HIPPOS AND PLOWS
But not everyone has thought of these constellations as bears. The Egyptians saw the seven stars of the Big Dipper as a bull’s thigh or a hippopotamus. Because its stars circled around the north pole of the sky without setting, or “dying,” below the horizon, this constellation was a symbol of immortality and figured in rebirth rituals at funerals. Ursa Minor was the Jackal of the god Set that participated in rites for the dead taking place in the Egyptian underworld.
In Mesopotamia, Scandinavia, Italy, and Germany, people referred to the Big Dipper as a wagon, chariot, or cart. In England it was “Charles’ Wain” (the word wain meant “wagon” and Charles stood for Charles the Great). The Little Dipper was the “Smaller Chariot,” or “Little Wain.” The four stars that make up the bowl of the dipper are the carriage part of the wain, and the dipper’s handle is the part of the wain attached to the horses that pull it.
In some parts of England (and elsewhere), people saw the Big Dipper as “The Plough.” The four stars of the dipper’s bowl form the blade of the plough, behind which stretches its three-starred handle.
DIPPER DIRECTIONS
At the tip of the handle of the Little Dipper is the most celebrated star in the sky, Polaris, the North Star. While not the brightest star in the heavens, Polaris is certainly the most valuable. It has provided directions to countless travelers. The two stars at the end of the bowl of the Big Dipper, called “The Pointers,” point to the North Star.
The Greeks used the Greater Bear and the Phoenicians used the Lesser Bear to find north. American slaves called the Big Dipper “The Drinking Gourd” and followed it northward to freedom.
Seen from the spinning Earth, the sky appears to move during the night, carrying all the stars along with it. Only the North Star stands in the same spot at the hub of the dome of the sky. The Greeks called this star Cynosure, a word that has found its way into our language meaning the center of attraction or interest. Others called the North Star the “Lodestar,” most likely referring to the magnetic rock lodestone, used in mariners’ compass needles to find north.
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“It is easier to accept the message of the stars than the message of the salt desert. The stars speak of man’s insignificance in the long eternity of time. The desert speaks of his insignificance right now.”
—Edwin Way Teale
A light-year (the distance light travels in a year) is about 6 trillion miles.
GROUCHO MARX, ATTORNEY AT LAW
Here’s a script from a recently rediscovered radio show featuring Groucho and Chico Marx. It’s from Five Star Theater, which aired in 1933.
(Phone rings)
MISS DIMPLE: Law offices of Beagle, Shyster, and Beagle … No, Mr. Beagle isn’t in yet, he’s in court…I expect him any minute ..
(Door opens)
MISS DIMPLE: Good morning, Mr. Beagle.
GROUCHO: Good morning. Have I any appointments today?
MISS DIMPLE: No, Mr. Beagle,
GROUCHO: Well, make some. Do you expect me to sit here alone all day? Don’t you think I ever get lonesome? What do you take me for? (Pause.) Well, go on—make me an offer.
(phone rings)
MISS DIMPLE: Beagle, Shyster, and Beagle …Just a second. Mr. Flywheel, a man says he found the book you lost.
GROCHO: (takes phone) Hello…Yes, this is Flywheel…You found my book?…Oh, don’t bother bringing it over—you can read it to me over the phone. Start at page 150. That’s where I left off. …Hello! Hello! (Sneers) He hung up on me. After I go to the trouble of putting aside legal business to talk to him!
MISS DIMPLE: Legal business? Why Mr. Flywheel, you were doing a crossword puzzle.
GROUCHO: Well, is doing a crossword puzzle illegal? Now how about mailing this letter?
MISS DIMPLE: But it has no stamp on it.
GROUCHO: Well, drop it in the box when nobody’s looking.
MISS DIMPLE: Anyway, this letter is too heavy for one stamp. I think we’d better put two stamps on it.
