Strange but true
Q. Who put the suck into the 'suction sweeper', as the vacuum cleaner was once called? Exactly how much suck is in one? A. Today's variety can generate low air pressure equivalent to an elevation of 7,620 metres, or enough suction to yank a man through a gash in a plane's pressurised cabin, as demonstrated at the end of the James Bond film Goldfinger, says David Bodanis in The Secret House.
It all began in London, 1901, when H. Cecil Booth, a Ferris Wheel constructor, was at a convention for the unveiling of a new device, a compressed-air generator hooked up to shoot out a stream of air for clearing away common dust.
Suddenly, Booth was struck by a better idea: why not run the compressor backwards so it would suck in the dust rather than move it about? 'The concept was so awesome that he needed to test it without delay. Booth returned to his office, knelt down on the floor, spread his lips over the carpet and proceeded to suck in furiously. He fell back gagging and choking, his mouth full of dust, ecstatic that his idea worked.' Q. Can being born under the wrong astrological sign shorten your life? A. Possibly, if you're convinced it's the 'wrong' sign (similar to the workings of a voodoo curse). Among traditional Chinese, says John P. Dworetzky in Psychology, it is believed that heart disease sufferers fare worse if they were born in a 'fire' year, a year ending in a six or seven; diabetes, ulcers and cancer patients do worse if born in an 'earth' year, ending in an eight or nine. And so on. Testing the effects of such beliefs, sociologist David P. Phillips examined death records for some 28,000 'traditional' Chinese in California. He found longevity was reduced by a stunning 1.3 to 4.9 years for those who suffered from ill-fated ailments (according to their birth year) compared to non-traditional Chinese and Caucasians with the same astrological birth year and ailment.
Phillips said: 'Those who believe they will die sooner, in fact do. Depression, sadness, and resignation have all been associated with an earlier death ... It is not that people will themselves to death, but rather that expectations can influence real physical outcomes.' Q. You're at a roulette wheel betting blacks vs reds when a string of blacks gets under way. After six or seven in a row, people nearby start to notice. Then it's 10 in a row, 15, near pandemonium is breaking loose. Now you think, by the law of averages, red is overdue, so you bet $500 on the 16th spin. Smart move? A. You just fell for the common 'gambler's fallacy', the erroneous belief that one chance event can influence the next. In fact, there's no way the wheel can remember from spin to spin what came up before.
In How To Lie With Statistics, Darrell Huff recounts an extraordinary situation at a Monte Carlo casino on August 18, 1913: after 15 or so blacks in a row, everybody at the roulette table started doubling down on red, figuring it was way overdue. But not until the 27th spin did the string of blacks come to an end, and by then just about everybody was broke. Except the house, which cleaned up to the tune of several million francs.