July 28, 2004
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163 YEARS AGO TODAY
Jul 28 1841
James Boulard and Henry Mallin pull the decomposed body of a young woman from the Hudson River near Hoboken, New Jersey. Mary Cecilia Rogers, who worked at a popular cigar store, is initially thought to have been killed in the course of a brutal gang rape, but ultimately it seems more likely that she died from a botched abortion. Years later, novelist Edgar Allen Poe adapts the sensational news story about "The Beautiful Cigar Girl" into the short story "The Mystery of Marie Roget."
"THERE are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them. Such sentiments --- for the half-credences of which I speak have never the full force of thought --- such sentiments are seldom thoroughly stifled unless by reference to the doctrine of chance, or, as it is technically termed, the Calculus of Probabilities. Now this Calculus is, in its essence, purely mathematical; and thus we have the anomaly of the most rigidly exact in science applied to the shadow and spirituality of the most intangible in speculation."
- Edgar Allen Poe, The Mystery of Marie Roget
A SEQUEL TO "THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE."
Comments (2)
Great comment by Poe, and I may have to lift it for an intro to any Statistics courses. But I don't think I"ll be teaching any statistics courses next semseter. Not even a survey of math course with a chapter on stats. Drat... Now I'll have to figure out how to archive that so I'll remember to retrieve it when I need it.
I should try to read them.
Yeah. I wrote it down on a note card thing I have! Wait, where's the note card...?!
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