Dr. Boli shares brief anecdotes about remarkable animals, including a talented pigeon who can transform into a dove.  So very funny, as usual. 

An illustration from a 1917 issue of Saturday Evening Post magazine.  The caption reads: "Do you not see its fearful eye staring at me through the wall?  Save me from it!"

An illustration from a 1910 issue of Hampton's magazine.  The caption reads: "We all know how corrupt and wicked city folks are."

A precursor to Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman?  From Everybody's Magazine, 1906.

"It may surprise you that the moon is included in your itinerary."
—Foundations of Astronomy (2012)

An illustration from a 1906 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "David's eyes were on the distance."

We're reading a bawdy farce of old-time radio (The Pleasure Dial by Jeremy Edwards), and the spectacles are one of the tools we use whenever we delve into material from (or set in) the past (to help filter and focus the mists of time, naturally).

What has us so delighted?  It's a passage in Chapter 22, involving imaginary water.  (Jeremy Edwards is the first author we've encountered who is witty enough to make a glass of water hilarious.)  Here are the lines, though we mustn't explain the context lest we ruin a plot twist:

This Pandora appears in a 1904 issue of Saturday Evening Post magazine.  The caption reads: "A common, battered tin box . . . but it held tragedy—more than tragedy."

"Our Higher Self is at all times there for us—a constant and eternal companion and the only certainty that we can count on."
—Brigitte Arora, Transformation of the Human-Animal (2012)

An illustration from an 1861 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "Antelope in the mirage."

"You may find it hard to believe that some of the things I discuss have been studied—I found it hard to believe myself at times—but rest assured that I am not simply making things up."
—Andrew Trees, Decoding Love (2010)

An illustration from a 1906 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "She sat staring into the fire."

I dreamed X was a broken question mark.*

*as per Juan Felipe Herrera's Crash Boom Love: A Novel in Verse, 1999

"'A rose is a rose is a rose' . . . doesn't actually hold true for different types of damask rose oils: rose otto is preferable over rose absolute as the former is not extracted using chemical solvents."
—Stephanie Gailing, Planetary Apothecary (2012)

"It is surprising but true that many people are born with talent but are not aware of it themselves."
—Gita Vittal, Reflections (2007)

An illustration from a 1906 issue of Harper's magazine.

"Animal, vegetable, or mineral?"  An illustration from a 1914 issue of Saturday Evening Post magazine.

An illustration from a 1904 issue of Life magazine.  The caption reads: "He centered his eye upon us."

The internet isn't especially forthcoming about the origin of the "shoe tree" phenomenon.  But here's a precursor to the world's largest shoe tree (of Hawthrone, Nevada, callously felled by vandals in 2011).  This vintage shoe tree appears in Punch, 1848.

"This might surprise you to hear me, of all people, say this -- we don't live in a courtroom, we live in the real world."
—Matthew W. Grant, Zach's Secret

An illustration from a 1900 issue of The Strand magazine.

Dedicated to Teresa Burritt.

photo by Cobalt 123

"Parenthetically, 'He must needs go whom the devil drives.'"
—John Hull, quoted in Francis J. Bremer's First Founders (2012)

An illustration from a 1906 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "When I came back he was still staring at the water."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but the ballet world seems almost cultish."
—Sophie Flack, Bunheads

"The answer is simple. 'Do not be anxious about anything.'”

—Ajith Fernando, An Authentic Servant (2012)

This serpent wrangler is from an 1883 issue of Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly magazine.

An illustration from an 1898 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.  The caption reads: "They were hard at work worshiping me."

An illustration from an 1864 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "Soft shineth the moon."

An illustration from a 1912 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "I'm going to the moon, because that's where you and me came from."

"Surprising, but true ... just as the individual life must reimagine the lost worlds of its childhood, so the collective life of even the modern world itself is built out of, and requires, a retelling of stories of its collective parts."
—Charles Lemert, Social Things: An Introduction to the Sociological Life (2011)

photo by Cobalt 123

"'Now you'll have something to write about,' she said one afternoon in the kitchen, apropos of nothing, talking without talking at all about the terrible thing that was happening to her as, instead, a terrible thing that was happening to me."
—Anna Quindlen, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake (2012)

An illustration from a 1919 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.  The caption reads: "It took him less than ten minutes to reduce the trunk to a mass of splinters."

Dedicated to Teresa Burritt.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

An illustration from a 1911 issue of Scribner's magazine.  The caption reads: "He turned and faced the rising sun, the light full on his face."

"It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them."
—Agatha Christie

(via FutilityCloset)

The entirety of history: "nothing, something, something, something, maybe something, nothing, something, something, something, something and not at once, something, something, assuredly there must be something, nothing." —William Keckler

An illustration from a 1910 issue of Scribner's magazine.  The caption reads: "There was a whir of wheels in the air, a lurch into space."

