HEROIC FAILURES - MARVELLOUS!

....and stating on a legal theme....


THE WORST JURY

A murder trial at Manitoba in February 1978 was well advanced, when one juror revealed that he was ompletely deaf and did not have the remotest clue what was happening. The judge, Mr Justice Solomon, asked him if he had heard any evidence at all and, when there was no reply, dismissed him. The excitement which this caused was only equalled when a second juror revealed that he spoke not a word of English. A fluent French speaker, he exhibited great surprise when told, after two days, that he was hearing a murder trial. The trial was abandoned when a third juror said that he suffered from both conditions, being simultaneously unversed in the English language and nearly as deaf as the first juror. The judge ordered a retrial.

I am especially proud of this one.......


THE WORST BANK ROBBERY

In August 1975 three men were on their way in to rob the Royal Bank of
Scotland at Rothesay, when they got stuck in the revolving doors. They had
to be helped free by the staff and, after thanking everyone, sheepishly
left the building.

A few minutes later they returned and announced their intention of robbing
the bank, but none of the staff believed them. When they demanded £5,000 in cash, the head cashier laughed at them, convinced that it was a
practical joke.

Then one of the men jumped over the counter, but fell to the floor
clutching his ankle. The other two tried to make their getaway, but got
trapped in the revolving doors again.

thanks E needed a laugh

No prob, Steve. Here is another...............



THE LEAST ACCURATELY LABELLED MUSEUM EXHIBIT.

A first class example of inaccurate labelling was discovered in October 1971 in County Durham. The object was exhibited in a South Shields museum as a roman sestertius coin, minted between AD135 and AD 138. However, Miss Fiona Gordan, aged 9, pointed out that it was, in fact, a plastic token given away free by a soft drinks firm in exchange for bottle labels. The dating, was in her view, almost 2,000 years out. When challenged to provide evidence, she said: ' I know because the firm's trademark is on the back.' A spokesman for the Roman Fort museum said 'The token was designed as a roman replica. The trouble was that we constructed the letter "R" on the coin to mean "Roma". In fact it stood for "Robinsons", the soft drinks manufactures.'

THE MOST INACCURATE VALUE OF PI.

Pi is a mathmatical constant which is the ratio of the circumference of the circle to it's diameter. It is neverending but is usually taken to be 3.142. However in 1897 the General Assembly of Indiana passed a bill ruling that the value of Pi was four. This ensured that all mathematical and engineering calculations in the state were wrong. It meant that a pendulum clock would gain about fifteen minutes an hour

We had a robbery in a bank not so long ago (year or two back). The robber, a solitary guy with a hat and sunglasses asks the clerk for money in the cash register. As he's holding the gun he has trouble to stuff them into his bag. So he asks the clerk to hold the gun to him. She kindly obliged, pointed it at him and called the police.

lord e : rumpole of the bailey would like to meet you at his favourite watering hole for a glass of "plonk" to show his appreciation for the great stories. hbg

Dag, it's nice to see that these things happen abroad, but I get the feeling that you are not taking much pride in the matter.
Buck yourself up, girl.

hbg, there is a good probability that I will be in Canada sometime during 2006, If I am in your neck of the woods, I will gladly sink some plonk with you....bugger Rumpole.

OK folks....we even have one on Pigeons.....

THE WORST HOMING PIGEON

This historic bird was released in Pembrokeshire in June 1953 and was expected to reach its base that evening. It was returned by post, dead, in a cardboard box eleven years later from Brazil.

I am afraid that you'll have to excuse me for a minute, as I have somehow managed to get pate wedged into my mouse ball.

heh

THE LEAST SUCCESSFUL HANDCUFFING

The most exciting case of handcuff difficulties was reported in the New Statesman in 1978. It arose while a British circuit judge was trying a burglar in whose possession a pair of handcuffs had been found. 'I thought,' said the judge, 'that the jury might be interested to know how handcuffs could be used to incapacitate a victim.' Brushing aside protests of the prosecuting council, he clasped one handcuff around his left wrist. 'And now,' he said, 'if I take the other handcuff...Oh do be quiet, Mr Smith (addressed to the agitated prosecutor), I am going to show the jury how these things work.' Only when the judge was completely fettered did he learn that the police had not yet recovered the keys. The hearing was adjourned while the judge was led off to the tender mercies of the local blacksmith.

heroic failures
lord elpus : a visit to...UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST COUNTRY...would certainly be appreciated.
please bring any lordly regalia you possess with you.
(when queen elizabeth visited a few years ago to open the "loyalist parkway" , a "royal outhouse" was constructed for her private needs - i'm sad to report that it was torn down later to prevent undue "worship" at the site !). hbg

Sounds wonderful, hbg.......we intend doing something special this year, as it will be our 30th wedding whatchamacallit. The fragrant one wants to go somewhere with palm trees, but I prefer mountains and doing a bit of exploring. You never know....she might let me win for a change.

