MEMORY
Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried, but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
—Daniel 12:10
3351 Mountbatten Remembers All Servants
On a visit to Toronto, Lord Louis Mountbatten promptly asked for a list of names of all waiters, drivers and others who would serve him during his stay, with notes as to each man’s war service, decorations, etc. It took some scurrying, but an aide got the information, had it typed, took it to Mountbatten. The Admiral said, “Read it to me.” The aide read it slowly while Mountbatten listened. From then on, during his entire stay, Mountbatten called by name those who served him chatting with them about their experience with easy informality.
—Toronto Financial Post
3352 Eidetic Memory
Mehmed Ali Halici of Ankara, Turkey, recited 6,666 verses of the Koran from memory in six hours. The recitation was followed by six Koran scholars. Eidetic memory, the ability to reproject and thus “visually” recall material, is rare in man, and when discovered, is a source of awe and admiration.
3353 Memorizing 6-Hour Recital Of Nonsense
A 22-year-old law student at the University of Padua, Italy, gave the following demonstration of an astounding memory in 1561: He listened to one continuous recital of 36,000 words of gibberish, barbarous, disconnected and meaningless—a sort of 16th-century doubletalk. After this single audition, he was able to repeat the entire six-hour-long recital from memory—either in the original order or reversed. He could also spice his performance by alternately skipping every second and third word.
3354 De Gaulle’s Famous Memory
In certain instances, if President Charles de Gaulle wants to charm or dazzle, he gives one a glimpse of his phenomenal memory.
A prominent financier was called to discuss a complicated technical problem. With the help of his associates, he had prepared a careful summation. His arguments were closely reasoned and in perfect order. He had committed them to memory and recorded his talk on tape. It covered 11 points and took exactly 16 minutes.
He was ushered in and invited courteously to explain his problem. The banker discussed the 11 points according to plan. When he finished, de Gaulle took over, repeated the 11 points without distortion and in order, and methodically gave his advice on each one.
The financier left stupefied with admiration and permanently won over.
—Pierre Viansson-Ponte
3355 Memorizing “Pi” to 4,000th
The highest number of places in which the mathematical “Pi” has been memorized is 4,000 by a student in a Brooklyn High School, USA. He wrote it out in 7 hours in 1976. He also offered to do the feat in reverse.
3356 Historic Memories
Henry the Second is said to have always known again those he once saw. Michelet says of Lewis the Eleventh that he seemed to know every one—in fact the whole kingdom, man by man. Montezuma, monarch of unhappy renown, knew the name of every man in the army, and was careful to discriminate his proper rank.
—Francis Jacob
3357 More Historic Memories
Dr. Johnson, it is said, never forgot any thing that he had seen, heard, or read. Burke, Clarendon, Gibbon, Locke, Tillotson, were all distinguished for strength of memory. Sir William Hamilton observes, “For intellectual power of the highest order, none were distinguished above Grotius and Pascal; and Grotius and Pascal forgot nothing they had ever read or thought. Leibnitz and Euler were not less celebrated for their intelligence than for their memory; and both could repeat the whole of the “Aeneid.”
Ben Jonson tells us, that he could repeat all that he had ever written, and whole books that he had read. Themistocles could call by their names the twenty thousand citizens of Athens. Cyrus is reported to have known the name of every soldier in his army.
Hortensius (after Cicero, the greatest orator of Rome), after sitting a whole day at a public sale, correctly enunciated, from memory, all the things sold, their prices, and the names of their purchasers. Niebuhr, the historian, was not less distinguished for his memory than for his acuteness … In his youth, he was employed in one of the public offices of Denmark. Part of a book of accounts having been destroyed, he restored it by an effort of memory.
—Dr. Winslow
3358 Retention Limit: 7 Items
Dr. George A. Miller, conducting a study for the Office of Naval Research, discovered that the average person can remember accurately only 7 items on any list read to him.
Dr. Miller offers this intriguing suggestion: Perhaps, since the human memory is limited to 7, this might explain why the number of 7 crops up so often—the 7 wonders of the world, the 7 notes of the musical scale, the 7 seas, the 7 deadly sins, the 7 ages of man.
3359 Epigram On Memory
• A well-trained memory is one that permits you to forget everything that isn’t worth remembering.
