Piet Zwart
50 additional interesting wikipedia articles
Inspired by the 50 most interesting articles on wikipedia and 50 more of wikipedia’s most interesting articles, I have been clicking away like a lab
rat at the random article button on the left hand column of every
wikipedia page, googling phrases like ‘interesting wikipedia articles’, and, I confess, borrowing heavily from the archives of best of wikipedia, to produce, for your adult edutainment, the DJ Misc list of 50 additional interesting wikipedia articles:
Stuckism
Superdollar
Chantilly lace
Oracle bone script
Alphabet
Claudian letters
Leet
Street dentistry
Dock Ellis
Sun Ra
Alchemy
Longest name
Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphioparaomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon
Kjerag
Pagan
Interesting number paradox
International Klein Blue
Orange revolution
Colors
Ukiyo-e
Love Land
Hitlers’ Cross
Forest swastika
Church of the SubGenius
Sandwich
Rumi
Floater
Language of flowers
International Talk Like a Pirate Day
Death from laughter
Sexuality of Abraham Lincoln
Chess boxing
Warp drive
Gramophone record
Megalith
Manhattanhenge
Faux Cyrillic
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher
Reality Checkpoint
Spirit of Ecstasy
Triboluminescence
Green flash
Cosmic latte
Mondegreen
Spectral evidence
The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World
Thought terminating cliché
Wikipedia
Nothing
drawing their Xs
“Ted Smallwood testified that he had not witnessed the shooting, only heard it, so he could not say that Bill House’s account was not true ‘far as it went.’ House looked disgusted but remained silent. Smallwood and a couple of others signed their names and House and the rest took pains drawing their Xs, to make sure that X would not be mistaken for somebody else’s.”
—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.
God ees all thees color?
“That Frenchman said he never held with no Father Who art in Heaven, ‘Man ees made in Hees ee-mage? Who say so? Black man? Red man? Which man? White man? Yellow man? God ees all thees color? Say tabsurde!’ ”
—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.
coral snake colors
“Mama says that Indians, too, would suffer ‘Jim Crow’ laws if we hadn’t wiped most of them out with bullets and diseases. In south Florida today, there are few left, but Papa says they have started to come in to trade at Everglade with dugouts full of deer hides, plumes, and pelts. The women like calico in yellow, red, and black—coral snake colors, says Lucius, who knows everything there is to know about Indians and the natural world of the Glades country. Probably the coral snake has sacred meaning, our little boy explains, until Eddie scoffs at this opinions, reminding him that he is only nine.”
—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.
an almighty question mark
“Ted did not feel like being teased. He reminded me that it was this day in the month before, on April 22nd, that the white wake of the Great Comet was first seen in the east, thirty degrees above the horizon, with its scorpion tail that curled across the heavens like an almighty question mark. That question mark set our preacher a-howling about the eternal War between Good and Evil, and how that scorpion tail was the first sign of Armageddon.”
—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.
Michel Polnareff
Jeff Beck – Nadia
the typeface called Janson
“[M]y first novel, The Poorhouse Fair . . . fell into the hands of Harry Ford, a perfect knight of the print world, an editor and designer both, who gave me a delicious striped jacket and an elegant page format, in the typeface called Janson, that I have stuck with for over forty books since. To see those youthful willful hopeful words of mine in that type, with Perpetua chapter heads set off by tapered rules, was an elevated moment I am still dizzy from.”
—John Updike, “Of Prizes And Print”, 1998.
10-point Janson
“I drank up women’s tears and spat
them out
as 10-point Janson, Roman and ital.”
—John Updike, Endpoint and Other Poems, 2009.