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Weekend


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August 13, 2004

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. Just how desperate would your territorial predicament be if you were promised only as much land as could be enclosed by the skin of an ox? That was the story of Phoenician Princess Dido, circa 900 B.C.E.

    A. Forced to flee from her ruthless brother, she went by ship to Africa where she tried to buy land from a local ruler, who rendered the strange ox bargain, says John A. Adam in "Mathematics in Nature: Modeling Patterns in the Natural World." According to Virgil's "Aeneid," Dido understood the "isoperimetric problem" — that of all perimeters, a circle will enclose maximum area. (From "The


     
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