(Roughly) Daily

Divergent thinking, courtesy of Carla Sinclair…

Here’s a fun party trick. Fill a plastic cup halfway with water and ask guests how to make the cup full without pouring. They might try thinking of other ways to get more water into the cup without having to pour, when they should actually be thinking of how to shrink the cup down to size.

Here’s the simple stunt in action:

Ingenuity: “How do you make a half-filled cup of water full without actually pouring?,” from @Carla_Sinclair in @BoingBoing.

* Frequently-used marketing copy

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As we light it up, we might recall that it was on this date in 1926 that J. Gordon Whitehead punched Harry Houdini– resulting, some days later, in Houdini’s death.

Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead was the McGill University student who punched Houdini in his dressing room at the Princess Theater in Montreal on October 22, 1926. Whitehead’s blows either started, contributed, or covered-up the appendicitis that would take Houdini’s life nine days later.

J. Gordon Whitehead was born November 25, 1895 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He was 31 when the dressing room incident occurred. Popular mythology states that he was a boxer, but this is not true. It’s also not clear whether Whitehead’s intent was to harm Houdini that day, or if it was a misunderstanding.

Whitehead was not charged in the incident and lived out a solitary life in Montreal. At some point he had an accident which resulted in a steal plate being placed in his head. In 1928 Whitehead was charged twice for shoplifting books. In his later years the troubled Whitehead lived as a recluse and hoarder. He died of malnutrition on July 5, 1954…

Wild About Harry

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