The great egg-balancing mystery

A recent scandal based on the Ouija-board effect is the claim that some autistic children while aided by a "facilitator" will type long documents far beyond the children's capacities to communicate by speaking. It has been shown by ingenious tests that a facilitator subconsciously guides the autistic child's hands as the child hits the keys. There have even been cases when autistic children in the hands of neurotic facilitators have typed fake condemnations of horrible sexual abuse by their loving parents!

For more than a century magicians have located hidden objects by what in the trade is called "muscle reading." A person who knows where the object is concealed grasps the magician's wrist. Subconscious pressures by the person's hand guide the magician to the correct spot. (Some magicians, I should add, unwilling to take chances with an uncooperative spectator, will have a "stooge" in the audience send electronic signals by a reed switch in a shoe. A tiny receiving device on the magician's body produces pulses that tell him or her which way to go.)

One of the funniest examples of mind control over the body is the annual ritual in China of balancing fresh chicken eggs on their broad end on the first day of spring. The notion that the position of the sun or planets on a certain day can influence gravitational forces acting on the egg is so preposterous that physicists laugh at the theory. Yet intelligent people, unknowledgeable about science and inclined toward paranormal beliefs, actually think that at certain times of the year a fresh egg is more easily balanced that at any other time!

This egg-balancing ritual seems to trace back to ancient China. Tradition has it that on Li Chun, China's first day of spring (the name means "spring begins") eggs will balance on a smooth surface with greater ease than on other days. Old Chinese books of uncertain date, such as Secret Kaleidoscope and Know What Heaven Knows, are sources of this legend.

The legend reached the United States in 1945 when an article by Annalee Jacoby, describing the Chinese ritual, appeared in Life's March 19 issue. Like our Thanksgiving, Li Chun is a variable date. It usually falls on February 4 or 5. In 1945 it was February 4, the twenty-second day of the twelfth Chinese lunar month. Some years have no Li Chun. These are called "blind" lunar years because they fail to "see" the first day of spring. Other lunar years can have two adjacent Li Chuns.

According to the Life article, in 1945 most of the population in Chungking turned out on Li Chun to balance eggs. All over the city one could see fresh eggs, shells unbroken, balancing on pavement, tables, and other surfaces. Correspondents for the United Press wired back stories about the mania. Albert Einstein was reported to have said he doubted that the date had any influence on egg balancing. Chungking was divided between believers and skeptics. Someone proposed balancing a large number of eggs to spell "Einstein is nuts," but nothing came of it.

For reasons that reflect popular ignorance of science, combined with a love of miracles, the notion that fresh eggs balance more easily on the first day of spring caught fire in the United States. However, the first day of spring here is the day of the vernal equinox when the sun crosses the equator and day and night are of equal length. This occurs about March 21, more than a month after China's first spring day. But this discrepancy did not trouble American believers.

Life's article touched off a small epidemic of egg balancing in the United States, not on Li Chun, but on the vernal equinox. The mania crested nearly forty years later, in Manhattan in 1983. According to a three-page report in The New Yorker (April 4, 1983), a believer named Donna Henes organized her sixth annual egg-balancing ceremony in the Ralph J. Bunche Park at First Avenue and Forty-second Street, across from the United Nations building. On March 20 the sun crossed the equator at precisely 21 minutes before midnight. At that instant, Henes believed, eggs would balance easily on their wide end.

Henes was then a 37-year-old artist strongly committed to working for world peace. Her egg-balancing ritual was intended to promote international harmony. The event was heralded by setting off 52 highway emergency flares, one for each week of the year. While the flares burned, Henes distributed from a laundry basket 360 fresh eggs donated by the Jersey Coast Egg Producers. Why 360? Because, Henes explained, there are 360 degrees in the Earth's circumference.

"When I first did this," Henes told The New Yorker, "I thought you had to use organic eggs. But it turned out you don't." She said she had no idea why eggs balanced on the equinox. "They just do, is all. I've had friends tell me you can even use eggs right out of the fridge. They don't even have to be at room temperature."

Several hundred peaceniks turned out for the 1983 ritual. Music was provided, said The New Yorker, by "two octarinas, two saxophones, one sleigh bell, one harmonica, four tin whistles, and one tambourine." Peace messages written on several hundred orange streamers were tied to the iron railings surrounding the park. They bore such slogans as "World Friendship! Let's Have It Now!," "The Universe Spreads Out Before Us, Ineffably Profound," and "If Peace Comes to the Earth, Donna Will Be Largely Responsible."