Worried that they hadn't heard anything for days from the widow in the apartment next door, the mother said to her son, "Tony, would you go next door and see how old Mrs. Pierpoint is?"
A few minutes later, Tony returned.
"Well, is she all right?" asked the mother.
"She's fine, but she's rather annoyed with you," remarked Tony.
"At me?" the mother exclaimed. "Whatever for?"
Tony replied, "Mrs. Pierpoint said it's none of your business how old she is."
Henry FauldsBorn 1 Jun 1843; died 19 Mar 1930 at age 86.Scottish physician who, from 1873, became a missionary in Japan, where he worked as a surgeon superintendent at a Tokyo hospital, taught at the local univeristy, and founded the Tokyo Institute for the Blind. In the late 1870s, his attention was drawn to fingerprints of ancient potters remaining on their work that he helped unearth at an archaeological dig site in Japan. He commenced a study of fingerprints, and became convinced that each individual had a unique pattern. He corresponded on the subject with Charles Darwin, and published a paper about his ideas in Nature (28 Oct 1880). When he returned to Britain in 1886, he unsuccessfully offered his fingerprinting identification scheme for forensic uses to Scotland Yard. Undeserved confusion on priority for the discovery with Francis Galton and Sir William J. Herschel lasted until 1917.« |