Hope I'm better at exploring than this chappie.



THE LEAST SUCCESFUL EXPLORER

Thomas Nuttall (1786 - 1859) was a pioneer botanist whose main field of study was the flora of remote parts of North-West America. As an explorer, however, his work was characterized by the fact that he was almost permanently lost. During his expedition of 1812 his colleagues frequently had to light beacons in the evening to help him find his way back to camp.

One night he completely failed to return and a search party was sent out. As it approached him in the darkness Nuttall assumed they were Indians and tried to escape. The annoyed rescuers pursued him for three days through bush and river until he accidentally wandered back into the camp. On another occasion Nuttall was lost again and lay down exhausted. He looked so pathetic that a passing Indian, instead of scalping him, picked him up, carried him three miles to the river and paddled him home in a canoe.

Did a state legislature once pass a law saying pi equals 3?

Dear Cecil:

In Science magazine a while back an article about the latest attempts to calculate pi to the umpteen zillionth decimal place made a passing reference to a curious Oklahoma law. It said Oklahoma legislators had passed a law making pi equal to 3.0. I also remember Robert Heinlein in one of his novels mentioning that Tennessee had passed a similar law. Did either of these states ever pass such a law? Are they still on the books? What are the penalties if I proclaim that pi equals 3.14159...? --Wulf Losee, Andover, Connecticut

Dear Wulf:

Cecil had heard this story too, only the state in question was Kansas, leading him to believe the whole thing was made up by big-city sharpies having a little fun at the expense of the rustics. However, with the help of Joseph Madachy, editor of the Journal of Recreational Mathematics, I've learned the story does have a germ of truth to it.

It happened in Indiana. Although the attempt to legislate pi was ultimately unsuccessful, it did come pretty close. In 1897 Representative T.I. Record of Posen county introduced House Bill #246 in the Indiana House of Representatives. The bill, based on the work of a physician and amateur mathematician named Edward J. Goodwin (Edwin in some accounts), suggests not one but three numbers for pi, among them 3.2, as we shall see. The punishment for unbelievers I have not been able to learn, but I place no credence in the rumor that you had to spend the rest of your natural life in Indiana.

Just as people today have a hard time accepting the idea that the speed of light is the speed limit of the universe, Goodwin and Record apparently couldn't handle the fact that pi was not a rational number. "Since the rule in present use [presumably pi equals 3.14159...] fails to work ..., it should be discarded as wholly wanting and misleading in the practical applications," the bill declared. Instead, mathematically inclined Hoosiers could take their pick among the following formulae:

(1) The ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference is 5/4 to 4. In other words, pi equals 16/5 or 3.2

(2) The area of a circle equals the area of a square whose side is 1/4 the circumference of the circle. Working this out algebraically, we see that pi must be equal to 4.

(3) The ratio of the length of a 90 degree arc to the length of a segment connecting the arc's two endpoints is 8 to 7. This gives us pi equal to the square root of 2 x 16/7, or about 3.23.

There may have been other values for pi as well; the bill was so confusingly written that it's impossible to tell exactly what Goodwin was getting at. Mathematician David Singmaster says he found six different values in the bill, plus three more in Goodwin's other writings and comments, for a total of nine.

Lord knows how all this was supposedly to clarify pi or anything else, but as we shall see, they do things a little differently in Indiana. Bill #246 was initially sent to the Committee on Swamp Lands. The committee deliberated gravely on the question, decided it was not the appropriate body to consider such a measure and turned it over to the Committee on Education. The latter committee gave the bill a "pass" recommendation and sent it on to the full House, which approved it unanimously, 67 to 0.

In the state Senate, the bill was referred to the Committee on Temperance. (One begins to suspect it was silly season in the Indiana legislature at the time.) It passed first reading, but that's as far as it got. According to The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers, the bill "was held up before a second reading due to the intervention of C.A. Waldo, a professor of mathematics [at Purdue] who happened to be passing through." Waldo, describing the experience later, wrote, "A member [of the legislature] then showed the writer [i.e., Waldo] a copy of the bill just passed and asked him if he would like an introduction to the learned doctor, its author. He declined the courtesy with thanks, remarking that he was acquainted with as many crazy people as he cared to know."