GROUCHO: Nonsense. That’ll only make it heavier. On second thought, never mind the letter. It’s just a note to my friend, Steve Granach, asking for a loan…but he’s probably got his own troubles. I hardly think he can spare it. And even if he had it, I think he’d be a little reluctant to lend me the dough. He’s kind of tight that way. Why, I don’t think he’d let me have it if I was going hungry. In fact, that guy wouldn’t give me nickel if I were starving. And he calls himself a friend. …the cheap, fourflushing swine. I’ll show him where to get off. Take a letter to that snake and tell him I wouldn’t touch his money. And if he ever comes near this office again, III break every bone in his body.
The biggest pumpkin ever recorded weighed 884 pounds.
(knock on door)
MAN: Excuse me. Are you Mr. Flywheel or Mr. Shyster?
GROUCHO: I’m both Flywheels. And Shyster doesn’t belong to the firm.
MAN: Then why is his name up there on the door?
GROUCHO: Well, Shyster ran away with my wife. And I put his name on the door as a token of my gratitude.
MAN: Oh. Well, Mr. Flywheel, permit me to introduce myself. I’m Bertram T. Bardwell. I suppose you’ve been hearing about my charity work and my fight against crime?
GROUCHO: Oh yes, I’ve been hearing about it for a number of years, and I’m getting pretty sick of it, too.
MAN: Why…er…I happened to be in court this morning when your thrilling address to the jury sent that man to prison for five years, where he belongs.
GROUCHO: My speech sent him to prison? (Laughs) That’s a good one on the jury. I was defending that guy. As I was…
MAN: Just a moment, Mr. Flywheel. Let me ask you a question.
GROUCHO: No, I’ll ask you one. What has eight legs and sings?
MAN: Why…er…1 don’t know.
GROUCHO: A centipede.
MAN: But a centipede has a hundred legs.
GROUCHO: Yes, but it can’t sing.
MAN (annoyed): Mr. Flywheel, my organization is waging an intensive fight against crime in this city, and I feel you’re a man who can help us drive the crooks out of town.
GROUCHO: Drive them? Why not let them walk? …(Dramatically) Bardwell, you’ve come to the right man. There isn’t room enough in this town for gangsters and me…. However, we’re putting up a big hotel this spring. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a director’s meeting at the poolroom across the street.
MAN: Mr. Flywheel! How can you go out to a poolroom?
GROUCHO: I have to go out. I can’t play pool in here—there’s no table! Miss Dimple, I’ll be back in an hour.” (Door closes)
Groucho will be back on page 341,
after a few words from our sponsor.
***
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
—Groucho Marx
Just like Mom? Only 55% of dinners served in the United States include even one homemade dish.
WRIGHT ON
Existential wisdom from Steven Wright.
“We had a quicksand box in our backyard. I was an only child, eventually.”
“My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.”
“I was walking down the street wearing glasses when my prescription ran out.”
“I put instant coffee in my microwave oven and almost went back in time.”
“My grandfather invented Cliffs Notes. It all started back in 1912…Well, to make a long story short…”
I’m writing an unauthorized autobiography.”
“I wrote a few children’s books. Not on purpose.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, but for awhile, I was the suspect.”
“If all the nations in the world are in debt, where did the money go?”
“If the pen is mightier than the sword, in a duel I’ll let you have the pen.”
“I own the erasers for all the miniature golf pencils.”
“Anywhere is walking distance if you’ve got
the time.”
“Ever notice that irons have a setting for ‘Permanent Press’? I don’t get it…”
“You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?”
“I went fishing with a dotted line and caught every other fish.”
“I stayed up all night playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.”
“First time I read the dictionary I thought it was a poem about everything.”
