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Just a reminder — Futility Closet books make great gifts for people who are impossible to buy gifts for. Both contain hundreds of hand-picked favorites from our archive of curiosities. Some reviews:

“A wild, wonderful, and educational romp through history, science, zany patents, math puzzles, wonderful words (like boanthropy, hallelujatic, and andabatarian), the Devil’s Game, self-contradicting words, and so much more. Buy this book and feed your mind!” — Clifford A. Pickover, author of The Mathematics Devotional

“Futility Closet delivers concentrated doses of weird, wonderful, brain-stimulating ideas and anecdotes, curated mainly from forgotten old books. I’m hooked — there’s nothing quite like it!” — Mark Frauenfelder, founder, Boing Boing

“Meant to be read in pieces, but impossible to put down.” — Gary Antonick, editor, New York Times Numberplay blog

“Futility Closet is a dusty museum back room where one can spend minutes or hours among seldom-seen curiosities, and feel that none of the time was wasted.” — Alan Bellows, DamnInteresting.com

Both books are available now on Amazon. Thanks for your support!

| Uncategorized

Unusual Books

https://www.flickr.com/photos/alixanaeuphoria/2226487562
Image: Flickr

Adam Thirlwell’s 2012 novel Kapow! and Mark Z. Danielewski’s 2000 House of Leaves (above) are typeset unconventionally, with some text appearing in separate blocks, aslant, and even upside down.

To create his 2010 book Tree of Codes, Jonathan Safran Foer took Bruno Schulz’s 1934 short story collection The Street of Crocodiles and physically cut out most of the words to produce a new story.

Marc Saporta’s 1962 novel Composition No. 1 consists of 150 unbound pages that can be read in any order.

Anne Carson’s 2010 Nox is an accordion-folded facsimile of a handmade book of memories of her brother, including old letters, family photos, and sketches.

Holes have been cut in several of the pages in B.S. Johnson’s 1964 novel Albert Angelo, allowing the reader to glimpse events further ahead in the story.

The plot of Serbian novelist Milorad Pavić’s 1988 Landscape Painted With Tea is constructed like a crossword puzzle, with chapters that can be read “across” or “down.” “The solution of the puzzle is supposed to lead to the solution of life.”

| Literature

Will I Am

In the year 1611, when the King James Version of the Bible was published, William Shakespeare was 46 and 47 years old. The 46th word from the start of the 46th Psalm is shake, and the 47th word from the end is spear. Also, the 14th word is will, and the 32nd word from the end is am, preceded by I. And 14 + 32 = 46.

Remarkably, these coincidences obtain also in Richard Taverner’s 1539 Bible, which uses a different wording.

(J. Karl Franson, “A Myth About the Bard,” Word Ways 27:3 [August 1994], 154.)

| Literature · Oddities

Toki Pona

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sitelen_sitelen_contract.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In 2001, Toronto translator Sonja Elen Kisa invented a language, “my attempt to understand the meaning of life in 120 words.” She called it Toki Pona (“good language”) and focused on minimalism, trying to find the smallest core vocabulary needed to communicate. With only 120–125 root words and 14 phonemes, the language helps its speakers to concentrate on basic things and to think positively — Kisa told the Los Angeles Times, “It has sort of a Zen or Taoist nature to it.”

To her own surprise it’s begun to grow. By 2007 Kisa estimated that 100 people spoke Toki Pona fluently, and it’s since expanded in online forums, social media, and even hacked video games. Here’s the Lord’s Prayer:

mama pi mi mute o, sina lon sewi kon.
nimi sina li sewi.
ma sina o kama.
jan o pali e wile sina lon sewi kon en lon ma.
o pana e moku pi tenpo suno ni tawa mi mute.
o weka e pali ike mi. sama la mi weka e pali ike pi jan ante.
o lawa ala e mi tawa ike.
o lawa e mi tan ike.
tenpo ali la sina jo e ma e wawa e pona.
Amen.

And above is a contract written by Jonathan Gabel in the sitelen sitelen writing system, arranging for sale of the contract itself as a piece of art. Official site, dictionary, language course.

| Language

Oops

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_H._Seward_portrait_-_restoration.jpg

On Nov. 23, 1866, Secretary of State William Henry Seward inaugurated the first sustainable transatlantic telegraph line by sending a diplomatic cable. Seward’s message was a tidy 780 words, but he sent it using a Monroe cipher, which converted the text into groups of numbers. And the telegraph company stipulated that a coded message that used number groups had to spell out the numbers — so 387 was sent as THREE EIGHT SEVEN. Consequently Seward’s message expanded to 3,772 words. To add insult to injury, the Anglo-American Telegraph Company charged double, or $5 per word, for coded messages. Seward’s telegram ended up costing $19,540.40, more than three times his salary.

Seward refused to pay at first, but he lost a court fight. The editor of the New York Herald wrote sarcastically, “It is a shame for the United States government not to be able to pay its telegraph bills as promptly as a New York newspaper.”

(Ralph E. Weber, “Seward’s Other Folly: America’s First Encrypted Cable,” Studies in Intelligence 36 [1992], 105-109.) (Thanks, John.)

| History

Podcast Episode 271: The Fraudulent Life of Cassie Chadwick

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Bankers_Magazine/LFgmAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA551

In 1902, scam artist Cassie Chadwick convinced an Ohio lawyer that she was the illegitimate daughter of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. She parlayed this reputation into a life of unthinkable extravagance — until her debts came due. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe Chadwick’s efforts to maintain the ruse — and how she hoped to get away with it.

We’ll also encounter a haunted tomb and puzzle over an exonerated merchant.

See full show notes …

| Crime · History · Podcast · Society

A Mouthful

In 1854, a correspondent wrote to Notes and Queries asking about the origins of this couplet:

Perturbabantur Constantinopolitani
Innumerabilibus sollicitudinibus.

[“Constantinople is much perturbed.”]

He got this reply:

“When I first learned to scan verses, somewhere about thirty years ago, the lines produced by your correspondent P. were in every child’s mouth, with this story attached to them. It was said that Oxford had received from Cambridge the first line of the distich, with a challenge to produce a corresponding line consisting of two words only. To this challenge Oxford replied by sending back the second line, pointing out, at the same time, the false quantity in the word Constantinŏpolitani.”

| Language