ob�nu�bi�late
v. to cloud or obscure
In 1810, Theodore Hook, a writer of comic operas, bet his friend Samuel Beazley that he could turn any house in London into the most talked-about address in the city within one week. Beazley accepted, and Hook began writing letters.
A few weeks later, on Nov. 10, a Mrs. Tottenham of 54 Berners Street turned away a coal merchant delivering a load of coal that she hadn't ordered.
She was in for a long day. The Morning Post reported: "Wagons laden with coals from the Paddington wharfs, upholsterers' goods in cart loads, organs, pioanofortes, linens, jewelry, and every other description of furniture sufficient to have stocked the whole street, were lodged as near as possible to the door of 54, with anxious trades-people and a laughing mob."
It went on. "There were accoucheurs, tooth-drawers, miniature painters, artists of every description, auctioneers, ... grocers, mercers, post-chaises, mourning-coaches, poultry, rabbits, pigeons, etc. In fact, the whole street was literally filled with the motley group."
The merchants were followed by dignitaries: the governor of the Bank of England, the archbishop of Canterbury, cabinet ministers, dukes, and finally the lord mayor of London.
Hook won his bet, collecting one guinea. He eventually confessed to the prank, but apparently never received any punishment.
|W|P|113883952440387212|W|P|The Berners Street Hoax|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
In 1726, 25-year-old English maidservant Mary Tofts began giving birth to rabbits. Despite a miscarriage earlier that year, she apparently went into labor, and local doctor John Howard delivered several stillborn rabbits.
More were coming. Howard summoned other doctors by letter, and Mary's next litter was witnessed by Nathaniel St. Andre, surgeon-anatomist to King George I, and Sir Richard Manningham, the most famous obstetrician in London.
Amazed, St. Andre published a tract titled A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbits. But Mary's deliveries stopped when she was put under close supervision, and soon a boy came forward reporting that she had bribed him to supply her with more rabbits. In the end she confessed, saying she had done it "to get so good a living that I should never want as long as I lived." Ah.
|W|P|113883865671361640|W|P|Mary Tofts|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"With the prospect of coal becoming as rare as the dodo itself, the world, we are told by scientists, may still regard with complacency the failure of our ordinary carbon supply. The natural gases and oils of the world will provide the human race with combustible material for untold ages -- such at least is the opinion of those who are best informed on the subject."
-- Glasgow Herald, quoted in Scientific American Supplement No. 717, Sept. 28, 1889
|W|P|113983418001016295|W|P|"The Fuels of the Future"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comVictims of Belgian "entarteur" No�l Godin, who flings cream pies at the self-important:
- Microsoft CEO Bill Gates
- French novelist Marguerite Duras
- Choreographer Maurice Bejart
- French anchorman Patrick Poivre d'Arvor
- French politician Nicolas Sarkozy
- Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard
- Philosopher Bernard-Henri L�vy
Godin told The New York Times he's trying "to function in the service of the capitalist status quo, without really using his intelligence or his imagination." Touch�.
|W|P|113978508951795770|W|P|"Georges Le Gloupier"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then give up. No use being a damned fool about it." -- W.C. Fields
|W|P|113960559392427096|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Orbie/\;;/\|W|P|Ahh The Bank DickA mother is 21 years older than her son. Six years from now, she will be five times his age. Where's the father?
I won't give the answer to this one -- if you do the math, you'll know precisely where he is.
|W|P|113910190672450234|W|P|Where's the Father?|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFor an imaginary creature, the Popo Bawa of Zanzibar seems pretty eager for publicity. According to legend, the creature -- described as a one-eyed dwarf with batlike wings and sharp talons -- seeks out men who deny its existence, sodomizing them for up to an hour and threatening longer, and repeated, attacks unless they tell their friends and neighbors about the experience.
Strangely, the creature's attacks are said to rise and fall with the local election cycle. Maybe it's campaigning.
|W|P|113979916465796154|W|P|Ambitious Cryptid|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The U.S. Senate used the same gavel for 165 years, from its inception until 1954, when the vice president splintered it during a heated debate on nuclear energy.
Who broke it? Richard Nixon.
|W|P|113970447431885868|W|P|Order!|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn a 1632 version of the King James Bible, the printers omitted a "not" from Exodus 20:14, so the seventh commandment read "Thou shalt commit adultery."