The human brain can hold 500 times the info found in a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE
Recently, we stumbled on Bizarre Books, a collection of weird-but-true book titles, compiled by Russell Ash and Brian Lake. Hard to believe, but these titles were chosen and published in all seriousness. How would you like to spend your time reading…
How to Avoid Intercourse with Your Unfriendly Car Mechanic, by Harold Landy (1977)
Sex After Death, by B.J. Ferrll and Douglas Edward Frey (1983)
The Unconscious Significance of Hair, by George Berg (1951)
Wall-Paintings by Snake Charmers in Tanganyika, by Hans Cory (1953)
The Inheritance of Hairy Ear Rims, by Reginald Ruggles and P.N. Badhuri (no date given)
A Toddler’s Quide to the Rubber Industry, by D. Lowe (1947)
The Baron Kinvervankotsdor-sprakingatchdern. A New Musical Comedy, by Miles Pewter Andrew (1781)
Manhole Covers of Los Angeles, by Robert and Mimi Melnick (1974)
The History and Romance of Elastic Webbing Since the Dawn of Time, by Clifford A. Richmond (no date given)
Frog Raising for Pleasure and Profit, by Dr. Albert Broel (1950)
Eat Your House: Art Eco Quide to Self-Sufficiency, by Frederic Hobbs (1981)
The Urine Dance of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico, by Captain John G. Bourke (1885)
Constipation and Our Civilization, by James Charles Thomson (1943)
Harnessing the Earthworm, by Thomas J. Barrett (1949)
The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives, Anon. (1900)
Swine Judging for Beginners, Joel Simmonds Coffey (1915)
Fish Who Answer the Telephone, by Yuri Petrovich Frolov (1937)
Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, University of Tokyo (1978)
The Art of Faking Exhibition Poultry, by George Riley Scott (1934)
Teach Yourself Alcoholism, by Meier Glatt (1975)
Grow Your Own Hair, by Ron MacLaren (1947)
Chance of meeting someone with Barbie’s human-scale measurements (36-18-33): 1 in 100,000.
THEY WENT THATAWAY
Malcolm Forbes wrote a fascinating book about the deaths of famous people. Here are a few of the stories he found.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Claim to Fame: American statesman
How He Died: Complications from sitting in front of an open window
Postmortem: Franklin was a big believer in fresh air, even in the middle of winter. He slept with the windows open year-round and, as he wrote, “I rise almost every morning and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season.” In April 1790, Franklin, 84, developed an abscess in his lungs, which his doctor blamed on too many hours spent sitting at the open window. The abscess burst on the 17th, sending him into a coma. He died a few hours later.
JOSEPH STALIN
Claim to Fame: Soviet dictator, 1929-1953
How He Died: Stroke
Postmortem: Stalin, who had murdered tens of millions of his own country people, may have been the last victim of his own reign of terror. On the evening of March 1,1953, Stalin, 74, stayed up drinking with his cronies until 4:00 a.m. His normal habit was to rise again around noon, but that day he didn’t.
As the hours passed and Stalin did not emerge from his private quarters, his aides began to panic. They didn’t want to risk his wrath, but they were worried. At 10:30 p.m., they finally worked up the nerve to enter his apartments, where they found him sprawled on his living room floor, paralyzed by a stroke and unable to speak. The terrorized aides still did not know what to do…so they didn’t call for the Kremlin doctors until 8:30 a.m. the following morning. By then it was too late: according to Stalin’s daughter Svetlana, the dictator “died a difficult and terrible death” four days later.
Chance of meeting someone with Ken’s: 1 in 50
KING GEORGE V
Claim to Fame: King of England, grandfather of Queen Elizabeth
How He Died: Euthanized with morphine and cocaine…to meet a newspaper deadline
Postmortem: The king, a heavy smoker, was in the final stages of lung disease on January 20, 1936. His death was imminent: the date of the State Funeral had been set, and the London Times had been instructed to hold the presses—a death announcement would be coming soon. “That night, however, the old king lingered on,” Sarah Bradford writes in The Reluctant King, and the king’s doctor, Lord Dawson,
seeing that his condition of “stupor and coma” might last for many hours and could easily disrupt all arrangements, therefore “decided to determine the end”…Dawson later admitted that the moment of the King’s death was timed for its announcement to be made in the respectable morning papers, and the Times in particular, rather than “the less appropriate evening journals.”
The king’s “last words” as reported to the media: “How is the Empire?” His actual last words: “Goddamn you!”