—Battista
REMEMBRANCES
3360 The Bugle’s Muted Note
From the steeple of St. Mary’s Church in Cracow, Poland, the bugle has been sounded every day for the last seven hundred years. The last note on the bugle is always muted and broken, as if some disaster had befallen the bugler. This seven hundred-year commemoration is in memory of a heroic trumpeter who one night sounded a blast on his trumpet and summoned the people to defend their city against the hordes of the invading Tartars. As he was sounding the last blast on his trumpet, an arrow from one of the Tartars struck him and killed him. Hence the muffled note at the end.
—C. E. Macartney
3361 Monument To A Leg
A monument to a man’s leg was erected on the Saratoga battlefield in honor of Benedict Arnold, one-time hero of the Continental Army but who later tried to betray West Point and then fled to England.
Because Arnold was instrumental in winning the crucial battle of Saratoga where his left leg was wounded, General Depeyster had the monument erected at his own expense. The rest of the betrayer’s body and his face were not to be commemorated!
The inscription beside the boot nowhere carries the name of Benedict Arnold. It reads:
In memory of the most brilliant soldier of the Continental Army, who was desperately wounded on this spot … 7th October, 1777, winning for his countrymen the decisive battle of the American Revolution, and for himself the rank of major general.”
3362 The Old Man’s Folly
In the Mount Hope Cemetery of Hiawatha, Kan., there is a strange memorial to a farmer and his wife. Himself an orphan, John M. Davis came to dislike his wife’s family. Accordingly, he arranged that his fortune—well over $250,000—would not go to any of his wife’s relatives, but would be invested in an elaborate tomb for himself and his wife.
There are statues of Mrs. Davis—who died at the age of 70 in 1930—and of the Davises as young lovers, seated discreetly at opposite ends of a loveseat. Davis is clean shaven and has both his hands.
The other statues show him with a long beard and without his left hand, which he lost in an accident. They depict the farmer and his wife at various stages of their lives.
The first statues commissioned by Davis shortly after his wife died were of Kansas granite. They show the farmer as a lonely man seated beside an empty chair bearing the inscription “the vacant chair.”
One statue shows Davis kneeling and placing a wreath in front of the tombstone, marking his wife’s final resting place. Davis himself, an eccentric farmer, died in 1974 at the age of 92.
Now the costly tomb, because of its weight, is slowly sinking into the ground. There are no funds for the upkeep of the memorial, and the townspeople are resentful that Davis did not invest his money in a swimming pool for the children or in a hospital that was desperately needed in the thirties.
What is seen is now referred to as “The old man’s folly.”
—Prairie Overcomer
3363 Doughnut Seller’s Monument
One of the strangest things “Believe-it-or-Not” Ripley told about was the woman in Genoa, Italy, called the “Doughnut Seller.” For fifty-two years Paisanan sold doughnuts on the streets until she had made enough money to set up for herself a beautiful statue of herself to be placed in the cemetery of Genoa. The statue was finished before her death, and she “spent the last three years of her life gazing at it.”
—Christian Victory
3364 Monument Of The Statues
In Kissimmee, Florida, there is a monument built of 1,500 stones from the 48 states and from 23 foreign countries. It is called the Monument of the States.
Conceived by Dr. Charles D. Bressler-Pettis, the idea for the structure took years to materialize. On a 12-year tour of the world the doctor collected many unusual stones. For example, there is a fragment of rock from the original foundation of the Washington Monument and a piece of Vermont granite from the birthplace of Brigham Young.
Other odd stones include some from the walls of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Hyde Park estate, granite and petrified wood from North Dakota, buffalo horns and tiny stones from Montana, and a good-luck pocket stone from India. There is also a piece of pink limestone from Puerto Rico.
The idea of the structure is to use stones to symbolize friendship among all the states of the union and between all the nations of the world. This Monument of the States was completed in 1943.
—Arthur Tonne
3365 The Gateway Arch
Curving gracefully to a height of 630 feet, the Gateway Arch of St. Louis, Missouri, is the nation’s highest monument. Tourists have the option of climbing l, 076 steps or riding a capsule to the observation deck, where at the apex they may look east and west for thirty miles.
The arch memorializes the spirit of the pioneers who settled the West after the Louisiana Purchase.