1. Your wish is that I wish what you secretly wish.
2. Within a two-hour period, you have eaten an amount of food that most people would consider excessive.
3. You've ruled out the possibility that you're being overly suspicious.
4. You know who she is and she knows what she is.
5. That time you said you loved the chocolate cake, you threw up a little in your mouth.
6. The fact that you tend to stay up through the hours of darkness has nothing to do with a craving for blood.
7. When you lie you break out in a rash.
8. You pray to be forgiven for doing that thing with the thing.
9. There's just no explaining that whatchamacallit.
10. You secretly dream of waking up as a Canadian.
11. Maybe it's time to stop not doing what you pretended you can do and can't, and start doing the thing that you can't do but can no longer pretend that you can.
12. Your secret desire is my deepest fear.
13. You can't listen to very much Wagner because you start getting the urge to conquer Poland.
14. You're so busy with work that you don't have time to "give back to society.”
15. You have neither the money nor the know-how to get that thingamajig out of your head.
16. You've ruled out deranged psychopathy and decided it sounds like fun.
17. Nobody knows what you carry about with you in your pocket.
18. No one will ever suspect that you have the whatsit in your possession.
19. Your secret desire is to bust out that straw-cowboy-hat-and-flip-flops look without looking out of place.
20. You have drunk champagne out of the slipper of a dancing girl.
21. You want to live better than you do now and work fewer hours.
22. You did not mean what you said that day we parted.
23. You have a playroom all to yourself.
24. You want to found a new religion.
25. Though talkative and often high-strung, your secret desire is to be with someone to whom you don't have to say a word, someone whose eyes are hypnotic and whose arms are soothing and strong.
26. You secretly dream of being in front of the camera.

I dreamed I read the great American novel.

"Though I just said it, it bears repeating: take it easy."
—Tara Stiles, Yoga Cures (2012)

An illustration from an 1869 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "Specture of the Brocken."

For Martha Brockenbrough.

An illustration from a 1911 issue of Scribner's magazine.  The caption reads: "It was perhaps a little past the third hour after midnight....He stretched both hands across the table...and whispered a name."

"Neither Darwin nor Dawkins, neither science nor philosophy, has explained how an irreducibly complex system such as a watch might be produced without a designer."
—Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box (2001)

An illustration from a 1920 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "Dropping their H's."

"The only certainty is that exceptions occur."
—Rand Wilcox, Modern Statistics for the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2011)

An illustration from an 1861 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "Captain Toby runs to save the vinegar."

Dedicated to Jonathan.

"YOU are indubitably the most important person you will ever meet in your world, in your lifetime.  No one nor anything will ever have as much impact or influence on YOU as YOU."*
—Jeanne Dolphus Cotton, Getting It Together: You, Life and Living (1995)

An illustration from a 1904 issue of Scribner's magazine.

Did you know that the phrase "Nothing or a duck's egg" is a Googlewhack?  From Punch, 1877.

The first image is from the exceptionally witty British panel show "Would I Lie To You?"  It depicts Greg Davies' "Hoot Owl Death Sign," from a schoolboy prank (or was it?)  The second image is from Appleton's magazine, 1905: "He had discovered the death-emblem."

The precursor to the crop circle was the crop pentagram.  (For evidence, see Scientific American, April 9, 1864.)

"This might surprise you, but these alabaster marvels are dentures."
—Lisa Lutz, Heads You Lose

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

An illustration from an 1899 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.

"Surprisingly, it turns out that any statement about all elements of an empty set is true. This rule is called vacuous truth."
—Algorithms and Data Structures: The Science of Computing (2004)

An illustration from a 1904 issue of Scribner's magazine.

"Someone should write a book and fill every page with the credo, Don't drop the soap."
—Terra Little, Jump (2011)

An illustration from an 1874 issue of Harper's magazine.

Out of context, it appears that everyone is expecting the man with a beard and turban to initiate contact with the Beyond.  The caption reads: "Why not try the long-distance telephone?"  This fakir's no faker!  From The Saturday Evening Post, 1911.

An illustration from an 1893 issue of Pall Mall magazine.

Our daily "Music Box Moment" features a baker's dozen new tracks.  Through the delicate workings of the music box, even the most dramatic compositions seem to play only for you.  You’ll hear even a very familiar piece in a whole new way.  Courtesy of home recording pioneer Ken Clinger, we now feature Handel's "Flute Sonata #7," three movements of Mozart's "Piano Sonata 11," Weiss' "Air," four movements of Chopin's "Piano Sonata 1," Zielenski's "Fantazja II," Saint-Saens' "Rondo," Zach's "Praeludium & Fuga," and Wartecki's "Nos Autem Gloriari Oportet."

Here's the link to the music box.  It makes a great bookmark!

"A mystery and a trick are generally two sides of the same object, according as it is turned to the view of the beholder."
—The Works of Robert Hall

An illustration from an 1879 issue of Harper's magazine.

Our friend at Frog Blog found a precursor to our own highly controversial atlas of blank maps.

"If it's really happening, a series of things is going to happen."
—Jim Moorhead, The Instant Survivor (2012)

An illustration from a 1900 issue of The Strand magazine.  The caption reads: "Small interposed it in time to save his head."