Real Life Tales

From the March 1998 publication of snippets from the Bizarre Column of New Scientist Magazine from the last 40 years. :)

Seen in a maths paper: "A freedom fighter fires a bullet into an enemy group of 12 soldiers and 3 civilians. Assuming one person is hit by the bullet, find the probability that the person hit is (a) a soldier, or (b) a civilian."

A story from MIT, that renowned institution of nerdism. There was a student there who went to the Harvard Football Stadium every day for the entire three-month long summer vacation wearing a black and white striped shirt and throwing birdseed all over the place. He would then blow a whistle and leave. At the start of the new team the Harvard football team played its first home game to a packed crowd. When the referee (dressed in black and white) blew his whistle, hundreds of birds descended on the field hunting for food.

As for the MIT-er, he wrote a thesis on the experiment and graduated.

In the 1960s, a New Scientist reader posed the following problem to other perusers of the excellent publication: "I was told recently that one could throw an egg over a house and that provided it landed on the grass, it would not break...can one of your readers explain this phenomenon?"

The question sparked off a rash of egg throwing all over the UK and elsewhere and several letters to the magazine with graphic details of the results: "We spent an enjoyable afternoon in a meadow, our aim over the house having proved disastrous. Every egg thrown shattered on impact on the ground. We therefore conclude a house to be essential to the experiment."

Some letters were more 'scientific' than others:

"As a result of certain experiments which have been carried out, our research team can state the following results.

  1. Eggs which land on a gravel path break instantly whether they are thrown over a house or not.
  2. Eggs which land on a dry lawn from a height of approximately 10 metres also shatter on impact.
  3. Eggs which fall on a wet lawn with longer grass from approximately the same height also break.

Having run out of experimental material we were not able to extend our tests but we have reached the following conclusions.

  1. Bull terrier bitches aged approximately eighg years will eat raw egs found in long, wet grass (and on gravel paths) with avidity.
  2. Raw egg running down the face of a newly painted stucco house is not decorative."

A alligator in a Mexican park once tried to mate with the alligator skin boots of a visitor. Poor thing. The alligator, I mean.


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