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There is this story of a street-entertainer-cum-vendor selling bottles of an elixir which he claimed would prolong life indefinitely. And claimed he was 958 years old but looking young, as you can see. One old man in the crowd wanted to know from his assistant if his boss was really speaking the truth (before he bought a bottle). The assistant said:
"Don't ask me, I don't know...he may be bluffing...I've been with him for only 656 years"
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There is this uniquely human weakness for record-setting and hunting. Once upon a time there was only the Guiness:
It had weird entries (click on the above link) including KGP for the longest railway platform in the world. KGP has other records not in the Guiness but let it go...
Then I saw in the Thackers Window a new book of Records named for a soft-drink. I then saw that the market has opened up.
Abraham Lincoln was tall (6' 4"):
On top of it he wore a stovepipe hat. And he had LEGS!
When asked how long one's legs should be, he is supposed to have remarked:
"Long enough to reach the ground"
That, I suppose, says it all about records. By the way, this quote I picked up from Dr David Reuben's Kama Shastra.
Our British Viceroys had a passion for killing our tigers and taking their skins and heads as trophies:
"...The number of wild Tigers in India dropped starting in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th
century, thanks to the British and Indian royalty alike going out on
elephants with huge hunting parties to hunt them for “Sport”. Like with
other animals and people, fire arms changed the dynamic totally against
the powerful Tiger.
http://www.connect-green.com/kingdom-of-the-tiger-in-decline/
Don't think that it was always their shots that killed their victims...just read Jim and you will find that more often than not, an Indian lackey of theirs was stationed behind them whose shot actually hit the tiger...and it was credited to the Raja Babu....bullet-holes don't come with names on them.
Anyway the first thing the Viceroy did after 'killing' his tiger and before skinning it was to take its measurements...just to set the record straight...
"Male Bengal tigers have an average total length of 270 to 310 cm (110 to
120 in) including the tail, while females measure 240 to 265 cm (94 to
104 in) on average.[8]
The tail is typically 85 to 110 cm (33 to 43 in) long, and on average,
tigers are 90 to 110 cm (35 to 43 in) in height at the shoulders.[9] The average weight of males is 221.2 kg (488 lb), while that of females is 139.7 kg (308 lb).[10]
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Coming to the world of sports, I better not talk of cricket. There was a time during my youth when every kid at IIT KGP had the cricket 'stats' at his fingertips...to gain entry into the sanctum sanctorum. Then on, cricket has been first democratized by the one-day color ball thing started in the 1970s by the 'rebel' Kerry Packer:
"Packer was famously quoted from a 1976 meeting with the Australian Cricket Board,
with whom he met to negotiate the rights to televise cricket. According
to witnesses, he said: "There is a little bit of the whore in all of
us, gentlemen. What is your price?"[5]....wiki"
My father used to crow about the Tennis Great, Ramanathan Krishnan (the Madras Syndrome) saying that none could match his 'touch play'. And then I watched the longest ever of tennis rallies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkvDbqAPE28
But the best was perhaps the shortest ones raining aces for an impatient onlooker like me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDodT82MpbY
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Coming to the world of academics in which I lived for forty years, a record of sorts, I went to our Central Library at IIT KGP to have a look at the sample Ph D theses before I wrote my own. The bulkiest was in two fat volumes, I and II, each of about 400 pages. And the slimmest was about 90 pages...both the records held by the ME Dept...that itself is a record...
Received wisdom for promotions at one time was to guide the maximum number of Ph D's. A hypothetical candidate entered the Interview Room carrying TEN theses and was asked:
"Put them down...how many crores of rupees of project money have you brought to our Institute which is struggling for financial autonomy?"
And when he next went in with Rs 10 crores, he was told:
"I hear you are the worst-ever teacher any IIT ever had"
Even Feynman was not above it. I read that he announced a prize for the tiniest running motor in the world and when finally a gent entered his room carrying a big box, Feynman asked him to go away till the contender said:
"This box contains the best portable microscope to see my tiny motor"
SDM told me that when he was HoD, a junior prof once entered his Office with a bulky book and asked SDM to send it to the Establishment Section to 'attach it to his Personal File'.
When SDM asked him why, he opened the 'Author Index' and showed his name there.
SDM told me that the big fat book bounced from the Establishment Section with the Note:
"No Room"
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By the way, do you know any other guy who posted more than 1000 blogs in 3 years flat?
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