a valley, a drib, a lion, a saga, a plat, a catnip, a pooh, a rail, a calamus, a dairyman, a bater, a canal — Panama!

— A 544-word palindrome composed in 1984 by Dan Hoey (with computer assistance)

| Language

Cat as Coauthor

Physicist J.H. Hetherington had already typed up a physics paper in 1975 when he learned of an unfortunate style rule: Physical Review Letters does not accept the pronoun we in single-author papers.

Hetherington didn’t want to retype the paper — this was before word processors had become widespread — so he added his cat as a second author (“F.D.C. Willard,” for “Felis Domesticus Chester Willard.”)

“Why was I willing to do such an irreverent thing? Against it was the fact that most of us are paid partly by how many papers we publish, and there is some dilution of the effect of the paper on one’s reputation when it is shared by another author. On the other hand, I did not ignore completely the publicity value, either. If it eventually proved to be correct, people would remember the paper more if the anomalous authorship were known. In any case I went ahead and did it and have generally not been sorry. Most people are amused by the concept, only editors, for some reason, seem to find little humour in the story.”

Chester is believed to be the only cat who has published research in low-temperature physics. “When reprints arrived, I inked F.D.C. Willard’s paw and he and I signed about 10 reprints which I sent to a few friends,” Hetherington later recalled. “The story has now been told many times and my wife can add that she sleeps with both authors!”

| Science & Math

Hapax Legomenon

A hapax legomenon is a word that occurs only once in a given body of text:

  • NORTELRYE (“education”) was used only by Chaucer, and only once.
  • AUTOGUOS, an ancient Greek word for “plow,” was used only once, in Hesiod.
  • FLOTHER, a charming synonym for “snowflake,” appears only once in written English before 1900 (in a manuscript from around 1275).
  • PIM, a stone weight of about a quarter ounce, appears only once in Biblical Hebrew (1 Samuel 13:20).

HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS appears only once in Shakespeare’s works (in Love’s Labour’s Lost). Probably a good thing.

| Language

Original Lyrics for “Yesterday”

Paul McCartney’s working lyrics for “Yesterday”:

Scrambled eggs
Have an omelette with some Muenster cheese
Put your dishes in the wash bin please
So I can clean the scrambled eggs

Join me do
There’s a lot of eggs for me and you
I’ve got ham and cheese and bacon too
So go get two and join me do

Fried or sunny side
Just aren’t right
The mix-bowl begs
Quick, go get a pan, and we’ll scramble up some eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs

Scrambled eggs
Good for breakfast, dinner time or brunch
Don’t buy six or twelve, buy a bunch
And we’ll have a lunch on scrambled eggs

“The song was around for months and months before we finally completed it,” John Lennon remembered. “We made up our minds that only a one-word title would suit; we just couldn’t find the right one. Then one morning Paul woke up and the song and the title were both there, completed. I was sorry in a way, we’d had so many laughs about it.”

| Entertainment

Found Poetry

William Whewell was a giant of 19th-century science, but he may have missed his true calling. Someone pointed out that his classic Elementary Treatise on Mechanics contains the following poetic sentence:

And hence no force, however great,
can stretch a cord, however fine,
into a horizontal line
that shall be absolutely straight.

Then again, maybe not: Whewell quietly changed the wording in the next edition.

Max Beerbohm noticed a similar happenstance in the first edition of his collected works:

‘London: John Lane, The Bodley Head
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.’
This plain announcement, nicely read,
Iambically runs.

| Poems · Science & Math

Get Out of Jail Free

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Monopoly_Game.jpg

There’s no Marvin Gardens in Atlantic City. Most properties in Monopoly correspond to real locations in that town, but Charles Darrow accidentally misspelled Marven Gardens, a local housing area, when he created his homemade prototype of the game in 1935. The error persisted until 1995, when Parker Brothers formally apologized to the residents of Marven Gardens for the misspelling.

In 1974, San Francisco State University professor Ralph Anspach released a variant of the game called Anti-Monopoly, in which the board is “monopolized” at the start and players compete to return to a free market system. Parker Brothers tried to suppress Anspach’s game, essentially claiming a monopoly on the word monopoly. Apparently that was too much irony for the Supreme Court, which ruled in Anspach’s favor in 1983.

| Entertainment

Belated Surrenders

For most Japanese, World War II ended in 1945. But not for some:

  • Shoichi Yokoi, a soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army, was discovered in a remote section of Guam in 1972. He had been hiding in an underground jungle cave for 28 years, refusing to believe leaflets that said the war had ended.
  • 2nd. Lt. Hiroo Onoda hid in the Philippines jungle for 29 years. He finally gave up in 1974, when his old commanding officer convinced him the war was over. He surrendered in his dress uniform and sword, with his Arisaka rifle still in operating condition, 500 rounds of ammunition, and several hand grenades.
  • The last holdout, Capt. Fumio Nakahira of the Japanese Imperial Army, was discovered on Mindoro Island in the Philippines in April 1980 — 35 years after V-J Day.

“It is with much embarrassment that I have returned alive,” Yokoi said on returning to Japan. He got $300 in back pay.

| History · Oddities