Whittle It a Little, It’ll Fit

Odds and sods I look at regularly, just because they amuse me. I hope they do the same for you. Incidentally, I found this page’s title on Greg Ross’s Futility Closet (it’s somewhere on this page) in a mini-article which also includes the delightful sentence in Icelandic: Barbara Ara bar Ara araba bara rabbabara. Ross points out that this, “besides being fun to say, is spelled with only three letters. It means “Barbara, daughter of Ari, brought only rhubarb to Ari the Arab.”

Futility Closet » Aviculture

Monday 11 March 19:47:34 UTC 2024

A logic exercise by Lewis Carroll: What conclusion can be drawn from these premises? No birds, except ostriches, are 9 feet high. There are no birds in this aviary that belong to anyone but me. No ostrich lives on mince pies. I have no birds less than 9 feet high. SelectClick for Answer No bird in this aviary lives on … [Link]

Weird Universe » Electricura Shoes

Monday 11 March 11:44:00 UTC 2024

John Wilson Gibbs claimed that his patented "electric shoe" would cure rheumatism.

Kansas City Star – July 23, 1907

How the shoes generated electricity is explained in his 1903 patent (No. 740,548). They contained zinc and copper nails. The two metals, when combined with sweaty feet, would form a galvanic cell, producing a mild electric current.

This invention relates to an … [Link]

Weird Universe » The Conqueroo

Monday 11 March 9:44:00 UTC 2024

No Wikipedia entry, but here's an interview with one of the founders. [Link]

Futility Closet » Unquote

Monday 11 March 7:42:24 UTC 2024

“Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.” — William Hazlitt [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons