Transcriber’s Notes
Text printed in the source document in italics, small capitals, bold
face or blackletter have been transcribed _between underscores_,
as ALL CAPITALS, =between equal signs= and ~between tildes~. ^x
and ^{text} represent single and multiple character superscripts
respectively. [signature] represent Ripley’s signature.
More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT----
[Illustration:
=Believe it
or not_!_=
A Modern Book of
Wonders, Miracles,
Freaks, Monstrosities
and almost-Impossibilities,
Written, Illustrated
and Proved by
Robert L. Ripley, or
[signature]
Simon and Schuster [Illustration] Publisher·New York]
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC.
37 WEST 57TH STREET, NEW YORK
AND ROBERT L. RIPLEY
PRINTED IN U. S. A. BY MORTIMER-WALLING, INC., N. Y.
BOUND BY H. WOLFF EST., N. Y.
1ST PRINTING, JANUARY, 1929
2ND PRINTING, JANUARY, 1929
BELIEVE IT OR NOT----
PREFACE
I make a living out of the fact that truth is stranger than fiction.
The “Believe It or Not” pictures that appear in a hundred or so
newspapers throughout the country are drawn according to that scale.
Yet, I venture to say that I have been called a liar more often than
anybody in the world. Ordinarily when one is called a liar--well, to
say the least, one feels hurt. (Sometimes it follows that somebody gets
hurt.) But it is different with me. I do not mind it a bit. When I am
called a liar by a reader of my cartoons I feel flattered! That short
and ugly word is like music to my ears. I am complimented, because it
means to me that my cartoon that day contained some strange fact that
was unbelievable--and therefore most interesting, and that the reader
did not know the truth when he saw it. That is the time when I always
think of the comment made by Hamlet on a certain occasion:
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
I shall not forget the day my cartoon appeared with the illustrated
statement that “Lindbergh was the sixty-seventh man to make a non-stop
flight over the Atlantic Ocean.” Who would believe a statement like
that? Three thousand wrote in to tell me that they did not. It is true,
however. Who will believe that “a day is forty-eight hours long--not
twenty-four”; “that Methuselah died before his father”; that “Buffalo
Bill never shot a buffalo in his life”; that “a man died of old age
before he was seven years old.” Can anybody be expected to believe that
“a river runs backward”; “a flower eats mice”; “Napoleon crossed the
Red Sea--as Moses did--on dry land”; “Fish climb trees,” etc.?
Those who “doubt truth to be a liar” may be forgiven. The mail brings
about a thousand letters a week from readers hoping to catch me in
error. Which they never do. (Well, hardly ever.)
Sometimes a reader is blinded by the shining countenance of truth and
stumbles into error. Not long ago I printed a short sentence in one of
my pictures that contained all the letters of the alphabet. This is it:
_John P. Brady gave me a black walnut box of quite a small size._
The next morning brought thirteen letters pointing out that I had left
the letter “F” out of the sentence. Now, there was no mistake on my
part--all the letters of the alphabet, including the letter “F” were in
that sentence, but what a strange thing it was that thirteen readers
failed to find it and that each of them thought the same letter was
missing.
The first “Believe It or Not” cartoon was an accident.
I had been drawing cartoons for the sports pages for some time when,
in the course of a day’s work, I hurriedly put together a few athletic
oddities that happened to be lying on my desk and made them up into a
cartoon--never for a moment expecting that it meant any more than a
day’s work done ... and for the want of a better caption I called it
“Believe It or Not.”
It appeared the next day in the old New York Globe, and much to my
surprise there was considerable comment about it. The editor of the
paper suggested that I make another one if I “could gather together
enough stunts.” A week later I had enough facts for another one, and it
seemed to be more popular than my usual run of cartoons. Thereafter I
made a “Believe It or Not” cartoon a week. A year later, I made two a
week, and soon the demand came that I make one every day. Now it looks
as though I will never do anything else. And I don’t care if I do.
I would like to answer the common question:
“_Where do you get all the strange things that you draw about?_”
Everywhere, all the time.
Here and there--day and night; through observation, conversation, and
edification. I am constantly searching--everywhere all the time.
Travel, of course, is an unfailing source of oddities--“The world’s
mine oyster.” Once or twice each year I venture forth to foreign
lands for pearls to string in the “Believe It or Not” columns of the
newspapers. I have traveled in sixty-four different countries, and hope
to see them all before I am through. (Oh, yes, there are more than
sixty-four countries.)
Sometimes suggestions are sent in to me, but, unfortunately, the
usable ones are rare. Someday I hope to meet James Waldo Fawcett, of
New York, Doc Applegate, of Ogallala, Neb., and J. Dennis Butler, of
Alameda, Cal., and thank them for their interesting contributions. They
are among the few who know what is interesting to people other than
themselves.
I have been drawing the “Believe It or Not” pictures for eight years
and find that it grows easier each day. There is no danger of running
out of material (as some readers think): the supply is inexhaustible.
“This world is all a fleeting show,
For man’s illusion given.”
I have enough “queeriosities” on hand to make a hundred cartoons, and a
library of strange facts and curious bits of knowledge enough to fill
several books like this one. (A fair warning!)
