Best Trivia - Philosophy

Favorite Trivia – DISASTERS & ACCIDENTS

Maud Parrish – Nine Pounds of Luggage

Geary – The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism

“The body kept them alive for over two weeks.  Then they had to settle upon a second victim, and this time the captain was in charge of drawing lots out of concern that it would otherwise take place without him. He wrote the names on small pieces of paper, threw these into a hat and shook it.  The crew watched these preparations in silence, their faces pale and mouths quivering, their fright visibly etched on every feature.  A man drew the piece of paper; the captain opened it and read the name: David Flat.  The crew gave in to the captain’s request to postpone his slaughter until the eleventh hour of the next morning.  At ten o-clock, when a large fire was already blazing and the cauldron in place on it, a sail came into view. It was the Susanne whose captain re-victualed the ship and took her in tow.” [February 7, 1945]

Ernst Jünger – A German Officer In Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945

Eleanor Coppola – Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now

“Among humans, a single bite from an infected flea often triggered a raging fever, vomiting, and the eruption of oozing boils around the neck, armpits and groin.  Two of three infected people would be dead within days, their corpses often left to rot as those able to flee the mysterious onslaught sought escape in the next village, only to fan fear and outbreak alike.

“The resulting pandemic, known as the Black Death, killed off a third of Europe’s population in just fifty years, including more than a million people in England alone. Soon, entire English estates were devoid of architectural workers. Children were left orphans. Churchmen, including many of the country’s remaining French speakers, died by the droves or abandoned their monasteries altogether. Thriving hamlets became ghost towns almost overnight. The resultant social and economic disruption was severe, breaking down class structure and driving mass migrations.”  

John Pollack – The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

“Within weeks, new legislation decreed that all natural gas in Texas should be mixed with low concentrations of malodorants—extremely smelly chemicals, such as mercaptans, that immediately alert anyone to the presence of gas. It was an easy solution; any leak could then be detected by the human nose with plenty of warning. The practice of adding smelly chemicals to natural gas lines quickly spread worldwide . . .

“It wasn’t long before workers at the Union Oil company noticed a peculiar side effect of the scented gas.  Whenever one of their remote lines sprang a leak, a group of turkey vultures would soon collect overhead, evidently detecting the mercaptans percolating in the atmosphere. The workers began looking for circling vultures when tracking down a leak, a technique that is apparently still used today.”

Noah Strycker – The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“I bring the Moken up not simply to show that there are people who exist using what has the shape and feel of animal intelligence but rather to show what this same intelligence can do: though their village and boats were demolished, all but one of the tribe—a disabled man, who was unable to run—survived the tsunami in 2003 that took hundreds of thousands of lives. It seems that, on the day of the tsunami, an elder Moken fisherman named Salama Klathalay noticed forebodings of trouble—the tide receded abnormally, dolphins headed out for sea, cicadas on the land stopped their buzzy singing, so he alerted his fellow tribesmen, and they all climbed up a local mountain.”

Henry Alford– How To Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People

“‘Now, do you believe in God?’ a friend telephoned immediately to ask.  The sky was flashing like lightning and the rumble had barely subsided, but I’ll be damned before I’ll believe in God just because of earthquakes, I’ve seen where that can lead. ‘No,’ I said and hung up. 

“An aftershock rolled under the house again and the man I was with trembled in terror.  He had never thought about earthquakes and had only been in L.A. for a few months. 

“‘Stand under the doorframe,’ I told him because he was grabbing his clothes and would probably run outside in a minute. The worst thing you can do is run outside, phone wires being what they are. The earth rocked beneath us like a cradle and if God wants me to believe in him, I’ll do it, but only for the Pacific Ocean and sunsets.  Earthquakes are only earthquakes, but a good sunset . . . “

Eve Babitz – Eve’s Hollywood

“News today of a fearful tragedy at Lawrence, Massachusetts, one of the wholesale murders commonly known in newspaper literature as accident or catastrophe.  A huge factory, long notoriously insecure and ill-built, requiring to be patched and bandaged up with iron plates and braces to stand the introduction of its machinery, suddenly collapsed into a heap of ruins yesterday afternoon without the smallest provocation.  Some five or six hundred operatives went down with it—young girls and women mostly.  An hour or two later, while people were working frantically to dig out some two hundred still under the ruins, many of them still alive and calling for help, some quite unhurt, fire caught in the great pile of debris, and these prisoners were roasted.  It is too atrocious and horrible to think of.” [January 11, 1860]