The printers were fined 300 pounds, a lifetime's wages, and most of the copies were recalled. Eleven still exist.
Bonus erratum: In Myles Coverdale's 1535 Bible, Psalms 91:5 read: "Thou shall not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night." Should have been "terror."
|W|P|113979925981149421|W|P|"God Regrets the Error"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comLast year Sharon Tendler married a bottle-nosed dolphin.
Tendler, 41, first became captivated with the animal during a dolphinarium show in Eilat, Israel. She visited him regularly for 15 years ("The peace and tranquility under water, and his love, would calm me down") and finally approached the trainer for permission for an unofficial ceremony.
On Dec. 28, 2005, Tendler walked down the dock in a white silk dress, kissed the dolphin, and whispered "I love you" into his blowhole (video). They had to make some concessions, of course: Instead of rice, the crowd threw mackerel.
|W|P|113979890556003106|W|P|Beauty and the Beast|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Admire it while you can -- this is the most frequently stolen street sign in Austria.
|W|P|113978208975048177|W|P|Sign Wave|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Fancy being remembered around the world for the invention of a mouse!" -- Walt Disney, during his last illness
|W|P|113447300076842192|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn 2004, French writer Michel Dansel published The Train from Nowhere, a 233-page novel written entirely without verbs.
He even organized a funeral for the verb at Sorbonne in Paris, calling it the "invader, dictator, usurper of our literature." No word where it's interred.
|W|P|113993263377280465|W|P|Active Voice|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Mammoths generally died out with the last ice age, but some survived on Russia's Wrangel Island until 1500 B.C., around the same time Stonehenge was built.
Reportedly the Soviet Air Force spotted a group of mammoths in Siberia during World War II but subsequently lost them.
|W|P|113811663193287976|W|P|Surviving Mammoths|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comWhat's the difference between a psychologist and a magician?
A psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
|W|P|112024205488990880|W|P|Rimshot|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com Orbie/\;;/\|W|P|ba dump bump!I had often, cowled in the slumbrous heavy air,
Closed my inanimate lids to find it real,
As I knew it would be, the colourful spires
And painted roofs, the high snows glimpsed at the back,
All reversed in the quiet reflecting waters -
Not knowing then that Durer perceived it too.
Now I find that once more I have shrunk
To an interloper, robber of dead men's dream,
I had read in books that art is not easy
But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
The black swan of trespass on alien waters.
-- "Durer: Innsbruck, 1495," a poem by Ern Malley. When it was celebrated in the Australian modernist magazine Angry Penguins, its real authors, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, stepped forward. Not only had they written the poem, they said, but they had "deliberately perpetrated bad verse": "We opened books at random, choosing a word or phrase haphazardly. We made lists of these and wove them in nonsensical sentences. We misquoted and made false allusions."
The point, they said, was to show that modern critics had become "insensible of absurdity and incapable of ordinary discrimination."
The critics insisted that they had accidentally created a masterpiece.
|W|P|113944636783454470|W|P|Ern Malley|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
George Lucas originally wanted Orson Welles to provide the voice of Darth Vader.
Finally he opted for James Earl Jones, whose voice was less recognizable.
|W|P|113737506500974614|W|P|A Tremor in the Force|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com Orbie/\;;/\|W|P|I have just discovered your blog due to the kind thoughtfulness of a friend. What a treasure.and what a marvelous picture of Mr. Mercury Theatre You should pair him with the stunning Agnes Moorehead from that same era
hip�po�pot�o�mon�stro�ses�qui�pe�da�li�o�pho�bi�a
n. fear of long words
On Oct. 16, 1906, small-time criminal Wilhelm Voigt became a big-time criminal ... for one day.
Wearing a secondhand captain's uniform, he took a train to K�penick, east of Berlin, dismissed the commander of the local army barracks, commandeered 10 grenadiers and a sergeant, and took over city hall.
There he confiscated 4,000 marks and 70 pfennigs and ordered the town secretary and the mayor sent to Berlin on charges of crooked bookkeeping. He told the remaining soldiers to guard the building for half an hour and then left for the train station, where he changed back to civilian clothes and slipped away.
