The following telegram was read to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1884:

MONOTREMES OVIPAROUS, OVUM MEROBLASTIC

It was described as "the most important message in a scientific sense that had ever passed through the submarine cables."

What was it about?

(a) A species of coral.

(b) A tribe of jungle-dwellers.

(c) Evidence of microscopic meteorites.

(d) The nature of the platypus.

Here are the quotes from the Hemingway Quiz, matched to their sources.

...as a child one really knew too much about Spain and China, and France was interesting while Spain and China were familiar, and daily. France was not daily it just came up again and again.
It came up first in such different books, Jules Verne and Alfred de Vigny and it came up in my mother's clothes and the gloves and the sealskin caps and muffs and the boxes they came in.
There was the smell of Paris in that.
Paris France, Gertrude Stein
(all entries correct)

"I cannot stand this life here. If you want to hold on to me, we must leave and go somewhere else, to southern France, or to Spain." "I cannot go abroad... I came here in order to stay here. I will stay here." And in a contradiction he didn't bother to explain, he added as if speaking to himself: "Now what could have attracted me to this desolate land other than the desire to stay?"
The Castle, Franz Kafka
(RWH and Eric correct)

It felt comfortable to be in a country where it is so simple to make people happy. You can never tell whether a Spanish waiter will thank you. Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me back. I would dine there again some time and he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France.
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
(all entries correct)

No one in his senses supposed that there was any hope of democracy, even as we understand it in England or France, in a country so divided and exhausted as Spain would be when the war was over. It would have to be a dictatorship, and it was clear that the chance of a working-class dictatorship had passed.
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
(all entries correct)

The Rome of two thousand years ago rose on the shores of Lake Michigan, a Rome improved by pieces of France, Spain, Athens and every style that followed it. It was a "Dream City" of columns, triumphal arches, blue lagoons, crystal fountains and popcorn. Its architects competed on who could steal best, from the oldest source and from the most sources at once.
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
(RWH correct)

To the westward, the northward, and the southward, as far as I could see, lay a boundless sheet of apparently unruffled ocean, which every moment gained a deeper and deeper tint of blue. At a vast distance to the eastward, although perfectly discernable, extended the islands of Great Britain, the entire Atlantic coasts of France and Spain, with a small portion of the northern part of the continent of Africa. Of individual edifices not a trace could be discovered, and the proudest cities of mankind had utterly faded away from the face of the earth.
"The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall", Edgar Allan Poe
(RWH and Eric correct)

We shall remember something of pleasant France; and something also of Paris, though it flashed upon us a splendid meteor, and was gone again, we hardly knew how or where. We shall remember, always, how we saw majestic Gibraltar glorified with the rich coloring of a Spanish sunset and swimming in a sea of rainbows.
The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain
(none correct)

When the war ended, the young rakehell of the Rumfoord family, Remington Rumfoord, IV, proposed to sail his steam yacht, the Scheherazade, around the world, visiting Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, India, China, and Japan. He invited Johnson to accompany him as first mate, and Johnson agreed.
Johnson saw many wonders of the world on the voyage.
Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
(Eric and Team Gareth correct)

Is the Hemingway sentence distinctive? Among these small samples, he does stand out in a calculation of the average number of words per sentence:
12.0 Hemingway
12.5 Kafka
19.0 Vonnegut
20.0 Stein
21.0 Rand
27.5 Twain
29.0 Orwell
31.7 Poe

And Papa's average word length is the second shortest:
3.88 Kafka
3.98 Hemingway
4.08 Stein
4.19 Orwell
4.54 Rand
4.60 Twain
4.69 Poe
4.86 Vonnegut

Congratulations to RWH and Eric for 6/8 entries and thanks to all contributors!

Here are the answers to the quiz:

True statements:

The mass of an object is not related to the rate at which it falls.

Electricity is the result of electrons moving through a conductor.

Ponds form a skin of ice on their surface because ice is less dense than fluid water.

Ignoring air resistance, an object dropped into a tunnel through the center of the earth would oscillate from end to end indefinitely.

Misconceptions:

Light coming from the sun is parallel.

An aircraft wing creates lift because air has to travel farther over the top surface than the bottom.

Sound travels better through solids.

A lemon can be used to light a flashlight bulb.

Infrared light is a form of heat.

Re-entering spacecraft are heated by friction with the air.

It should be recognized that some of the misconceptions are partly true -- such as that there do exist parallel paths of light between the sun and Earth. And they may be false in ways that are obvious to a casual student of physics.

I created the true statements and tried to make them as unambiguous as possible, but my definition of electricity could be better.

Here is the debunking of the misconceptions that inspired the quiz.