—Gospel Herald
3366 Buried Right In Mid-Street
Right in the middle of the highway at Midlothian, Virginia, there is a singular monument to an old-time country doctor. He had done such service to the community that the people wanted to erect a memorial to him in the village while he was yet alive. But the doctor was too modest for that and said, “When I die, you all just bury me wherever I be.”
Shortly afterward, as he was driving his buggy on his way to a sick patient, he died there in the middle of the road; and there today, right in the middle of the road, so that you have to drive your automobile round it as you pass through the village, stands that singular monument.
—C. E. Macartney
3367 The Little Manikin Of Brussels
Europe’s best known statue is “The Little Minikin,” a 20-inch bronze figure of a boy that has stood in the heart of Brussels for about 500 years. During this time, celebrities including Louis XV and Napoleon presented him with many medals, swords and other gifts, as well as nearly 50 fancy uniforms which he wore on appropriate occasions. Among them were the dress of a Belgian Grenadier, a French Chevalier, a Chinese Manchu, a British Master of Hounds, an Indian Chief and an American G. I.
3368 A Non-Monument In U.S.A.
Growing tired of the bicentennial celebration in the United States, Eskill Rmgdahl of Rome, N. Y., displayed a plaque given to him as a joke by a friend eleven years ago. The plaque reads: “N.O.N. Historical Marker. On this spot February 29, 1776, absolutely nothing happened.”
3369 Monument To A Tomato Eater
At Newport, Rhode Island, there stands a monument to Michele Felice Corne, who first dared to eat a tomato, despite the age-old idea there had been to that time that tomatoes were poisonous.
3370 Leaning Tower Of Pisa
Italian scientists wonder, too. Each year since 1911 a professor from the University of Pisa has measured the slant of the Tower of Pisa. Each year the measurement has shown the old tower leaning a fraction of an inch more.
The tower was started in 1173 by the famous architect and builder, Bonano Pisano. He stopped work in 1185 when the tower was only three-and-one-half floors high.
Ninety years later a second architect added three-and-one-half circular tiers. The tower was leaning when he started. He should have torn it down and started with the foundation. Instead he tried to fix the lean by straightening the uper tiers to make up for the tower’s slant.
Eighty years passed before a third architect put a domed eighth floor on the tower. Still it leaned.
Scientists say that the foundation must be rebuilt, with the 14.500-ton tower held in place by some means. Unless this is done, they say, the 800-year-old tower will inevitably fall. It is currently leaning 17 feet.
According to Mechanix Illustrated, electricity could help straighten it out. A current passing between iron electrodes planted in the ground on the side away from the tilt would draw the water out of the soil beneath the tower’s high side, letting the side settle as the soil compressed. This was propounded by Melvin I. Esrig of Cornell University.
3371 He Avoided Eiffel Tower
Before the war, Elliot Paul maintained an apartment in Paris. One day his friends learned that he had rented desk space in the restaurant on the first landing stage of the Eiffel Tower. An incredulous reporter from the Paris Herald found him there, typing away contentedly on a story. “Well”, said the reporter, “you certainly must be attached to the Eiffel Tower!” “Attached to it!” snorted Paul. “This is the only place in Paris where I can avoid seeing that thing!”
3372 Wonders Of The World
I. Seven Wonders of Antiquity:
1. Pyramids of Egypt
2. Hanging Gardens of Babylon
3. Mausolus’ Tomb
4. Temple of Diana in Ephesus
5. Colossus of Rhodes
6. Pharos of Egypt
7. Palace of Cyrus
II. Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages:
1. Coliseum of Rome
2. Catacombs of Alexandria
3. Great Wall of China
4. Stonehenge
5. Leaning Tower of Pisa
6. Porcelain Tower of Nanking
7. Mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople
3373 Epigram On Memory (Remembrance)
• On the pedestal of the old monument to Luther at Wittenburg is this legend, “If this be the work of God it will endure. lf not it must go down.”
—J. H. Bomberger
• Judge John Lomenzo took a friend’s youngster on a sight-seeing tour of Washington, D. C. When they got to the Washington Monument the missile-minded moppet stared and said, “They’ll never get it off the ground.”
—New York Herald Tribune
See also: Conscience ; Reputation ; Thinking.