Why? Why not?
|W|P|113944576911761621|W|P|Fortune Favors the Bold|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
"Kion alian vi havas en la poŝo?" Alicio respondis malĝoje ke "nur fingroingon." "Tin transdonu al mi," diris la Dodo.
Denove ĉiuj amasiĝis ĉirkaŭ ŝi, dum la Dodo solene prezentis la fingroingon dirante: "Ni petas ke vi bonvolu akcepti ĉi tiun elegantan fingroingon." Ĉe la fino de tiu mallonga parolo ĉiuj aplaŭdis.
-- La Aventuroj de Alicio en Mirlando (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), British Esperanto Association, 1910
|W|P|113918819899615669|W|P|"Sed Kiu Venkis?"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comSolution to "Rig Latin," from Friday:
"TO TIE HORSES TO."
|W|P|113966424056117120|W|P|"Rig Latin": Solution|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe sound of Rice Krispies in other languages:
- Finnish: "Riks! Raks! Poks!"
- French: "Cric! Crac! Croc!"
- German: "Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!"
- Swedish: "Piff! Paff! Puff!"
- Spanish: "Pim! Pum! Pam!"
In 2002, pollster Kellyanne Conway found that most Americans could name the three elves but could not name any three of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices.
|W|P|113958252937969611|W|P|Snap, Crackle, Pop|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Madagascar's elephant bird died out around Shakespeare's time.
So it's a little weird that two eggs were found in Western Australia in 1930 and 1993.
Did they float there? No one knows.
|W|P|113770752775008660|W|P|Over Easy|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn the dusty street of an Old West mining town, a classics professor was stunned to find a post bearing this inscription:
TOTI EHORS ESTO
What was the post for? I'll give the answer tomorrow.
|W|P|113944515180559545|W|P|Rig Latin|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comEn route from Vancouver to Australia on Dec. 30, 1899, the captain of the S.S. Warrimoo spotted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. At midnight, he stopped the ship at the intersection of the international date line and the equator.
At that moment, the ship was straddling two different hemispheres, days, months, years, seasons, and centuries, all at the same time. By passing between the bow and the stern, passengers could stroll between winter and summer, north and south, and the 19th and 20th centuries.
The downside: For the Warrimoo, Dec. 31 disappeared entirely.
|W|P|113940085838632582|W|P|A Freak of Navigation|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
A gigantic figure haunts the Vosges Mountains, known by the name of "The Spectre of the Brocken." The ignorant peasants were, in former times, in great fear of it, thinking it a supernatural being, and fancying that it brought upon them all manner of evil. And it must be confessed it was a fearful sight to behold suddenly upon the summit of a lofty mountain an immense giant, sometimes pointing in a threatening attitude to a village below, as if dooming it to destruction; sometimes with arms upraised, as if invoking ruin upon all the country; and sometimes stalking along with such tremendous strides as to make but one step from peak to peak; often dwarfing himself to nothingness, and again stretching up until his head is in the clouds, then disappearing entirely for a moment, only to reappear more formidable than before.
But now the Spectre of the Brocken is no longer an object of fear. Why? Because men have found him out, and he is nothing in the world but a shadow. When the sun is in the right position, an ordinary-sized man on a lower mountain will see a gigantic shadow of himself thrown upon a cloud beyond the Brocken, though it appears to be on the mountain itself, and it is so perfect a representation that it is difficult to believe it is only a shadow. But it can be easily proved. If the man stoops to pick up anything, down goes the spectre; if he raises his hand, so does the spectre; if he takes a step of two feet, the spectre takes one of miles; if he raises his hat, the spectre politely returns his salute.
-- Frank R. Stockton, Round-About Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy, 1910
|W|P|113813955543633939|W|P|"The Spectre of the Brocken"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me." -- Sigmund Freud
|W|P|113389692180969647|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble," wrote Dr. Johnson.
During World War II, 300,000 American troops were stationed in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). Greatly impressed with the Westerners' wealth and power, the natives began to worship a messiah they called Jon Frum, "the king of America," who lives in the crater of a local mountain.
To this day, every Feb. 15 they celebrate Jon Frum Day by offering prayers and flowers at a red cross -- that's the date the believe Frum will return bearing cargo from heaven. They also conduct a flag-raising ceremony and a military parade with bamboo "rifles." The movement even has its own political party.
