"A man, a plan, a canal--Panama" (1955)

[Jonathan Lighter]

I obtained most of my knowledge of relativity physics from the following, but I can't recall the name(s) of the authors:

There was a young lady named Bright,
Who could travel much fater than light;
She departed one day
Ina relative way,
And returned on the previous night.

There was a young fencer named Fisk,
Whose stroke was exceedingly brisk;
But the relative action
Of the Fitzgerald contraction
Soon flattened his foil to a disk.

JL

Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: "A man, a plan, a canal--Panama" (1955)
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On Dec 11, 2004, at 8:05 AM, Fred Shapiro wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Fred Shapiro
> Subject: Re: "A man, a plan, a canal--Panama" (1955)
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> --------
>
> On Sat, 11 Dec 2004, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>
>> That palindrome was published in 1948 by Leigh Mercer, though it's
>> possible that Mercer was not the first to have found it. From _Word
>> Ways:
>> The Journal of Recreational Linguistics_:
>
> Does anyone know of any other very famous palindromes, tongue twisters,
> limericks, etc., for which there is a known or putative coinage?
>
> Fred Shapiro

WRT limericks, is Edward Lear too obvious to need mentioning?

-Wilson Gray

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> Associate Librarian for Collections and YALE DICTIONARY OF
> QUOTATIONS
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