[signature]
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface i
The Ghats of the Ganges 2
The Burning Ghat 5
The Sun Gazer 7
Buried Alive 8
The Bed of Nails 9
The Ever-Standing Men 10
Human Inch-Worms 10
A Pound of Feathers Weighs More Than Pound of Gold 14
A Gallon of Vinegar Weighs More in the Winter than in the Summer 14
The Boy Who Died of Old Age Before He Was 7 Years Old 15
The Longest Fight 16
The Man Who Was “Seen” to Death 17
Henry Lewis Playing Billiards With His Nose 17
The Clock of Heaven 18
Punishment by Proxy 18
Making Whoopee! 18
The King’s English 18
Bye! Bye! Black Sheep 18
What’s In a Name 18
All the Names of God Have Four Letters 20
David Rice Atchison Was President of the United States 21
The River of Vinegar 23
The Boy With Owl Eyes 23
The Base-Stealing Record 23
One Hundred Years--and a Day 25
The First Hundred Centuries Are the Hardest 25
Convicted of Killing Himself 26
The Sting of Death 26
The Man Who Hanged Himself 26
Life Is Like That 26
“To Err Is Human--” 28
Christ Was _Not_ Born in the First Year of the Christian Era 30
Aesop Did _Not_ Write “Aesop’s Fables” 30
Nero Did _Not_ Fiddle While Rome Burned 30
The Needle of the Compass Does _Not_ Point to the North Pole 30
The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is _Not_ a Straight Line 30
Napoleon--Like Moses--Crossed the Red Sea On Dry Land 31
Selling the World 32
The Golden Man 33
The Walking Half-Moons 34
Commodus Fought and Won 1,031 Battles 38
Lindbergh Was the Sixty-Seventh Man to Make a Non-Stop Flight Over
the Atlantic Ocean 39
Present--But Not Voting 40
Pain? You Don’t Know What Pain Is 42
Guyal Vaca Segual--Fire Eater 42
The Horned Kaffir 44
The Square Palindrome 45
Damned Clever, These Chinese 46
Methuselah--Oldest Man in the Bible--Died Before His Father 48
Coghlan’s Coffin 49
The Human Pin Cushion 53
The Luckiest Man Alive 54
Silent for 30 Years 54
“3,675 Feet and 9 Inches” 54
The Sun That Rises in the Pacific and Sets in the Atlantic 55
Bootlegging Human Heads 59
“Be Fruitful, and Multiply, and Replenish the Earth” 61
Mulai Ismail the Father of 888 Children 61
The Nine-Year-Old Mother 63
The Eight-Year-Old Mother 63
The Ninety-Year-Old Mother 63
The Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather 64
The Oldest Parents in the World 65
The Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother 65
Three Children in Three Centuries 65
The Mother of 69 Children 66
Business for the Pied Piper 66
The Progressive Mother 67
You Can’t Beat the Dutch 67
The Largest Number of Children a Woman Ever Had 68
An Indian Juggler’s Remarkable Feat 71
“Words, Words, Words” 72
The 1792 Family 73
Epigram Upon Nothing 74
Can You Punctuate This Sentence? 74
“That” Word Used 7 Times in Succession 74
It’s the Katz 74
The Longest Word in the World 76
There Are 58,366,440 Different Ways of Spelling the Word
“Scissors” 76
The Author Who Never Read a Book 76
An American Palindrome 78
The Mental Marvel 79
Hot Lips 80
Pillar Saints 81
Two Scandinavians Rowed Across the Atlantic Ocean 84
Wedded for 147 Years 85
The Land of the Humming Birds 86
Jim Corbett Fought in the Prize Ring for 18 Years 88
The Fish That Climb Trees 89
Red Rain 90
The Barking Bird 92
The Shark Destroyer 92
Man-Eating Clams 92
Pranks of Nature 93
The Child Cyclops 93
The Transparent Man 94
The Crab-Toed Tribe 94
Yogi Haridas 95
The Fork-Tongued Fräulein 96
The Glass Snake 96
The Left-Handed Family 96
The Man Family 96
The Half Woman 98
The Double-Eyed Man 99
The Man Without Ears 99
The Family Physicians 100
Lion-Hearted 100
The Dusty Ocean 101
Raining Fishes and Frogs 102
The Red Sea 102
Manna from Heaven 103
Whistling Trees 103
Shirts Growing On Trees 103
Oysters Growing On Trees 104
The Cow Tree 104
The Wingless Bird 105
The Ways of Spelling Shakespeare 106
Nature’s Marksman 109
Golf Birdies 109
Burning Anger 109
Figures Don’t Lie 110
Can You Write the Answer? 112
Magic Seven 112
Can You Change Five Dollars? 113
Palindromatic Figures 113
The 100 Symbols 114
The Persistent Number 115
The Largest Prime Known 115
Magic Squares 116
“Pi” 117
One Problem Never Proved 117
Kaspar Hauser Could See the Stars In the Daytime 118
Babe Ruth Hit 125 Home Runs In One Hour 119
The Handy Letter Writer 120
The Book Worm 120
A Beaver’s Dam 120
“The Place of Drunkenness” 121
The Ideal Landlord 121
A Week With Two Thursdays 121
Enduring Fame 121
The Bobbing Island 121
The Fig-Tree Tomb 123
Sidis--the Prodigy 123
The Illiterate Calculator 123
The Giraffe Girl 124
God’s Heaven 126
The Vocal Memnon 128
The King Who Was Crowned Before He Was Born 130
The 153-Year-Old Bridegroom 131
The Eyeless Infant 132
The Lyre Bird 132
Singing Sands 134
Oysters That Catch Mice 136
A Billion Dollars in London is Worth a Thousand Times as Much as
a Billion Dollars in New York 137
A Spider is Not an Insect 137
St. Patrick was Not an Irishman 137
Buffalo Bill Never Shot a Buffalo in His Life 138
Sex Appeal 139
“The Queen of Spain Has No Legs” 139
The Note of a Suicide 139
The Richest Man Who Ever Lived 141
The Crawling Fish 141
The Hard-Riding Squire 141
The Tracer Bullet 142
German Insect Power 142
A Remarkable Runner 143
Catching the Same Fish Twice 145
“One Long Hop” 145
A Queen Crowned After Death 146
The Kaiserpokal 148
A Cough in the Car Load 148
Hot Dog 148
Flaming Youth 148
“O P Q R S T” 148
George Washington Was _Not_ the First President of the United
States 149
The Hen that Became a Rooster 149
The Man of Chains 151
A Fleet Captured by Cavalry 151
“If You Would See His Monument Look Around” 151
Mother Goose 151
The Ghost Ship 152
What Price Privacy 152
T I P 152
He Who Laughed Last 152
A Year and a Day 152
The Shortest Poem in the World 153
Even Up 153
It’s Not the Heat--It’s the Humidity 153
The Morning After 153
Jakuck Weather Report 153
The Fountain of Blood 153