Records show there never was an actual Jon Frum. But a separate cult has found a real messiah: They worship Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
|W|P|113500628637630541|W|P|Cargo Cults|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The Colossi of Memnon, in Egypt. After an earthquake, the one on the right began to "sing" every morning at dawn, producing a light moaning sound probably related to rising temperatures and evaporating dew. In "The Sphinx," Oscar Wilde wrote:
Still from his chair of porphyry gaunt Memnon strains his lidless eyes
Across the empty land, and cries each yellow morning unto thee.
Hearing the song brought good luck, so the colossi began to attract pilgrims from across the ancient world. It stopped in 199 when Emperor Septimius Severus tried to fix the damage. Nice going.
|W|P|113841476780155463|W|P|Song of the Sphinx|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comWhen he received the first duck-billed platypus from Captain John Hunter in Australia, naturalist George Shaw thought it was a hoax. "Impossible not to entertain some doubts as to the genuine nature of the animal, and to surmise that there might have been practised some arts of deception in its structure," he wrote in the journal Naturalist's Miscellany.
Surgeon John Knox agreed: "Aware of the monstrous impostures which the artful Chinese had so frequently practised on European adventurers ... the scientific felt inclined to class this rare production of nature with eastern mermaids and other works of art."
|W|P|113904030316027269|W|P|Platypus|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIt's bad enough that the Chase family of Barbados had to inter six members between 1808 and 1819.
But each time they opened the family vault, they found that the coffins had been rearranged into awkward positions.
After the last instance, the island's governor pressed his personal seal into fresh cement in the vault's door. The seal was intact when the vault was opened the next year -- but the coffins had been rearranged again, with one thrown up against the door.
Finally the coffins were buried separately in the Christ Church graveyard. No explanation was ever found.
|W|P|113900063782728605|W|P|The Chase Vault|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Whenever a death sentence is commuted or a death-row inmate is released, anywhere in the world, the Colosseum's nighttime illumination is changed from white to gold.
It's a gesture against the death penalty, which Italy abolished in 1948.
|W|P|113916920155042279|W|P|Thumbs Up|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comSolution to "Down, Over, Up," from Monday:
There's a ring of such points around the South Pole -- from any one of them you'd walk south, march in a circle around the pole, and return north to your starting point.
|W|P|113910079452141047|W|P|"Down, Over, Up": Solution|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park." -- 1920s publicity hound Jim Moran, on learning that he needed a permit
|W|P|113927464179316855|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
On Oct. 25, 1924, witnesses reported a three-hour fight between two whales and a "giant polar bear" off the coast of Margate, South Africa. The creature attacked the whales using its tail, lifting itself out of the water by as much as 20 feet, but eventually succumbed.
When its body washed up on shore, residents reportedly saw a 47-foot fishlike animal with snow-white fur 8 inches long, an elephant's trunk, a lobster's tail and a carcass drained of blood. No head was visible; the trunk extended directly from the body.
Strangely, though the body remained for 10 days on Margate Beach, no scientist investigated and no photographs were taken. Most likely it was a whale whose decay made it appear furry, but we'll never know.
|W|P|113778865474660147|W|P|"Trunko"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIf you start at the North Pole and walk one mile south, one mile east, and one mile north, you'll find yourself back at your starting point.
The North Pole is not the only point with this property on Earth's surface. In fact, there are any number of such points. Where are they?
I'll give the answer tomorrow.
|W|P|113910074189806760|W|P|Down, Over, Up|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFrom John Aubrey, Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects, 1696:
|W|P|113770673268916120|W|P|Landmarks in Medicine, #3|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comMr. Schoot, a German, hath an excellent book of magick: it is prohibited in that country. I have here set down three spells, which are much approved.
-- To cure an Ague. Write this following spell in parchment, and wear it about your neck. It must be writ triangularly.
A B R A C A D A B R A A B R A C A D A B R A B R A C A D A B A B R A C A D A A B R A C A D A B R A C A A B R A C A B R A A B R A B AWith this spell, one of Wells, hath cured above a hundred of the ague.
-- To cure the biting of a Mad-Dog, write these words in paper, viz. "Rebus Rubus Epitepscum", and give it to the party, or beast bit, to eat in bread, &c. A Gentleman of good quality, and a sober grave person, did affirm, that this receipt never fails.
