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 » Unquote

Friday 12 April 19:23:40 UTC 2024

“A sleeping child gives me the impression of a traveller in a very far country.” — Emerson [Link]

Weird Universe » Beulah’s Tomb

Friday 12 April 10:35:00 UTC 2024

Beulah Acklin of St. Petersburg, Florida died on May 15, 1948, 52 years old. Her husband, mailman Roy Acklin, built a mausoleum for her in Greenwood Cemetery. He fitted up the interior of it to look like a living room. On the wall he hung a blue neon sign with her name, "Beulah".

He spent much of his time hanging … [Link]

Weird Universe » Snakes on Guard

Friday 12 April 8:46:00 UTC 2024

[Link]

Futility Closet » Outcry

Friday 12 April 7:21:12 UTC 2024

A curious observation by a British ornithologist during World War I: The Zeppelin raids … were nearly always heralded in this country by the crowing of pheasants, and the sensitiveness of this species to distant sounds was frequently a subject of comment. There seems no reason to suppose that pheasants have keener powers of hearing than men; it appears more … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons