January 2012
Hug me
The three colors on a typical traffic light have near-universal meaning: red means stop, green means go, and yellow is slow down — or something in between. Most everyone knows this, even preschoolers, which is to say that it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the signals above. Yet Mensa uses it anyway. Not to regulate traffic, though — Mensa uses it to regulate hugs. ...
Die hard
Michael Malloy was a fifty year old erstwhile fireman and a full time drunk. Like many in his situation, he spent more time drinking than employed, but because he lived in the early 1930s in New York, his hobby happened to be illegal. A regular at the local speakeasy, Malloy also became the central figure in another crime: insurance fraud. The scam: kill someone and collect on his life...
Mysterious meeting on Jekyll Island
When the 1907 financial panic hit the United States, there was no central bank, so a consortium of private banks led by JP Morgan had to dramatically intervene to rescue the banking system. America was the only major power without a central bank - a bank with the power to issue currency such as Britain’s Bank of England and France’s Banque de France. Even though the 1800s had been...
One of the great pieces of reporting →
Exit lines
Last words of executed criminals:
“Mercy! Mercy! Mercy! Don’t hang me! I can’t die! I’m not ready to die! I don’t want to die!” — North Carolina burglar Henry F. Andrews, 1879
“Where is my little boy? Look at me, my son, and take warning.” — Louisiana murderer Edward Rector, 1884
“What time is it? I wish you’d hurry up. I want to get to hell in time for dinner.” — Wyoming murderer John Owens,...
Virgin dad
36-year-old Silicon Valley computer specialist Trent Arsenault is father to 14 children, yet he’s a virgin. How did he do it? Sperm donation, of course .. and now, the government is trying to stop him:
Trent Arsenault told CNN’s Anderson Cooper he has never had sex and “committed 100 percent of my sexual energy for producing sperm for childless couples to have babies. So I don’t have other ...
NYC in the '80s →
Tempest-tost
As the hurricane of August 1915 approached Galveston, Texas, it encountered a buoy in the Gulf of Mexico.
Investigators later found the buoy nearly 10 miles west of its original location.
It weighed 21,000 pounds and had been anchored with a 6,500-pound sinker and 252 feet of chain weighing 3,250 pounds.
Bird love
I, along with several onlookers, says a friend, recently, observed a swallow enter an exhaust-pipe in the roof of one of the Grand Trunk workshops, evidently for the purpose of building her nest in it. Unfortunately for her, she could not get out again; and her partner entered the pipe also, and backed out again with a feather in his beak. Three times did he ineffectually attempt to rescue...
Words
Cold turkey
The sudden and complete withdrawal from an addictive substance and/or the physiological effects of such a withdrawal. Also, predominantly in the U.S.A., plain speaking.
Origin
At this time of year you have probably had enough of cold turkey to last until next year’s festivities. Nevertheless, here’s another plateful.
The term ‘cold turkey’ is now...
Lightning rods
On April 18, 1926, Sinclair Lewis mounted the pulpit of a Kansas City church, took out his watch, and defied God to prove his existence within 10 minutes by striking him dead.
God spared him.
George Bernard Shaw had once made the same challenge but gave God only three minutes. “I am a very busy man,” he said.
Inspiration
The author William James told the story of Mrs. Amos Pinchot, who in a dream thought she had discovered the meaning of life. Sleepily she wrote down what she believed to be a profound poetic statement. Fully awake, she saw she had merely written:
Hogamus, higamus Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamus Woman monogamous.
– Malcolm Potts and Roger Valentine Short, Ever Since Adam and Eve, 1999
Equidistant
No point in Great Britain is more than 75 miles from the sea.
Explorers of the Nile
A poisonous rivalry existed between Speke and Burton, recalibrating their places in history.
In February 1858, Burton and the man he forever referred to as his “subordinate” reached the shores of Lake Tanganyika after a journey of quite astonishing unpleasantness. Burton was so ill he had to be carried for the last 200 miles. Speke’s raging ophthalmia meant he could barely see the lake....
Words
Yiddish has many expressions you didn’t know you needed until you saw them. For instance, doppess means a ‘uselessly commiserating bystander.
Words
Have no truck with
Q. I used to think that the expression “to have no truck with” - to disagree with or refuse to be involved with - was strictly rural American dialect, until I read it recently in The Economist. Where does this come from? Was there once the opposite usage in the sense that sharing a truck meant to go along with someone? [Louis Cohen] A. The evidence suggests...
A.A.Milne and the Great War
When World War I began, many British felt it would be good for the moral character of the nation - an antidote for a country where “the lower classes seem to have no discipline.” There were hours and days of singing and rejoicing in the streets. Among those who were not enthused was a young Cambridge-educated man named A.A. Milne, an editor of Punch and later the author of...