-- To cure the Tooth-Ach: out of Mr. Ashmole's manuscript writ with his own hand.
"Mars, hur, abursa, aburse".
Jesu Christ for Mary's sake,
Take away this Tooth-Ach.Write the words three times; and as you say the words, let the party burn one paper, then another, and then the last. He says, he saw it experimented, and the party "immediately cured."
Yes, it's a Jewish toadstool.
In 1938, fanatical Nazi Julius Streicher published a children's book called Der Giftpilz (The Poisoned Mushroom), which compared perfidious Jews to poisonous fungus.
"Our boys and girls must learn to know the Jew," a mother warns her children. "They must learn that the Jew is the most dangerous poison mushroom in existence. Just as poisonous mushrooms spring up everywhere, so the Jew is found in every country in the world. Just as poisonous mushrooms lead to the most dreadful calamity, so the Jew is the cause of misery and distress, illness and death."
Disturbingly, Streicher had worked as an elementary school teacher before joining the German army in 1914. He published propaganda for Hitler, and after Nuremberg he was the only sentenced Nazi to declare "Heil Hitler" before being hanged. At least he was consistent.
|W|P|113883812490446917|W|P|Der Giftpilz|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comas�tro�lo�gas�ter
n. a foolish or petty astrologer
Identities assumed by virtuoso impostor Stanley Clifford Weyman (1890-1960):
- U.S. consul representative to Morocco. Arrested for fraud.
- Military attach� from Serbia and U.S. Navy lieutenant (so the two could use each other as references).
- "Lt. Cmdr. Ethan Allen Weinberg, consul general for Romania." He inspected the U.S.S. Wyoming and invited its officers to a dinner at the Astor Hotel. On being arrested, he was heard to complain that they should have waited until dessert.
- "Royal St. Cyr," a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Arrested on an inspection tour of the Brooklyn armory.
- Company doctor in Lima, Peru. Threw parties until arrested.
- State Department naval liaison officer. Introduced himself to Princess Fatima of Afghanistan and promised to arrange a meeting with the president. She gave him $10,000 for "presents" to State Department officials. Weyman got appointments with Secretary of State Evans Hughes and with Warren G. Harding. Indicted for impersonating a naval officer.
- U.S. secretary of state. Interviewed Queen Marie of Romania for the Evening Graphic newspaper.
- Personal physician to Pola Negri, Rudolph Valentino's grieving lover. Established a faith-healing clinic and issued regular press releases.
- Arrested during World War II for telling draft dodgers how to feign various medical conditions.
- Journalist for the United Nations. Caught when he asked the State Department whether he could remain a U.S. citizen if he became the Thai delegation's press officer.
Ironically, Weyman's most honest act may have been his last: He was shot trying to stop a robbery in a New York hotel. "One man's life is a boring thing," he once said. "I lived many lives. I'm never bored."
|W|P|113883653201122426|W|P|Who?|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
In 1959, the U.S. Postal Service tried delivering mail with a cruise missile -- they replaced its warhead with two mail containers and fired it from Virginia to Florida.
When it hit the target, the postmaster general announced a new era. "Before man reaches the moon," he said, "mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail."
But the program went no further. "The post office has a great charm at one point of our lives," wrote Jane Austen. "When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for."
|W|P|113519657575631127|W|P|Rocket Mail|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comDORMITORY is an anagram of DIRTY ROOM.
|W|P|113904148752532780|W|P|Fitting|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFrom a Scientific American account of a Thai earthquake on May 13, 1848:
During the shock, there spontaneously came out of the ground a species of human hairs in almost every place -- in the bazaars, in the roads, in the fields, and the most solid places. These hairs, which are pretty long, stand upright and adhere strongly to the ground. When they are burned, they twist like human hairs and have a burned smell which makes it to be believed that they are really hairs; they all appeared in the twinkling of an eye during the earthquake. The river of Chantibun was all rippling, and bubbles rose to the surface, so that the water was quite white. It is thought that these hairs may have been produced by electricity.
Similar "hairs" have been reported after other Asian earthquakes. Some have been identified as fibers from the hemp palm Chamaerops fortunei, a native tree. Others remain unexplained.
|W|P|113841656580721078|W|P|"Quake Hairs"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Jim Morrison's grave, in Paris. Officially, the Doors frontman died on July 3, 1971, but some questions remain. For one thing, no autopsy was performed; a French physician attributed his death to heart failure on the advice of Morrison's wife, who was the only one to see the body (and who died herself a few years later). When The Doors' manager arrived, Morrison's body was already in a sealed casket.