A Comma that Saved a Human Life 155
The Mental Freak 158
The Will of Akbar the Great 158
Easy Come Easy Go 158
The Cruise of the Skeletons 159
The Man Who Drank Himself to Death 159
A Good Listener 159
The Penitent Eye 160
The Last Nod of Homer 160
Fare Enough 160
What Is so Rare as This Day in June 160
The Loudest Noise Ever Heard 162
The Earth Moves in Three Different Directions at the Same Time 162
“The Holy Roman Empire” 162
Pa’s a Sap 162
The Blessed Isles 164
The Boozing Bishop 164
The One-Armed Paper Hanger 164
The River That Runs Backwards 164
A Square Egg 164
The World’s Worst Thug 166
Heaven Only Knows 166
Solving the Servant Problem 166
The Man With the Golden Nose 168
An Empress’s Agile Ears 168
Friday Unlucky? 168
Fire Water 170
The Cheese Champion 170
Whoopee 170
A Record to Be Sneezed At 170
The Fiji Fire-Walkers 171
The $4,412,000-a-Year Man 172
The $2,000,000 Comma 172
Mammy! 172
The Last Will of Rabelais 172
FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Upside-Down Man 3
An Ever-Standing Man 11
A Hindoo Urdhabahu 12
A Football Game; A Pumpkin; A Wounded Soldier; A Cat and a Rat 19
River of Vinegar; Boy With Owl Eyes; A Lemon; Jimmy Johnston 22
Jean Baptiste Mouron Was a Galley Slave for 100 Years and a Day 24
Pacific and Atlantic Oceans; Duke Farrell; Paul Hubert 27
Inca Atahuallpa; Fishermen of El Gran Chaco 36
Morimoto; The Murder at Midnight 43
Bootlegging Human Heads 58
Magdelaine--Charlotte--Jacquette--Renaud 62
An Indian Juggler 70
H. B. Applegate’s Boat; The Rubaiyat; Soveski of Stanford
University, Sultan of Djocjockarte 77
Simon of the Pillar 82
Red Snow; Emmett French; A Letter Delivered 64 Years Late 91
The Fork-Tongued Fräulein; Sigmund Klein; H. Hanson; London’s
Honking Pedestrian; The Glass Snake 97
The Beaked Chaetodon Fish; French Biplane; Largest Number; Mrs.
Mathilde Kovacs; Miss Joyce Wethered 108
The Fig-Tree Tomb; Sidis, the Prodigy; The Peg-Legged Cow; W. C.
Perry 122
A Kewawnqdu 125
Robert Jones; The Eyeless Infant; Phil Hanna; The Lyre Bird 133
Rameses; Mrs. Elliott Lynn; The Crawling Fish; Squire Osbaldeston 140
O. T. Wertz; W. J. Brassard; John Radcliffe; A Bull Frog 144
Oliver Cromwell; Tom McAuliffe; J. Johnson 147
Sankal-Walah 150
Finger Nails of a Chinese Priest; The Four-Footed Chick; A
Caterpillar 154
Champion Hog-Caller; A 67-Year-Old Contortionist; The Word
“Personality”; Gus Sundstrom 157
Herr Heinrich Laufer; John G. Anderson; Smallest Church in the
World; California’s Lion Hunter; 24-Year-Old Cat 162
A Luzonese Dancer; Japanese Plum Tree 163
Hirohito; An American Palindrome; Beggars’ Newspaper; Walter Hagen 165
World’s Worst Thug; Hopping Toad; Lefty Groves 167
7¹⁄₂ Inch Nose; Empress Marie Louise; Terry McGovern; A Telegram;
One Pair of Shoes 169
BELIEVE IT OR NOT----
AN ODYSSEY OF ODDITIES
[Illustration]
To obtain material, and to gather strange facts and to portray queer
people that go to make up the daily “Believe It or Not” pictures it has
been necessary for me to get about the world a bit.
“SEEING IS BELIEVING”
I have traveled in 64 countries--including Hell (Norway), and the
strangest thing I saw was man. Man may be the noblest work of
God--but even the good Lord must have his joke sometimes. The world
was made in seven days, and man in a perpetual daze. The Lord placed
a funny-looking little fellow on the earth without telling him what
it was all about or where he came from or where he was going. This
funny-looking little chap has been running about trying to find out
ever since.
“STRANGE IS MAN WHEN HE SEEKS AFTER HIS GODS.”
Therefore the strangest places on earth are the holiest. And the
strangest and most remarkable city in the world is the holy city of
Benares on the muddy arm of the Ganges, India’s holy river. Here amidst
a crumbling confusion of holy places is a temple--The Nepalese Temple.
About fifteen feet up on the outside is a frieze of sculptured figures
representing in succession the eighty-one sinful positions.
Sin is the curse of the human race--although it is very popular. The
question of what causes sin has perplexed the ages. But of all the
doctrines which men have propounded in their endeavors to solve the
permanent enigma of existence, probably none has had a more potent
influence than that which holds that the spirit is eternally pure and
that all matter is inherently bad. The spirit of man is pure but his
flesh is wicked, and therefore should be subjected to various degrees
of mortification.
This gives rise to the various penances and punishments and ascetic
practices so highly honored in all great religions.
The 81 sinful positions around the Nepalese Temple are counter-balanced
by the same number of positions of punishment. These positions
of penitence are practiced by an army of ascetics throughout
India--particularly in the holy cities of Benares, Allahabad, Lahore,
Mysore, and Calcutta. These sects of ascetics are probably the
strangest men of mankind. They are sometimes called Faquirs (often they
are fakers), Sadhus, Yogis, etc.
They presume to renounce the world and its ways, cast off their
clothing and cover their naked bodies with ashes which gives them
a weird white appearance; they neither cut nor comb their hair and
usually plaster their heads with cow-dung (as evidence that the cow is
holy in India) and adopt one of the ingenious methods of self-torture
with the idea of keeping themselves constantly conscious of their
penance. They are most often found about the holy places and always
flock to all the religious festivals in the sacred cities along the
Ganges where they are frequently made objects of veneration by the
muddled multitudes of India who shower them with food and money. I have
never heard one of them ask for alms, and they accept all offerings in
stony silence.
