Uncanny Stories...

Once upon a time, in the 19th Century, there was a man in Honey Grove, Texas, called Henry Ziegland. One fine day, in 1893 (Old stuff!), this nice man decides to walk out of his girlfriend, who committs suicide. But then, the brother of that subbed lady, tried to avenge his sister by shooting Henry... Missing the shot! The bullet barely injured Henry, grazing his face and getting encrusted on a tree behind him, but that brother thought he was dead and so, thinking himself (and his sister) avenged, ended his own life with the same weapon.

20 years after that, Henry decides to remove that same tree of his property and so, tries to saw it... But, unable to do that manually, he decides to use some dynamite. In the explosion, that bullet which had originally been intended for Ziegland, became dislodged with such a catapulting jolt that it was shot violently into Ziegland's head, killing him at last...

And the most strange thing is, this story's regarded to be true...This is what we call a Serendipity, an unexpected discovery or action, fruit of a big big big coincidence.

A lot of discoveries in the history had been fruit of some serendipities... Albert Einstein, for instance, recognized some of his findings were serendipities... Niels Bohr spent several time thinking how atoms were. One night he saw in a dream a possible shape of the atom, and he drew it on a paper... When he finally found out the configuration of the atom he realized it was just exactly the same as the one he draw previously. According to Umberto Eco, Columbus discovery of America was a serendipity!


And, this is one of my favourites! In 1898, Morgan Robertson -a well-known short stories American writer- wrote the book Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan. It's the story about a huge ship, called Titan, which sinks in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg... Is it familiar? Yes! Robertson described one of the most famous shpiwrecks of the history, the RMS Titanic, 14 years before happening! And even if he wrote the novel long before the Olimpic-class Titanic had even been designed, he described some of the features of the ship and the wreck:

- The Titanic was the world's largest luxury ship (882 feet, displacing 66,000 tons), and was once described as being (nearly) "unsinkable".The Titan was the largest ship and the greatest of the works of men (800 feet, displacing 75,000 tons), and was considered "indestructible".

- They both were launched from Southampton in April.

- The Titan and the Titanic carried less than half the number of lifeboats needed (Titanic 20, Titan 24).

- They both crashed with an iceberg, 400 miles away from Terranova, on an April night.

- In both cases, more than half of their passengers (Titanic 2207, Titan 2500) died screaming for help.

Curious, huh?

More Irish stuff...

This is a traditional Irish song, about a highwayman who's betrayed by his own wife or lover... There are a lot of versions of it, but I do really prefer this, Thin Lizzy's one, Metallica's version. If you want to know more aobut this song, visit Wikipedia:

Metallica - Whiskey in the Jar

As I was going over the Cork and Kerry mountains
I saw Captain Farrell and his money he was counting
I first produced my pistol and then produced my rapier
I said “stand and deliver or the devil he may take you”

Yeah

I took all of his money and it was a pretty penny
I took all of his money, yeah, and I brought it home to Molly
She swore that she’d love me, no, never would she leave me
But the devil take that woman, yeah, for you know she tricked me easy

Musha rain dum-a-do-dum-a-da
Whack for my daddy-o
Whack for my daddy-o
There’s whiskey in the jar-o

Being drunk and weary I went to Molly’s chamber
Taking money with me and I never knew the danger
For about six or maybe seven, yeah, in walked Captain Farrell
I jumped up, fired my pistols, and I shot him with both barrels, yeah

Musha rain dum-a-do-dum-a-da, yeah-yeah
Whack for my daddy-o
Whack for my daddy-o
There’s whiskey in the jar-o

Yeah, whiskey
Yo-ooh, whiskey

Yo-ooh, yeah, ooh
Yo-oo-ooh, yeah

Now some men like the fishing and some men like the fowling
And some men like to hear, to hear the cannonball a-roaring
Me I like sleeping, especially in my Molly’s chamber
But here I am in prison, here I am with a ball and chain, yeah

Musha rain dum-a-do-dum-a-da, yeah-yeah
Whack for my daddy-o
Whack for my daddy-o
There’s whiskey in the jar-o, yeah

Whiskey in the jar-o, yeah

Musha rain dum-a-do-dum-a-da
Musha rain dum-a-do-dum-a-da, hey
Musha rain dum-a-do-dum-a-da
Musha rain dum-a-do-dum-a-da
Yeah

No leaf clover!