Beyond that, it's known that Morrison was tired of fame and had told his bandmates that he wanted to fake his own death. Short of an exhumation, we'll never know for sure, but Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek has said, "If there was one guy that would have been capable of staging his own death -- getting a phony death certificate and paying off some French doctor ... and putting a 150-pound sack of sand into a coffin and splitting to some point on this planet -- Africa, who knows where -- it is Jim Morrison who would have been able to pull it off."
|W|P|113841390144043541|W|P|Jim Morrison's Death|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
"Whatever is said in Latin seems profound."
|W|P|113897547288408495|W|P|Lingua Franca|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comHere's what a pact with Satan looks like:
I deny God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Mary and all the Saints, particularly Saint John the Baptist, the Church both Triumphant and Militant, all the sacraments, all the prayers prayed therein. I promise never to do good, to do all the evil I can, and would wish not at all to be a man, but that my nature be changed into a devil the better to serve thee, thou my lord and master Lucifer, and I promise thee that even if I be forced to do some good work, I will not do it in God's honor, but in scorning him and in thine honor and that of all the devils, and that I ever give myself to thee and pray thee always to keep well the bond that I gave thee.
This one was presented as evidence against Urbain Grandier, a French Catholic priest who was executed for seduction and witchcraft in 1634.
|W|P|113883776618768344|W|P|Devil Deal|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Where there's a will, there's a way. In 1849, Henry Box Brown escaped slavery by mailing himself to Philadelphia.
Brown stood 5'8" and weighed 200 pounds, and he spent 26 hours in a box 2'8" x 2' x 3'. Unfortunately, he spent a lot of it upside down. "I felt my eyes swelling as if they would burst from their sockets," he later wrote, "and the veins on my temples were dreadfully distended with pressure of blood upon my head." The trip from Richmond covered 275 miles by overland express stage wagon.
When the box was opened, his first words were "How do you do, gentlemen?"
|W|P|113883913330201054|W|P|Special Delivery|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comRecord skyscrapers through history:
- 1873 - Equitable Life Building, New York: 142 feet (6 floors)
- 1876 - St. Pancras Chambers, London: 269 feet (9 floors)
- 1889 - Auditorium Building, Chicago: 269 feet (17 floors)
- 1890 - New York World Building, New York: 309 feet (20 floors)
- 1894 - Manhattan Life Insurance Building, New York: 348 feet (18 floors)
- 1895 - Milwaukee City Hall, Milwaukee: 350 feet (9 floors)
- 1899 - Park Row Building, New York: 391 feet (30 floors)
- 1908 - Singer Building, New York, 612 feet (47 floors)
- 1909 - Met Life Tower, New York, 700 feet (50 floors)
- 1913 - Woolworth Building, New York: 792 feet (57 floors)
- 1930 - Chrysler Building, New York: 925 feet (77 floors)
- 1931 - Empire State Building, New York: 1,250 feet (102 floors)
- 1972 - World Trade Center, New York: 1,368 feet (110 floors)
- 1974 - Sears Tower, Chicago: 1,451 feet (108 floors)
- 2003 - Taipei 101, Taipei, Taiwan: 1,474 feet (101 floors)
"In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts in living color, we bring you another first, an attempted suicide." -- Florida newscaster Christine Chubbuck, before shooting herself on live television, July 15, 1974
|W|P|112361850502975156|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
In Death Valley, rocks move. No one's actually seen it happen, but they leave tracks hundreds of feet long. Experts think it's a combination of wind, ice, and mud, but some of these things weigh as much as a man. One 700-pound rock disappeared altogether in May 1994. Hmm.
|W|P|113846824510472470|W|P|"The Racetrack"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comA minister, a priest, and a rabbi walk into a bar.
The bartender says, "Is this a joke?"
|W|P|113824362380226441|W|P|Rimshot|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn April 1865, Abraham Lincoln related the following story to his bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon:
About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. "Who is dead in the White House?" I demanded of one of the soldiers, "The President," was his answer; "he was killed by an assassin." Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.
He was assassinated a few days later.
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