The Hone & Strong Diaries of Old Manhattan – George Templeton Strong

San Francisco Earthquake, April 18, 1906, The Great Fire:

“San Francisco’s fire chief, Dennis Sullivan, was fatally injured in the earthquake, and so the city lost at the inception of the disaster the person who might have directed subsequent efforts wisely. The earthquake broke many water mains, so fighting the fires became far harder than it could have been. In his absence, the firefighters were joined by the army, and the latter tried reckless experiments in using explosives to make firebreaks.  There mistakes were many. 

“One was the use of black powder, or gunpowder, in place of dynamite. The latter simply blows things up; the former tends to also ignite them. Thus many buildings were turning into burning, flying brands that spread the fire farther or started new conflagrations entirely. Another was setting the firebreaks too close to the existing flames, thereby simply breaking buildings up into more flammable debris.  A third was setting explosives to buildings that contained chemicals, alcohol, and other highly flammable substances. A fourth was setting explosions that restarted or started fires in areas that were previously secure. And a fifth was keeping away from the flames the public who might have supplied the power to fight the fire by hand. . .

“Former fireman Dennis Smith reports in his San Francisco is Burning that by the second day the National Guard allowed citizens to fight fires, but the army persisted in evacuating, or evicting, them. . .  The big post office still standing today at Seventh and Mission streets was saved because ten employees refused direct orders to evacuate and put out the flames with wet mail sacks. The U.S. Mint downtown was also saved by its own employees.”

A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster – Rebecca Solnit 

“I learned from Laurie and Mirandi [Eve’s sister] that a number of her burns didn’t fully heal, are still open. And her body can no longer efficiently rid itself of heat because the fire destroyed so many of her sweat glands. Sitting in a chair at a table for an extended period, especially in warm weather, must be excruciating . . . 

“Mirandi: ‘She was wearing an Indian skirt, very, very thin, and it burned up like tissue paper.  Her panty hose melted into the skin of her legs.  She stopped the car and rolled on the grass and actually set the grass on fire.  But she did manage to put herself out. Then she got back into the car and drove to Wilton Place. I was there because I’d taken Mother home.  When she pulled into the driveway, I was talking to Mother’s neighbor, Nancy Beyda. I saw Eve, and I was aghast. She was naked from the waist down, and the lower half of her was just this awful charred orange.  She was clutching a wool sweater to her crotch, which, if you can believe it, is what saved her crotch. Good wool is hard to burn. “It’s okay,” she said to me. “I’ll put some aloe on it.  I can still go dancing.”  I guess she was supposed to have some kind of date that night with Paul. I followed her into the house and called an ambulance.’

“Eve spent six weeks in the ICU, several months after that in a rehab hospital. She survived two twelve-hour operations in which the skin from her scalp, shoulders, back, and arms was grafted onto her midsection, groin, and legs; the removal of the hundreds of staples and stitches that were keeping those grafts in place; hallucinations from ICU-induced psychosis; bedsores that had to be cut off with a knife; relearning to walk. And all while kicking smoking [cigarettes]. The doctors tried to help her cope with the withdrawal symptoms by giving her a nicotine patch, but they couldn’t because there was nowhere to put it, not a single inch of undamaged skin.

“Eve: ‘If you have third-degree burns, your nerve endings are gone, but I still screamed in pain. I was always screaming in pain, morning and night, drugs or no drugs. If I sat up in my bed, it felt like I was sitting on crushed glass . . .’ 

“Friends of Eve, the group called itself—arranged a benefit at the Chateau Marmont. An auction was staged with works donated by, among others, Ed Ruscha, Kenny Price, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, John Baldessari, and Dennis Hopper . . .

“Prior to the benefit, Friends of Eve had sent out a letter soliciting donations through the Allisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation. That’s what brought in the big money. (The Foundation was tax-exempt.)  Laurie reported back to Eve, still at Country General, told her how Steve Martin and Harrison Ford had kicked in $50,000 apiece. A prostrate Eve raised her head. Through dry, cracked lips she croaked out, ‘Blow jobs,’ before collapsing on the pillow.”

Lili Anolik – Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.