Happy St. Patrick's Day, my Irish fellows!

Just remember, if you want to swim today in a river... You can find it's totally green! Take care!


That's just what they do in Chicago, since 1961: dying the Hudson river of this Irish green colour. And the thing is, they found out how to do that by chance! Some plumbers discovered that the dye they used to detect leaks into the river turned green, not just any color green, but the perfect color green! And so, they decided to use that to surprise the public in St.Patrick's Day!

Slán leat!

Once upon a time...

...In a not-so-far away island called Sark, people lived happily, according to their ancient habits and laws... They had their own language (Sercquiais), and their own flag too, and they served the Feudal Lord of the Island, the Seigneur of Sark... Cars and helicopters were forbidden, and tractors were the only motorised vehicles allowed in that island... Wait a minute... Cars? Helicopters?


Yes, beloved readers, Sark was the last redoubt of feudalism in Europe, an island between England and France... and I said was, because now they're on their way to full democracy. In 1996 they agreed to endorse the European Convention of Human Rights, which was completely incompatible with their feudalism, and so, putting an end to that government system in a short time... Now, the Chief of Pleas, the "Council" of the Island, is no longer ruled by the descendants of those 40 colonists who arrived to the island with the permission of the Queen Elizabeth I (not II) to settle there... Now, 28 elected congressmen rule the island... waiting for a referendum in 2011, when people of Sark will finally decide if they want to become a full democracy or still a feudal land... But this is not really the point of this post!

This is about tradition, about some values some people may think they're old fashioned and/or useless, nowadays... And so, to talk about that, let's take a look on the Barclay Twins. Both awfully rich, owners of The Daily Telegraph and one Ritz hotel in London, one day they decided to buy the island of Brecqhou, close and under the management of Sark, and build a huge Gothic castle for them, with 2 swimming pools and a helicopter pad... Too bad! As helicopters are forbidden on that island... And so, they started to invest on the island, which main economical activity is tourism (and some tax advantages, for sure!). And so it was! They thought they have found their paradise, and started asking for political changes on the island, maybe just to get finally the permission to ride an expensive car in those islands... and, in some way, they succeeded... but not in the way they wanted, curiously!

When finally democracy was knocking at Sark's doors, and most probably the Barclay Twins were sharpen their fangs, something happened. Sark's inhabitants decided to vote for the traditionalist party, leaded by the former Seigneur of Sark, John M. Beaumont, and so, supporting Sark old ways! Democracy's ok, but let's do it our way! However, this decission didn't pleased those Barclay twins, and they decided to stop investing on that island, getting the sack to 100 people, 1/6 of Sark's population!

And that's the way it is! The Barclays couldn't buy Sark with money, and now they're punishing them... Childish behaviour? Hm... You'll say! And even if it can get awful for Sark's inhabitants after "disobeying" those twins, they decided to disobey them and that's brave and remarkable, don't you think?

So, that's all! Only 3 curious facts about Sark's Island:

1.- Dogs are forbidden on the island.

2.- There are, in fact, 2 Sark islands -Greater and Little Sark- and they're connected by a natural isthmus, 3 meter width and 92 meters above the sea... A banister was build in 1900, because people had to cross that natural bridge crawling, to avoid being swept by strong winds. That isthmus was paved by the Nazis, during the ocupation of the island, in the WWII.

3.- In 1990, an unemployed French nuclear physicist attempted a singlehanded invasion of Sark, armed with a semi-automatic weapon. The night he arrived, he put up signs declaring his intention to take over the island the following day at noon. He was arrested while sitting on a bench, changing the rifle's clip and waiting for noon to arrive.

See you soon!