THE GHATS OF THE GANGES
As I stood on the steps of Dasashwamedh--steps worn smooth by countless
thousands of pious ones descending into the water--the sight before my
eyes impressed me more than any other in the world.
Nowhere on earth can you see such a weird cross-cut of human life with
all of its spiritual and social manifestations set in such a background
of picturesque architecture as along the crescent-shaped shore of the
holy Ganges.
Several miles to either side extend the bathing ghats, wide flights of
stately steps sinking down into the sacred waters. Surmounting them
are the strange towers and temples of their gods and the palaces and
places of their kings. Above and in back are the narrow streets and
lanes which connect the ghats with one another--a bewildering mass of
mouldering alleyways, too narrow for wheeled traffic, and overhung by
crumbling buildings that reminded me of Canton. These are the “Pukka
Mahals.” And so this is Benares!
[Illustration: THE UPSIDE-DOWN MAN
The Urdhamukhi Sadhu who hangs head downward for three hours at a time.]
Crowding my way down the steps of the ghat, among the weirdest
collection of humanity on the face of the earth--demented, deluded,
diseased, and devout--all struggling after their gods, I clambered
aboard a boat and floated slowly down the Ganges before all this pagan
panorama, wondering all the while whether leprosy were contagious, and
whether that one-eyed beggar with spots and both hands and feet eaten
away had tainted me with that unmerciful malady with the red stump of
his hand when he nudged me as I passed.
Each ghat and each temple is different. Each is built and dedicated to
a different deity and each spot is peculiarly holy to a Hindoo--from
the Assi Ghat, built at the junction of a river not visible to anybody
but the Hindoo, down past several hundred ghats to the Prahlad Ghat,
the last of all.
Five of these ghats are particularly holy, and the millions of
pilgrims must immerse in each successively on the same day--the Assi,
Dasashwamedh, Barna-sangam, Panchganga, and the Manikarnika. Some are
built in honor of monkeys, others, to “Ganesh,” a red idol with three
eyes, a silver cap, and an elephant’s trunk, riding on a rat. Another
was built for the “Dandas,” ascetics who always carry long sticks
upright, never putting them down. The Sitla Ghat was built in honor of
“Mother Smallpox,” and the Dasashwamedh Ghat means the “ghat of the
ten-horse sacrifice.”
All the ghats are thronged with multitudes who swarm down in
multicolored waves to the filthy--but purifying--water.
Strange, but it seems that the dirtier a thing is the holier it becomes
in India!
Sanitation and sanctity never come together here. The holy water of the
Ganges is muddy and sluggish. Into it empty the city sewers and into it
are thrown the dead who are too poor to afford the wood with which to
burn their bodies after death. Those who die of loathsome diseases such
as smallpox and leprosy are regarded as unworthy of cremation and so
are consigned also to the great river.
According to their creed, the holy Ganges water purifies everything,
utterly and instantly. Nothing can defile it, no matter how foul.
So the sight of these throngs of people drinking and bathing in this
filthy water in which dead bodies are floating and sewage is seeping is
not to be wondered at--but you will shudder at it just the same.
I was rowed up and down this panorama of never-ceasing interest all
morning and I wish space permitted me to tell all I saw. I had the boat
stop near the tall, stately minarets of the Aurangzeb Mosque near where
thin columns of smoke were slowly ascending. Climbing over several
native boats I reached the shore where several gauze-draped corpses
were resting with their feet in the water.
Just above me were several bodies burning.
THE BURNING GHAT
I had seen burning ghats before and was not particularly anxious to see
this one at the Jalsain Ghat. However, when I learned that more than a
million human beings offered up a daily prayer that they be burned on
this very spot I decided to watch the entire ceremony.
I have seen many dead people in India--it is a common thing to die
here--and frequently I have seen the bodies being wrapped in winding
sheets of thin gauze as they lay on the ground in front of a hut. When
a death occurs the body is immediately taken out of the house. If it
is that of a woman it is wrapped in red; if it is that of a man it is
covered over with white. Children are not wrapped at all, and neither
are those who die of leprosy or smallpox. They are simply taken down to
the Ganges and thrown in.
This morning on my way to the Burning Ghat I saw two funerals on
the way. The procession is simple. There is no hearse--the body is
merely tied to a bamboo pole by the neck and ankles and hoisted on the
shoulders of two chanting relatives, who carry it down to the river
bank.
I arrived at the Burning Ghat before them, passing the Nepalese Temple
with its eighty-one indecent carvings, and the Dharm Kup, the sacred
well in which the lepers bathe and where the water is changed but once
a year. I stood for a few minutes watching the ghastly fires of several
corpses leaping viciously to the sky, when behind me came the chanting
of the procession I had passed near the Chowk.
Down the crumbling steps they went to the edge of the sacred water and
advancing gave the body its last bath in the holy Ganges, for without
that bath any shadow which might fall upon it would convey impurity.
Then, resting the feet of the white-robed figures in the water, the two
bearers set about building the funeral pyre.
An ordinary pile of logs and boughs, about four feet high, costs five
dollars. This was just an ordinary one. The body was placed on top
and several cakes of cow dung laid on its chest, while the nearest
relative, the dead man’s wife, ascended a few steps to a sacred spot
where the holy fire was brought to burn the body.
As I waited a sacred cow came wandering down the steps and calmly
proceeded to eat the grass strands that bound the winding sheet to the
corpse. The widow returned with shaven head and snow-white garments,
waited for the cow to finish, then placed a handful of meal on her dead
husband’s mouth, walked five times around the pyre and without the
slightest sign of emotion set fire to the pile at her husband’s throat.
The flames spread rapidly. From time to time the woman, assisted by
a near relative, used long poles to make the fire burn faster. Not a
pleasant sight.
You are never so dead as when you die in India.
