Strange things happen in Boston . . .

. . . Especially on and around the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They put railroads through buildings.

There are buildings that seem to have no right angles.

The Massachusetts Avenue (Mass Ave) bridge over the Charles River connects MIT on the Cambridge side to Boston.

These markings appear on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge:

The bridge is a few hundred smoots across.

But how long, exactly, is a smoot?

And where did this name come from?

The smoot is exactly five feet, seven inches.

It’s the height of Oliver Smoot, when he was a freshman at M.I.T. in 1958.

As a prank, his fraternity brothers at Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity used him as a unit of measurement and marked off the Mass Ave Bridge.

The bridge is 364.4 smoots (and one ear).

The bridge gets periodic painting and maintenance, but the fraternity continues to refresh the markings.Smoot should also be remembered for his professional career.

He has a law degree from Georgetown University.

He was President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

He served as chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

The newest fun/weird/amusing thing out of M.I.T. is the XKCD cartoon series.

You can find this at www.xkcd.com.

Here’s the famous cartoon on statistics:

This is available on a T-shirt.

These cartoons are the creation of Randall Munroe (born 1984).

Munroe was not a student at M.I.T, but he lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, not far from the M.I.T. campus.