The bill was postponed indefinitely and died a quiet death. According to a local newspaper, however, "Although the bill was not acted on favorably no one who spoke against it intimated that there was anything wrong with the theories it advances. All of the Senators who spoke on the bill admitted that they were ignorant of the merits of the proposition. It was simply regarded as not being a subject for legislation."

As for Representative T.I. Record--well, I haven't been able to confirm this. But some say he changed his name to Quayle.

THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON:
NOT WHAT IT'S CRACKED UP TO BE

Dear Cecil:

Your response to the question about attempts to legislate pi suggests not only that your scholarship is weak but that you are a heathen. When King Solomon constructed the Temple of Jerusalem, the Second Book of Chronicles, chapter 4, verses 2 and 5, tells us:

"Then he made the Sea [a big tub] of cast bronze, ten cubits from one brim to the other; it was completely round. Its height was five cubits and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference. It was a handbreadth thick; and its brim was shaped like the brim of a cup..... It contained three thousand baths."

The ratio of 30 cubits for the circumference to 10 cubits for the diameter "from one brim to the other" of the "completely round" circle gives the value of pi as being exactly 3. Perhaps reliance on the Word of God motivated the Indiana legislators you trashed. You should have checked with the ultimate reference. --H.K.S., Springfield, Virginia

Cecil replies:

Some of the mail I get is unbelievable. As I attempted to point out, the Indiana legislature did not consider making pi equal to 3, but rather to 3.2, 4, or approximately 3.23, depending on which formula you used. Neither the text of the bill nor any of the commentaries regarding it refer to the Bible. Perhaps Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kansas or one of the other states I mentioned was the one that attempted to a legislate a pi of biblical proportions.

Interesting you should bring this up, though. In 150 A.D. a Hebrew rabbi and scholar named Nehemiah attempted to explain away the anomaly in Chronicles by saying that the diameter of the tub was 10 cubits from outer rim to outer rim, whereas the 30 cubit circumference was measured around the inner rim. In other words, the difference between the biblical notion of pi and the actual value may be accounted for by the width of the tub's walls. How's that for tap dancing, eh? Nehemiah lived a long time ago, but I feel he's my spiritual kin.

--CECIL ADAMS

Hah! So I was correct ....(I think).


OK, back to good ol' blighty.....

THE LEAST SUCCESFUL EXHIBITION

The royal society for the prevention of accidents held an exhibition at Harrogate in 1968. The entire display fell down, causing injury to three people.

Not to be outdone, the USA has a go, but being America, it has to do it on a massive scale.......


THE LEAST SUCCESFUL EXPLORATION FOR OIL


Erecting the very latest equipment, Texaco workers set about drilling for oil at Lake Peigneur in Lousiana during November 1980.

After only a few hours drilling they sat back, expecting oil to shoot up. Instead, however, they watched a whirlpool form, sucking down not only the entire 1,300 acre lake, but also five houses, nine barges, eight tug boats, two oil rigs, a mobile home, most of a botanical garden, and 10 percent of nearby Jefferson Island, leaving a half-mile-wide crater. No one told them there was an abandoned salt mine underneath.

A local fisherman said he thought the world was coming to an end.

Noticing that this world record was held by an American, a Brit called Thomson decided to do something about it.....


The FASTEST FAILURE OF A DRIVING TEST

During the late seventies, the world record was held by Mrs. Helen Ireland of Auburn, California, who failed her driving test in the first second, cleverly mistaking the accelerator for the clutch and shooting straight through the wall of the Driving Test Centre.
This seemed unbeatable until 1981 when a Lanarkshire motor mechanic called Thomson failed the test before the examiner had even got into the car.
Arriving at the test centre he tooted the horn to summon the examiner, who strode out to the vehicle, said it was illegal to sound your horn while stationary ,announced that Thomson had failed and strode back in again.

This sceptered isle is rightly proud of Mr Thomson.

....and the final one for today.....as my brain is now tired...


THE WORST BOXER

Ralph Walton was knocked out in ten and a half seconds in a bout at Lewinston, Maine, USA, on 29 September 1946. It happened when Al Couture struck him as he was still adjusting his gum shield in his corner. The ten and a half seconds includes ten while he was counted out.

While the winter has been cold, we've been a little short on snow. Most rural police departments have some skill in tracking miscreants from the Scene of the Crime to the Safe Bolt Hole.