When the fire died away the widow threw the remaining parts into the
Ganges. The relatives led her to the water’s edge and broke the jewelry
from her wrists and ankles and threw them into the water also. Then,
filling an earthen jar with the sacred water, she placed it on her
shoulder, ascended to the smouldering pyre, and tipped it backward from
her shoulder onto the glowing ashes of her master. Straightway she
walked on up the steps; never again will she look backward at the spot.
On and up she went through an archway where monkeys were clambering and
above which several vultures were soaring. And just as she disappeared
from sight into the dingy crevices--called streets--of the Pukka Mahals
she passed by a high platform on top of which is an image of Mahadeva
where the worshippers of Mahadeva dwell, a sect supposedly immune to
the possibility of earthly defilement.
So they say.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
[signature]
from life
--Benares, India]
THE SUN GAZER
“Strange is man when he seeks after his gods.” Sometimes he thinks too
much and seeks too long, yet learns nothing and loses everything ...
like the naked faquir who sits all day glaring at the blazing sun. He
has looked too long and now sees nothing. The fiery rays of the sun
have burned out his eyes long years ago.
Each morning as I floated down the sacred stream I saw this sun
gazer being carried down the steps to his accustomed place on the
Dasashwamedh Ghat. His brothers placed him down gently--he could not
walk as his legs had withered away from years of inactivity--and turned
his face toward the east. Slowly he opened his eyes to greet the
morning sun as it raised its burning head over the temple tops of the
Holy City; here he remained the whole day long with his wide staring
eyes fastened on the blazing sun without once turning them away or
closing them for an instant until the dying disc had sunk once more
below the horizon. He had been doing this for fifteen years.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
YOGI HARIDAS
WAS BURIED ALIVE FOR
40 DAYS.
HE ATTAINED “_SAMADAI_” ... suspended animation
PERFORMED BEFORE
MAHRAJAH RUNJEET SINGH
Lahore-Punjab, 1837.]
BURIED ALIVE
“Samadai,” the act of suspended animation, is a power long claimed
by the Hindus. Although I was not fortunate enough to witness a
performance of this seeming impossibility, there are many reliable
records of such burials and subsequent restorations.
The best known performance of this mysterious power of suspending the
functions of the body (with the exception of a faint heart action) was
given before the Maharajah Runjeet Singh in Lahore during the summer of
1837. A Yogi by the name of Haridas attained “samadai” and was buried
in the ground for forty days, after which he was dug up again and
revived. Yogi Haridas fell into a trance and his assistants stopped his
nose, mouth, ears, and eyes with wax; then, wrapping him in a winding
cloth, they lowered him into a grave and filled it tight with earth. A
guard was placed about the spot to prevent trickery. When the Yogi was
uncovered forty days later he appeared slightly emaciated but otherwise
was little the worse for his remarkable experience.
Yogi Haridas, by the way, was the same Yogi who could touch his
forehead with his tongue. (See page 95.)
The various “Rama Beys” etc., who have been appearing in American
vaudeville recently with “buried alive” acts in which they claim the
power to suspend animation are merely tricksters. None of them ever
saw India--as a matter of fact, the most successful one is an Italian.
Houdini performed the same trick under water.
Hindoos are credited with marvelous powers of magic, but I was unable
to see any of it. They do remarkable sleight-of-hand work, and I had
a faquir do the tree-growing trick on my bed-room floor. It is a fair
trick, but in my opinion, Thurston and Houdini were far more clever
than any Hindoo.
[Illustration]
THE BED OF NAILS
Sadhus who sit on beds of sharp spikes have been more or less featured
in the Sunday supplements of our country. This stunt is a popular one
in India and I saw half a dozen of them. In Mysore a six-year-old boy
was starting out in life by assuming a sitting position on a home-made
“kiddie car” of nails.
One old fellow that I saw in Benares had been on his trundle bed for
eighteen years, I was told. After some persuasion, highly emphasized
with rupees, the venerable old faquir stood up on his spiny mattress
and gave me the opportunity to see that there was no fake about it.
THE EVER-STANDING MEN
They were standing by the river not far from the Kali-Ghat in Calicut.
They had been standing for ten years or more without once sitting down,
and were apparently prepared to remain upright the rest of their lives.
I doubt if there be two more homely objects. Their bodies and faces
were smeared a dirty sickly white leaving two black spots for their
eyes which were divided by perpendicular red and yellow caste marks.
They had forced two poles into the sand from which were suspended arm
rests on which they leaned now and then, but never at any time did they
take their weight entirely off their feet, or attempt to sit down in
any manner.
HUMAN INCH-WORMS
Pilgrimages are quite the thing in the Far East. All Mohammedans
hope to make a pilgrimage to Mecca before they die. All Hindoos hope
to bathe at least once in the Ganges at Benares. Their penchant for
penitence has created some ingenious methods of locomotion. They come
crawling and rolling long distances to their temples on the Ganges. One
deluded disciple of Siva crawled all the way from the Himalayas taking
more than two years to make the journey.
I happened to be in the Kali-Ghat Temple one day and witnessed the
finish of one of these pilgrimages of penance. A woman--followed by a
curious crowd--was progressing by means of a series of prostrations.
Standing up straight she would extend her arms above her head and then
kneel and slide her hands forward on the ground until she was lying
at full length on her face in the dust. Keeping her finger tips to
the ground she raised the rest of her body in much the same way as
an inch-worm and gaining her feet she stepped along until her toes
reached the tips of her fingers--then she stood up again and repeated
the performance. She had been traveling many days in this fashion to
reach the Kali-Ghat. The Goddess Kali, the object of her struggles, is
a large black figure with four arms, three red eyes, a long scarlet
tongue reaching out three feet from the mouth, a necklace of human
skulls, and no legs.
The curse of India is the Hindoo religion. More than two hundred
million people believe a motley mixture of mythology that is strangling
the nation.
“_He who yearns for God in India soon loses his head as well as his
heart._”
[Illustration: AN EVER-STANDING MAN]
[Illustration: A Hindu Urdhabahu held his arms above his head for 20
years!]
