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An interesting query by Bob High, posed in the May-June 1994 issue of MIT Technology Review: Suppose a billiard ball with a small black dot precisely on its top is rolled around the full circumference of a circle of the same radius. Assuming no slippage or twisting, where is the dot when the ball returns to its starting point?

A very efficient poem by Leigh Hunt: Here, without any more ado, we have the whole history of a couple of successful rural lovers comparing notes. They issue forth in the morning; fall into the proper place and dialogue; record the charms and kindness of their respective mistresses; do justice at the same time to the fields and shades; and conclude by telling their...

From an appreciation of Ernest Rutherford by C.P. Snow in the November 1958 issue of The Atlantic: Worldly success? He loved every minute of it: flattery, titles, the company of the high official world. He said in a speech: ‘As I was standing in the drawing room at Trinity, a clergyman came in. And I said to him: “I’m Lord Rutherford.” And he said...

In the 1950s, mathematician C. Dudley Langford was watching his son play with blocks, two of each color, when he noticed that they formed a curious pattern: one block lay between the red blocks, two between the blue blocks, and three between the yellow blocks. Langford found that by rearranging the blocks he could add a green pair with four blocks between them. This...

In a 1901 parody edition, the journal Mind! offered £1,000 to any philosopher who could produce adequate documentary evidence that he: Knows what he means. Knows what anyone else means. Knows what everyone means. Knows what anything means. Knows what everything else means. Means what he says. Means what he means. Means what everyone else means. Means what everyone else says that he means....

A man of the State of Chêng was one day gathering fuel, when he came across a startled deer, which he pursued and killed. Fearing lest any one should see him, he hastily concealed the carcass in a ditch and covered it with plantain leaves, rejoicing excessively at his good fortune. By and by, he forgot the place where he had put it, and,...

On April 1, 1990, an anonymous verse was posted to the comp.lang.perl newsgroup on Usenet. It was written in the programming language Perl 3: BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time. open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us); write it, print the hex while each watches, reverse its length, write again; kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them. unlink...

A dentist spotted a deadbeat patient while dining at his country club one evening. He called the patient aside, reminded him that he owed him $250 for work done more than two years earlier, and insisted the man pay up. To the dentist’s astonishment, the patient pulled a checkbook from his pocket and wrote a check to the dentist for the full amount. Skeptical...

philomath n. a lover of learning; a scholar noddary n. a foolish act fedifragous adj. contract-breaking subitaneous adj. sudden In Fredric Brown’s 1954 short short story “Experiment,” Professor Johnson displays a brass cube and proposes to send it backward in time. An identical cube appears in his time machine at 2:55, and Johnson announces that at 3:00 he will complete the transaction by sending...

Jones had been greatly depressed; he declared himself a murderer, and would not be comforted. Suddenly he asked me a question. ‘Are not the parents the cause of the birth of their children?’ said he. ‘I suppose so,’ said I. ‘Are not all men mortal?’ ‘That also may be admitted.’ ‘Then are not the parents the cause of the death of their children, since...

If a sphere is inscribed in a tetrahedron, and segments are drawn on each face connecting its vertices to the point of tangency, then the same three angles will appear on each face. And the 12 triangles produced will form congruent pairs across each edge of the tetrahedron. Discovered by A.S. Bang in 1897.

Into an empty vase drop balls numbered 1 to 10. Remove ball 1. Add balls numbered 11 to 20. Remove ball 2. Continue in this way, spending half an hour on the first transaction, 15 minutes on the next, and so on. After one hour all the transactions will be finished. Obviously, in the end the vase will contain infinitely many balls, since with...

He, then, who says that something true exists either only asserts that something true exists or proves it. And if he merely asserts it, he will be told the opposite of his mere assertion, namely, that nothing is true. But if he proves that something is true, he proves it either by a true proof or by one that is not true. But he...

From Bismarck’s Reflections and Reminiscences, 1898: At the time of my first stay at St. Petersburg, in 1859, I had an example of another Russian peculiarity. During the first spring days it was then the custom for every one connected with the Court to promenade in the Summer Garden between Paul’s Palace and the Neva. There the Emperor had noticed a sentry standing in...

The audience at … a play are spectators of a world they are not in. They see what they may well describe as, say, Othello in front of a certain palace in Venice … [b]ut they are not themselves at any specifiable distance from that palace. … I see Othello strangle Desdemona; but that will not entail that I, as part of my biography,...

A puzzle from the 18th century — punctuate this sentence so that it makes sense: King Charles the First walked and talked half an hour after his head was cut off.

Play with work blend, keep warmish feet, Away drive trouble, slowly eat; Air pure breathe, and early rise; Beware excess, take exercise. Exercise take, excess beware; Rise early and breathe pure air; Eat slowly; trouble drive away; Feet warmish keep, blend work with play. — “W.E.R.,” in Truth, Jan. 13, 1881

There are several simple little drawing tricks which the nurse may use to arouse the interest of her patient as she uses puzzles and catches. The oldest of these is by Hogarth and represents a soldier and his dog going through a doorway. As is seen by the diagram, it consists of three straight lines and one curved one. — William Rush Dunton, Occupation...

In March 1939, students at McGill University dictated this sentence to a dozen faculty members: Outside a cemetery sat a harassed cobbler and an embarrassed oculist, picknicking on a desiccated apple, and gazing at the symmetry of a lady’s ankle with unparalleled ecstasy. The participants included three English professors, the head of the journalism department, and a proofreading instructor. Only Esther Korstad, instructor of...

In the classic Indian rope trick, a rope rises into the sky, its end lost to view. A boy disappears up the rope, and when he fails to return the angry magician climbs up after him. Body parts fall to the ground, the magician descends and places the parts in a basket, and the boy reappears uninjured. This is all thought to be a...

Examination questions from the final Classical Honours School at Oxford University, 1899 — “to have passed through it was the hallmark of a superbly educated man, and its graduates went on to rule the nation and, in that heyday of British imperialism, half the world too”: Sketch the history of the Syracusan democracy between the fall of Thrasybulus in 466 B.C. and the accession...

“We went back to England together. When we arrived at the customs shed, Syrie said: ‘Always choose the oldest customs official. No chance of promotion.'” — Somerset Maugham, quoting his wife