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Illustration by Arnie Bermudez
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Arizona Daily Wildcat
Friday, November 14, 2003
Things you always never wanted to know
In 1783, Captain Robert Jenkins displayed an ear pickled in brine before a Parliamentary committee in London. He identified the ear as his own, and charged that a Spanish patrol had cut it off while he was sailing in the West Indies. Appalled, the British declared war on Spain, resulting in the aptly-named "War of Jenkin's Ear" that expanded into the War of the Austrian Succession.
To terrorize their foes in the 15th century, Turks used a cannon of hooped iron that had to be pulled by oxen and maneuvered by a hundred men. The gun fired half-ton stone balls. If the weapon failed to frighten their enemies, it is certain that their rivals were demoralized by way of extreme cannon-envy.
Three pairs of common English rabbits were let loose in Australia, in the middle of the 19th century. Within a decade, the six rabbits had multiplied into millions, menacing the country's agriculture.
123,456,787,654,321 is 11,111,111 multiplied by itself.
"An utter stranger takes the liberty of addressing you," began a note from Claire Godwin to George Byron, whom she had not met. "It may seem a strange assertion, but it is no less true that I place my happiness in your hands ... I know that you have the reputation of being mad, bad and dangerous, but nevertheless you hold my destiny ..." Byron yielded to the request for rendezvous. He met Miss Godwin, despised her, loved her - and left her.
Fernande Olivier lived seven years (1904-11) with Picasso and wanted to marry him. However, she was unable to locate her estranged husband and obtain the necessary divorce. Years later, sometime in the mid-1940s, she learned that her husband had died just after she had first met Picasso in a corridor of the tenement known as the Bateau-Lavoir - 40 years earlier.
When Hermann Boerhaave, a Dutch physician and chemist known for his "Elementa Chemiae," died in 1738, he left behind a sealed book with the title "The Onliest and Deepest Secrets of the Medical Art." The book, still sealed, was auctioned for $20,000 in gold. When the new owner broke the seal, he found that 99 of the 100 pages were blank. Only the title page bore his handwritten note by the "author": "Keep your head cool, your feet warm, and you'll make the best doctor poor."
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