Modern Hindoo theology is a development of several ancient and odd
forms of worship, the first form of which was called Vedism--the
worship of nature. Some, representing these sects of the middle
ages, still survive and we see them about the streets of Calcutta,
particularly at the Kali-Ghat Temple: Nail-men, whose nails grow until
they pierce their palms; Sky-facers, who hold their faces rigidly
upward till unable to bend them back; Up-arm men, who hold up their
arms in the same way until they wither away; Tree-men, who hang upside
down in trees like monkeys; Skull-men and Pot-men, who carry these
symbols, and other forms of religious fanatics.
Most of the wretches that we see around the holy places of worship have
no idea what their attitudes and symbols mean; all are intellectually
degraded and some are mere fakers.
The modern Hindoo has one God who pervades everything, called Brahma.
His three personal manifestations are as Brahma, the Creator; Vishnu,
the Preserver; and Siva, the Destroyer. Brahma is generally represented
with four heads and four arms, in which he holds various symbolical
objects. From Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva have sprung a multitude
of lesser gods, whom the Hindoos, faithful to their practice of
exaggeration, reckon up to the astounding total of 330,000,000.
The Hindoos believe that all evil proceeds from antecedent evil and
that the penalty must be suffered in each succeeding existence. There
are eighty-four lakhs (8,400,000) of different species of animals
through which the soul of man is liable to pass, and the Hindoo’s
object is to rid himself of this series of continuous transmigrations
so that he may live in the same heaven with his god.
To this end he makes offerings to the image of a god, abstains from
killing any animal, gives money to priests; does penance which at times
extends to severe bodily torture, propitiates demons and keeps strictly
the rules of caste. And there are almost a hundred different castes,
each entirely separate with regard to marriage and trades.
This, briefly, is Hindooism.
Sounds almost unbelievable, doesn’t it? Yet more than twice as many
people as there are in all the United States believe such things with a
burning fervor that we, as Christians, cannot understand.
A strange country is India!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A POUND OF FEATHERS WEIGHS MORE THAN A POUND OF GOLD
A pound is a pound you say?
Not always.
A pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold because feathers
are weighed by “avoirdupois” weight which has 16 ounces to a pound,
while gold is always weighed by “troy” weight which only contains 12
ounces to a pound.
A GALLON OF VINEGAR WEIGHS MORE IN THE WINTER THAN IN THE SUMMER
This is puzzling--but a fact nevertheless.
The difference in weight is due entirely to the contraction and
expansion of the vinegar due to the changes in temperature. During the
heat of the summer months the vinegar, as any other liquid, will expand
and thus the weight will be slightly less because a gallon jug will
hold less.
A gallon jug of 4 per cent. (Acetic Acid) cider vinegar measured at 80
degrees (Farenheit) or summer heat, weighed 8.403 pounds--or 134¹⁄₂
ounces. When the same gallon jug filled with the same vinegar was
measured at 40 degrees (Farenheit), or winter temperature, it weighed
8.457 pounds--or 135¹⁄₂ ounces. In other words, a gallon of vinegar
will weigh approximately one ounce more in the winter than in the
summer.
[Illustration]
THE BOY WHO DIED OF OLD AGE BEFORE HE WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD
This strange anomaly of an aged youth attracted considerable attention
during the last century. He was Charles Charlesworth, born of normal
parents in Staffordshire, England, March 14, 1829. He reached maturity
and grew whiskers at the age of four and died suddenly in a faint
(syncope) when but seven years old.
Charlesworth was of small stature and proportions, and with imperfectly
developed clavicles, lower jaw, and membrane bones of the skull. His
face was wizened, hair and whiskers white, skin shriveled, hands
knotted with conspicuous veins and tendons, voice piping, and gait and
standing posture those of an old man.
_Ref.: “Progeria” and “Premature Senility” in any Medical Text Book._
[Illustration]
THE LONGEST FIGHT
The longest battle within the ropes of a squared circle took place in
the Olympic Club of New Orleans, April 6, 1893, between Andy Bowen
(colored) and Jack Burke.
The contest lasted 110 rounds--7 hours, 19 minutes.
Iron men! Doubtless that will be your comment; but the irony of it all
was the fact that the referee, Jack Duffy, stopped the struggle in the
110th round and declared it “no-contest.”
Following is the report as it appeared in the Police Gazette on the day
following the match:
THE LONG-WINDED BOWEN-BURKE FIGHT AT NEW ORLEANS
The Bowen-Burke fight took place last Thursday night and Friday
morning before several thousand spectators at the Olympic Club in
New Orleans. It was stopped Friday morning in the 110th round by the
referee, Jack Duffy, who decided that it was no contest. The purse
will probably be divided. Bowen wanted to fight to a finish. The
bones in both of Burke’s hands were broken.
Bowen, who is a New Orleans man, and Burke, a Texan, fought for
a $2,500 purse, of which the loser was to get $500, and the
light-weight championship of the South. The betting previous to the
fight favored New Orleans, and the largest crowd ever held by the
Olympic Clubhouse was in attendance when the men entered the ring.
That was at 9.30 o’clock Thursday night. In the twenty-fifth round
Bowen was nearly knocked down and out by two punches on the head. His
opponent failed to follow up his advantage.
Burke got a stiff punching in the twenty-eighth, and from then on
up to the forty-fifth round the contest was dull and uninteresting.
At the end of the forty-eighth Burke was knocked down and was only
saved by the call of time for the interval between rounds. The crowd
whistled “Home, Sweet Home,” and at midnight many hundreds deserted
the clubhouse for home. It was one of the poorest fights that had
ever taken place in New Orleans, although both men were in perfect
condition.
* * *
THE MAN WHO WAS “SEEN TO DEATH”
Wei Chieh, son of Wei Huan (286-312), was popularly known as “The
Jewel” on account of his great beauty. At the age of five his handsome
face and graceful form caused the populace to regard him as a
supernatural being.
He joined the establishment of the Heir-Apparent of China, but during
political troubles it was necessary for him to flee to the city of
Nanking where he was exposed to the populace who crowded around him in
such numbers and stared so hard that he was actually “seen to death.”
