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January 19, 2001

Strange But True!

  • A weekly column of incidental information, off-the-wall observations and other random facts about the world.
    • By BILL SONES AND RICH SONES, PH.D.
    Special to the Journal

    Q. A World War II British mine expert was investigating an unusual object washed ashore along the Thames River. An 8-foot cylinder, it lacked torpedo propellers or the mooring chains of contact mines. So why did he remove all keys from his person before bravely approaching?

    A. It was late 1939, and dozens of British ships had been blown up in shallow waters where no submarines had been detected and which had been swept for ordinary contact mines, says James Livingston in “Driving Force: The Natural Magic of Magnets.”

    Then English spotters saw German aircraft dropping cylindrical objects that parachuted into the river and disappeared below the surface. By lucky accident, one of these was now in full view. Suspecting a magnetic trigger, the expert removed all magnetic objects from pockets and approached with nonmagnetic tools. “Fortunately for him and for Great Britain, he successfully dismantled the device.”

    The crucial piece of the complex trigger to the 650 pounds of high explosives was a small magnet much like a compass needle, that would respond to a large nearby steel object like a ship and close an electric circuit — kaboom!

    “Degaussing” became a countermeasure, i.e., girdling ships in current-carrying cables to cancel any magnetic fields. But this was slow and expensive, so soon degaussed tugboats dragged long electrical cables through waters to trigger mines harmlessly. Other ships used electromagnets so powerful they triggered mines far ahead of the bow.

    By late 1940, Hitler’s first “secret weapon” was no longer a major threat, says Livingston.


    Q. As between your Brooklyn lover and Bronx lover, you can never decide. So you follow fate, hopping the subway at random times each day, taking whichever lover’s train comes first. Since you’ve been assured each one comes every 30 minutes, your love should be 50-50 over time. Two satisfied paramours! Will train potluck keep your romance on track?

    A. You thought so but Mr. Brooklyn wound up seeing you too much, Mr. Bronx not enough, dulling Cupid’s arrows. Oh my, your bi-polar heart is breaking! What went wrong?

    Nobody told you that while both trains indeed come every 30 minutes, the Brooklyn train comes always five minutes after the Bronx train. So for every 25-minute interval where you can chance upon a Bronx train, you have only a 5-minute interval to chance upon a Brooklyn train.

    Love derailed 5-to-1. Go figure! (from “Innumeracy,” by John Allen Paulos)


    Q. Any chance Mom or Dad caught your very first smile on camera? Dream on.

    A. Embryologists have spotted eye movements in fetuses only twenty weeks old, suggesting a REM-like state (the rapid eye movements of dreaming sleep) before they’re born, says Harvard’s J. Allan Hobson in “Dreaming as Delirium.”

    A fascinating possibility is these fetal dreams are trial runs for behaviors to come, as brain circuits are laid out and blueprinted in utero. So it’s likely your first smiles were fetal smiles, or if not there, while you were REMing away in your bassinet, unseen by loving eyes.

    The human fetus spends most of its last uterine days in a REM-like state, mentally rehearsing for the world ahead. Not only smiles of happiness but frowns of displeasure, grimaces of pain, thumb-suckings to fine-tune the act of swallowing are among the many instinctual acts “preprogrammed by the self-activated brain, in REM, long before they are put to the service of survival.”


    Have any STRANGE comments or questions? Send comments to Matt Brown or brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@compuserve.com


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