One can hardly overstate the influence Hemingway had on modern style. Condensed to an extreme in his six-word story, his terse prose is immediately recognizable. Isn't it? Here are eight excerpts from eight well-known authors; see if you can match them up.

authors:
Ernest Hemingway
Franz Kafka
George Orwell
Edgar Allan Poe
Ayn Rand
Gertrude Stein
Mark Twain
Kurt Vonnegut

excerpts:
(1)

...as a child one really knew too much about Spain and China, and France was interesting while Spain and China were familiar, and daily. France was not daily it just came up again and again.
It came up first in such different books, Jules Verne and Alfred de Vigny and it came up in my mother's clothes and the gloves and the sealskin caps and muffs and the boxes they came in.
There was the smell of Paris in that.

(2)

"I cannot stand this life here. If you want to hold on to me, we must leave and go somewhere else, to southern France, or to Spain." "I cannot go abroad... I came here in order to stay here. I will stay here." And in a contradiction he didn't bother to explain, he added as if speaking to himself: "Now what could have attracted me to this desolate land other than the desire to stay?"

(3)

It felt comfortable to be in a country where it is so simple to make people happy. You can never tell whether a Spanish waiter will thank you. Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me back. I would dine there again some time and he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France.

(4)

No one in his senses supposed that there was any hope of democracy, even as we understand it in England or France, in a country so divided and exhausted as Spain would be when the war was over. It would have to be a dictatorship, and it was clear that the chance of a working-class dictatorship had passed.

(5)

The Rome of two thousand years ago rose on the shores of Lake Michigan, a Rome improved by pieces of France, Spain, Athens and every style that followed it. It was a "Dream City" of columns, triumphal arches, blue lagoons, crystal fountains and popcorn. Its architects competed on who could steal best, from the oldest source and from the most sources at once.

(6)

To the westward, the northward, and the southward, as far as I could see, lay a boundless sheet of apparently unruffled ocean, which every moment gained a deeper and deeper tint of blue. At a vast distance to the eastward, although perfectly discernable, extended the islands of Great Britain, the entire Atlantic coasts of France and Spain, with a small portion of the northern part of the continent of Africa. Of individual edifices not a trace could be discovered, and the proudest cities of mankind had utterly faded away from the face of the earth.

(7)

We shall remember something of pleasant France; and something also of Paris, though it flashed upon us a splendid meteor, and was gone again, we hardly knew how or where. We shall remember, always, how we saw majestic Gibraltar glorified with the rich coloring of a Spanish sunset and swimming in a sea of rainbows.

(8)

When the war ended, the young rakehell of the Rumfoord family, Remington Rumfoord, IV, proposed to sail his steam yacht, the Scheherazade, around the world, visiting Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, India, China, and Japan. He invited Johnson to accompany him as first mate, and Johnson agreed.
Johnson saw many wonders of the world on the voyage.

When Richard Feynman was asked to review textbooks for the California Board of Education, he was continually incensed by the errors he found:

Finally I come to a book that says, "Mathematics is used in science in many ways. We will give you an example from astronomy, which is the science of stars." I turn the page, and it says, "Red stars have a temperature of four thousand degrees, yellow stars have a temperature of five thousand degrees . . ." -- so far, so good. It continues: "Green stars have a temperature of seven thousand degrees, blue stars have a temperature of ten thousand degrees, and violet stars have a temperature of . . . (some big number)." There are no green or violet stars, but the figures for the others are roughly correct. It's vaguely right -- but already, trouble! That's the way everything was: Everything was written by somebody who didn't know what the hell he was talking about, so it was a little bit wrong, always! And how we are going to teach well by using books written by people who don't quite understand what they're talking about, I cannot understand. I don't know why, but the books are lousy; UNIVERSALLY LOUSY!

Anyway, I'm happy with this book, because it's the first example of applying arithmetic to science. I'm a bit unhappy when I read about the stars' temperatures, but I'm not very unhappy because it's more or less right -- it's just an example of error. Then comes the list of problems. It says, "John and his father go out to look at the stars. John sees two blue stars and a red star. His father sees a green star, a violet star, and two yellow stars. What is the total temperature of the stars seen by John and his father?" -- and I would explode in horror.

Has physics education improved since then? Test yourself with the following statements. Which are true, and which are oft-repeated misconceptions?

1. Beams of light coming from the sun are parallel.
   
2. An aircraft wing creates lift because air has to travel farther over the top surface than the bottom.
   
3. Sound travels better through solids.
   
4. The mass of an object is not related to the rate at which it falls.
   
5. Electricity is the result of electrons moving through a conductor.
   
6. Ponds form a skin of ice on their surface because ice is less dense than fluid water.
   
7. Ignoring air resistance, an object dropped into a tunnel through the center of the earth would oscillate from end to end indefinitely.
   
8. A lemon and metal strips can be used to light a flashlight bulb.
   
9. Infrared light is a form of heat.
   
10. Re-entering spacecraft are heated by friction with the air.