[Illustration: HENRY LEWIS PLAYING BILLIARDS WITH HIS NOSE MADE A RUN
OF 46]
* * *
THE CLOCK OF HEAVEN
If the stars in the northern sky are visible, says _Popular Mechanics_,
you can set your watch by them within fifteen minutes of the correct
time and without the use of a complicated table. The polestar is
considered as the center of a huge clock and the pointer of the Dipper,
the hour hand. The numeral six will be below the polestar and twelve
above. Taking the time as indicated by the Dipper’s pointers, you can
add to that figure the number of months that have elapsed since the
first of January to the nearest quarter month. The resulting sum is
doubled and subtracted from sixteen and a quarter. If the result is
more than sixteen and a quarter, subtract it from forty and a quarter.
The answer is time in hours after noon. For instance, it is late
September and the pointers of the sky clock correspond to the position
of the hour hand at seven o’clock. Eight and three-fourths months have
elapsed since New Year’s Day. This is added to seven, making fifteen
and three-quarters. Double this is thirty-one and one-half. Subtracting
from forty and one-quarter gives eight and three-quarters, or 8:45 P. M.
* * *
PUNISHMENT BY PROXY
In Germany during the nineteenth century all Princes of the blood had
their “Prügelknaben”--that is, a boy who was brought up with the young
Prince and who was spanked every time the Prince misbehaved.
* * *
MAKING WHOOPEE!
Lord Edward Russell was host at a party where 6,000 men got drunk. A
fountain was used as a punch bowl into which 25 hogsheads of brandy
were poured, and among the other ingredients used were 25,000 lemons
and 1,300 pounds of sugar. London, Oct. 25, 1799.
* * *
THE KING’S ENGLISH
King George I, of England, could not speak one word of English.
* * *
BYE! BYE! BLACK SHEEP
During a storm in Lapleau, France, lightning struck into a sheep fold,
killing every black sheep but leaving all the white sheep unharmed.
* * *
WHAT’S IN A NAME
All female rulers named Jane were murdered, became insane, or were
deposed.
[Illustration:
A FOOTBALL GAME (Rugby).
WAS PLAYED BY MATANI SAVAGES
OF WEST AFRICA----USING
A HUMAN SKULL
FOR A BALL
A PUMPKIN--WEIGHING 100 POUNDS--AND
MEASURING 6¹⁄₂ FEET IN CIRCUMFERENCE
WAS RAISED BY AL. CLAYBERG, of Mt. Kisco, N.Y. 1924.
FRANK
BROWN
wounded soldier
CAN SMOKE A
CIGARETTE
THRU A HOLE IN
HIS FOREHEAD
A CAT
ADOPTED AND
MOTHERED
A RAT
Owned by FRANCES PITT--England 1916.]
* * *
ALL THE NAMES OF GOD HAVE FOUR LETTERS
LORD English.
JHVH (JeHoVaH) Hebrew.
DEUS Latin.
DIEU French.
ADAT Assyrian.
GODT Dutch.
GOTT German.
GODH Danish.
GOTH Swedish.
SORU Persian.
ALLA Mohammedan.
RAMA Hindu.
DEVA Sanscrit.
DIOS Spanish.
ODIN Scandinavian.
TEOS Greek.
ZEUS Greek mythology.
THOR Viking.
AMIR Arabic.
AMON Egyptian.
PAPA Inca.
ATON } Canaanish.
ADNJ }
AGLA Cabalistic.
INCA Quechua.
BAAL Phoenician.
ISTR Persian.
DEUS Portuguese.
ILLU Syrian.
ELAH Aramaic.
KAMI } Japanese.
SHIN }
HAKK }
ILAH } Hindustani.
EZID }
NEBO Chaldean.
BRAM Aryan.
[Illustration]
DAVID RICE ATCHISON WAS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ... and slept
through his term of office.
This unusual circumstance came about because the inauguration day of
Zachary Taylor as President fell on Sunday, March 4, 1849.
President Polk’s term expired at the same time. However, Taylor did not
take the oath of office until the next day--Monday, March 5th.
In the meantime, David Rice Atchison--as President pro tempore of the
Senate--became the chief magistrate of the nation between the time of
Polk’s retirement and Taylor’s inauguration.
This period came immediately after a very trying session in the Senate,
and Senator Atchison always said that he slept all during his term as
President.
[Illustration:
THE
RIVER OF VINEGAR
(RIO VINAGRE OF COLOMBIA)
CONTAINS SULPHURIC ACID AND HYDROCHLORIC ACID
AND IS SO SOUR THAT NO FISH CAN LIVE IN IT
THE BOY WITH OWL EYES!
GIOVANNI GALANTI, of ITALY
CAN SEE AT NIGHT BUT NOT IN THE DAYTIME
A LEMON
22 INCHES AROUND AND
WEIGHING 4 POUNDS
WAS GROWN BY
W. G. MICKI
IN LODI, CAL.,
June, 1928
JIMMY JOHNSTON (San Francisco, 1913) STOLE 124 BASES IN ONE SEASON]
* * *
THE RIVER OF VINEGAR
The Vinegar River (El Rio Vinagre) is found in Colombia in the vicinity
of the active volcano Puracé. It is really a part of the Cauca River
which rises in the southern part of the country near Ecuador and flows
680 miles north to the Magdalena.
The high acidity of the river is in part attributed to the proximity of
the volcano. It contains eleven parts of sulphuric acid and nine parts
of hydrochloric acid in every thousand, and is so sour that no fish can
live in it.
* * *
THE BOY WITH OWL EYES
Giovanni Galanti, the sixteen-year-old Italian boy who has a peculiar
affliction of his eyes which permits him to see at night but not in
the day, attracted considerable attention during the month of April,
1928, when he tried to enter this country from Italy. The public health
inspectors pronounced the youth a victim of Retinochoraiditis--the
scientific term for “Day Blindness,” and refused to give him permission
to land.
The boy’s parents live in Hermine, Pa.