DIAMOND JIM BRADY
Claim to Fame: Turn-of-the-century millionaire, collector of fine gems (hence the nickname), one of the world’s all-time great eaters
How He Died: He ate himself to death. A typical day started with a breakfast of steak, eggs, cornbread, muffins, pancakes, pork chops, fried potatoes, and hominy, washed down with a gallon or more of orange juice. Breakfast was followed with snacks at 11:30, lunch at 12:30, and afternoon tea; all of which involved enormous quantities of food (but no alcohol—Diamond Jim didn’t drink). Dinner often consisted of 2 or 3 dozen oysters, 6 crabs, 2 bowls of turtle soup, 7 lobsters, 2 ducks, 2 servings of turtle meat, plus steak, vegetables, a full platter of pastries, and a 2-pound box of chocolate.
Postmortem: When Brady suffered an attack of gallstones in 1912, his surgeons opened him up and found that his stomach was six times normal size and covered in so many layers of fat they couldn’t complete the surgery. Diamond Jim ignored their advice to cut back, yet hung on another five years—albeit in considerable pain from diabetes, bad kidneys, stomach ulcers, and heart problems. He died of a heart attack in 1917, at the age of 61.
To whom did President Nixon hand in his resignation? Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
DEMOCRACY IN ACTION
A democracy is only as weird as the people who participate in it—and you know what that means: anything can happen in an election. Here’s proof.
A BSENTEE BALLOT
WESTMORELAND, KAN.—“What if they held an election and nobody came? It happened in Pottawatomie County. Nobody, not even the candidate, showed up to vote in the Rock Creek School Board election Tuesday. ‘I don’t understand it,’ County Clerk Susan Figge said Wednesday. ‘I really don’t.’ Three hundred, twenty-seven people were eligible to vote, but none showed up—not even the candidate, Mike Sotelo, who was running unopposed.” The school board wound up appointing a new member themselves.
—Associated Press, April 1997
ELECTING A CORPSE
“A dead man was elected mayor of a small town in Colorado in 1983. The voters of Ward, population 125, elected as the mayor of this old mining town, a resident who died a week before the election. Some of the voters were undoubtedly paying tribute to the man and the community, for as one resident quipped, ‘Ward’s a ghost town, and we decided to elect a dead man to represent the silent majority.’ But not everyone shared this sentiment; another voter was heard to say, ‘When he won, I just about died.’”
—The Daily Planet Almanac, 1985
ELECTION FRAUD?
>
YPSILANTI, MICH.—“When City Councilman Geoffrey Rose turned over a voter list to a college freshman to help get out the vote, it didn’t occur to him to ask the kid whom he was getting out the vote for. It turns out, the 18-year-old Eastern Michigan University student was looking out for No. 1.” Instead of encouraging voters to cast their ballots for Rose, Frank Houston went door to door urging people to write in his name. And he won.
“Rose, who thought he was running unopposed in Monday’s primary, said: ‘Frank is 18 years old, and he’s already acting like what most people in the country can’t stand in elected officials.’ Houston, who’s thinking about majoring in political science, said he didn’t lie to Rose. ‘All I ever said was that I was going to get people to vote,’ he told reporters.
—Christian Science Monitor, April 1994
The autographs of what two presidents are most valuable? Washington and Lincoln.
TIE VOTE
NOV. 14,1994—“In Rice, Minnesota, Virgil Nelson and Mitch Fiedler, who tied 90 to 90 in the November 1994 election for a city council seat, settled the race by drawing cards. On the first try, both drew eights, and on the second, both drew aces. Then Nelson drew a seven, and Fiedler drew an eight for the victory.”
—News of the Weird
AND ELSEWHERE…
• COPENHAGEN, DENMARK—“Danish comedian Jacob Haugaard, promising better weather, shorter lines, and the right of men to be impotent, got the shock of his life by being elected to parliament in a general election. A stunned Haugaard, the first independent member of parliament elected in Denmark, told crowds of reporters: ‘It was all a practical joke, honestly.’ He won with 23,211 votes after spending his official campaign money on free hot dogs and beer for voters and providing kettles for old age pensioners.”
—Reuters, September 1996
Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader Page 8