* * *
THE BASE-STEALING RECORD
Jimmy Johnston stole 124 bases in one season--the modern record.
However, Johnston compiled this high mark with San Francisco in the
Pacific Coast League where the season is long. Johnston played in 201
games.
This prize-pilfering performance resulted in Johnston’s going up to the
major leagues where he was a star for a number of years with Brooklyn.
He is now manager of the Chattanooga Club in the Southern League.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
Jean Baptiste
MOURON
of TOULON--WAS A GALLEY SLAVE
FOR =100 YEARS AND A DAY=!
[signature]]
ONE HUNDRED YEARS--AND A DAY
The first hundred years are the hardest, it is said, and Jean Baptiste
Mouron, of Toulon, should know. He served a full sentence of “100 years
and a day” as a galley slave!
Jean Baptiste Mouron of Toulon was a flaming youth. In 1684, when but
17 years of age, he was convicted of incendiarism and sentenced to the
depths of a galley ship to slave his life away. Exactly one hundred
years and a day later, a tottering old man shambled unsteadily ashore
in the town of Toulon. It was Mouron. He had served his sentence in
full--and the world was even with him once more.
It was the common practice of the Mediterranean countries to use
convicts to man the oars of their galleys of war. However, Jean
Baptiste did not pull an oar for long, as the use of galleys for war
purposes had practically ceased at the time of his incarceration. The
ships were moored as prison hulks in the different harbors--principally
at Marseilles and Toulon, and Mouron was chained to a bench below the
decks and left to rot with the ship.
They made the old man like it. Even as Bonnivard did the dungeon of
Chillon, Mouron learned to love despair; and years later when Louis XV.
suggested that he might go free, the gallant old “galérien” refused to
leave his “Hermitage” until one day after a hundred years had passed.
“My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:--even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.”
And he died 6 years after.
_Ref.: Memoirs of a Protestant, by Jean Marteilhes._
* * *
THE FIRST HUNDRED CENTURIES ARE THE HARDEST
The first hundred centuries will be harder still, no doubt. At the
present time there is a man in jail in Mainz, Germany, attempting to
serve out a sentence of 14,975 years.
Otto Nodling, a brewer, was recently found guilty of violating the tax
laws in connection with his brewery and was sentenced to pay a fine of
82,000,000 marks with the alternative of a day in jail for every 15
marks of the fine unpaid.
Brewer Nodling declared his inability to pay, and was taken into
custody in December, 1927.
He has only about 150 centuries more to serve.
* * *
CONVICTED OF KILLING HIMSELF
Paul Hubert was convicted of first degree murder by a “Cour
Correctionelle” of Bordeaux, France, and sentenced to death. The
sentence was commuted to lifelong imprisonment and he was sent to the
French penal colony in Guiana.
In 1860, after he had served 21 years in solitary confinement, the
Procureur Imperial moved the French Cour de Cassation to review the
case. The case was reopened and Hubert acquitted after the highest
French Court found that his supposed victim was none other than himself!
The Hubert case is a “cause célèbre,” and a great argument for those
who strive to abolish capital punishment.
* * *
THE STING OF DEATH
François de Civille was declared dead in 1562 and was buried. Six hours
later--on the intuition of his brother--he was disinterred and revived.
He lived seventy years longer, dying at the age of 105 from a cold
contracted while “serenading the lady of his heart all night long.”
_From his tombstone in the cemetery of Milano._
* * *
THE MAN WHO HANGED HIMSELF
Radford Williams, an Englishman, was convicted of murder and sentenced
to be hanged. He mounted the scaffold with firm step, and as a last
request, asked to be permitted to spring the death trap himself. He did.
He was buried at the conflux of four roads in the center of London with
a stake driven through his heart, “and over him drives forever the
uproar of unresting London.”
* * *
LIFE IS LIKE THAT
There are 68 deaths a minute, 97,920 daily, and 35,740,800 annually.
[Illustration:
YOU CAN SEE BOTH
THE PACIFIC AND ATLANTIC OCEANS
FROM THE TOP OF MT. IRAZU
Costa Rica
DUKE FARRELL
THREW OUT 8
PLAYERS TRYING
TO STEAL--in
one game.
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Plus 2
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PAUL HUBERT
--of Bordeaux, 1863.
WAS CONVICTED OF MURDERING HIMSELF!
HE SERVED 21 YEARS
IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
BEFORE IT WAS DISCOVERED
THAT HIS SUPPOSED VICTIM WAS NONE OTHER THAN HIMSELF
[signature]]
* * *
“TO ERR IS HUMAN”--
“_It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to
put him in possession of the truth._”--John Locke.
Or as Josh Billings said: “The trouble with most folks isn’t so much
their ignorance, as knowin’ so many things that ain’t so.”
THERE IS NO LEAD IN A LEAD PENCIL.
(It is graphite--one of the forms of carbon.)
THERE IS NO CORK IN CORK LEGS.
(The name comes from Dr. Cork who invented them.)
A GUINEA PIG IS NOT A PIG NOR DOES IT COME FROM GUINEA.
(It is a Rodent and comes from the western coast of South America.)
A BLIND WORM IS NEITHER BLIND NOR IS IT A WORM.
(It is a lizard and has two conspicuous eyes.)
GERMAN SILVER CONTAINS NO SILVER.
(It is an alloy of copper, nickel, and zinc.)
THE COFFEE BERRY IS NOT A BERRY.
(It is a seed.)
A PENTHOUSE IS NOT A HOUSE.
(It is a shed attached to a building.)
A STEELYARD IS NOT A YARD NOR IS IT STEEL.
(It is a regulator or balance.)
DRESDEN CHINA DOES NOT COME FROM DRESDEN.
(It is made in Meissen.)
THERE IS NO RICE IN RICE PAPER.
(It is made from pitch or wood pulp.)
THERE IS NO BONE IN WHALE BONE.
(It is Baleen, an elastic substance found in the mouth of a whale.)
THERE IS NO TEA IN BEEF TEA.
(It is an extract of beef.)
THERE IS NO KID IN KID GLOVES.
(They are made of lamb skin.)