Gertrude Walker died in 1893 at age 4 and lies in Lt. John Walker Cemetery near White Horn, Tenn. Her gravestone reads:
GONE TO BE AN ANGLE
John Young, who died in 1836, lies in St. Andrew’s churchyard in Staten Island, New York. His reads:
THOSE THAT KNEW HIM BEST DEPLORED HIM MOST
The epitaph of James Ewins of East Derry, N.H., reads:
MY GLASS IS RUM
The stonecutter cut an M in place of an N.
(From Charles Langworthy Wallis, Stories on Stone, 1954)
The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, and Tom Swift were all the product of one man, Edward Stratemeyer, a New Jersey author who wrote more than 1,300 books and eventually founded a syndicate of ghostwriters who pounded out juvenile mysteries based on his instructions.
Stratemeyer conceived the syndicate when his Rover Boys series proved so popular that he could not keep up with the demand for more books. He corralled a stable of hungry young writers, and in 1910 they were producing 10 new series annually. Each writer earned $50 to $250 for a manuscript he could produce in a month, working with characters and plot devised by Stratemeyer. Stratemeyer would review each completed manuscript for consistency and publish it under a pseudonym that he owned — Franklin W. Dixon, Carolyn Keene, Laura Lee Hope, Victor Appleton. Each book in a series mentioned the thrilling earlier volumes and foreshadowed the next book. The formula worked so well that when Stratemeyer died in 1930 his daughter continued the business; when she died in 1982 the syndicate was selling more than 2 million books a year.
This sounds cynical, but it worked because Stratemeyer had a sympathetic understanding of what young readers wanted. “The trouble is that very few adults get next to the heart of a boy when choosing something for him to read,” Stratemeyer wrote to a publisher in 1901. “A wide awake lad has no patience with that which is namby-pamby, or with that which he puts down as a ‘study book’ in disguise. He demands real flesh and blood heroes who do something.”
polyhistor
n. a person of wide learning
You have two straight iron bars that look the same. One is a magnet and one is not. How can you tell which is which only by touching them together?
In 1880 a man calling himself Smith opened an office and a bank account in London and purchased stationery reading “Henderson & Co., Ship Brokers.” Later that year another man approached a Glasgow chandler to order a large quantity of stores — he explained that Smith had chartered the steamer Ferret for a Mediterranean cruise. Henderson & Co. and the bank vouched for Smith, so the chandler filled the order.
The ship steamed to Cardiff, where it picked up Smith and a crew of strangers. On Nov. 11 it sailed through the Strait of Gilbraltar, showing its number, and then vanished. When some of the ship’s casks were found floating in the Mediterranean, the underwriters paid for a total loss.
A water policeman in Queenscliff, Australia, happened to be reading about this in a Glasgow newspaper on April 19 when he noticed the arrival of a steamer strangely similar to the Ferret. The India‘s hull was black, its boats white, and its funnel red, but the resemblance was otherwise striking. He notified the authorities, who seized the ship, where they noted that the Ferret‘s official numbers had been chipped off the hatch.
The ensuing investigation showed that after passing Gibraltar, the criminals had repainted the steamer, tossed the casks overboard, covered their lights and stole back through the strait, whence they had made for Cape Town and then for Australia.
Two of the pirates served seven years’ hard labor and the third three and a half years. “But for the copy of the Scotch paper falling into the hands of the Queenscliff policeman,” recalled The Age in 1930, “the identity of the vessel would probably never have been discovered.”
When Jesse James’ gang robbed a Missouri train in 1874, they left this note with the conductor:
THE MOST DARING ON RECORD!
The south bound train on the Iron Mountain Railroad was robbed here this evening by five heavily armed men, and robbed of —– dollars. The robbers arrived at the station a few minutes before the arrival of the train, and arrested the station agent and put him under guard, then threw the train on the switch. The robbers were all large men, none of them under six feet tall. They were all masked, and started in a southerly direction after they had robbed the train. They were all mounted on fine blooded horses. There is a h— of an excitement in this part of the country.
Understandably, it was false in one particular — they rode west.
When Nathan M. Morse was trying the Tuckerman Will Case before Judge McKim, Dr. Jelley, the well-known expert on insanity, was one of the witnesses. One of the hypothetical questions asked of the witness by Mr. Morse contained no less than 20,000 words. The lawyer started this pithy question at the opening of court and closed only a few minutes prior to the noon adjournment. The point that Mr. Morse was endeavoring to bring out related to the mental condition of the testator when he made his will.
This is said to be the longest single interrogation ever made in a court of law, and the answer comprised just three words, ‘I do not.’
— Boston Herald, quoted in The American Lawyer, December 1906
Ignatius Nathaniel Scares’ nose shaper, patented in 1907, offers new hope to “those with upturned, one-sided, or flat noses or those with distended nostrils.”
The noses of a great many persons are slightly deformed, and therefore because of the prominence of this feature the appearance of the face is more or less disfigured. Such deformity can frequently be remedied by a gentle but continuous pressure, and it is the object of this invention to bring about this result in a way that shall be painless to the individual.
Apply the cup to your nose, then cinch the strap to your head to produce a steady pressure. “It will usually be found preferable to wear the device at night, but it can be worn any time, and a continuous use will soon be found to re-form or reshape the nose into its normal lines.” For all I know it works.
Written in prison by Arthur Connor, a prominent figure in the Irish Rebellion of 1798:
The pomps of Courts and pride of kings
I prize above all earthly things;
I love my country, but the King,
Above all men, his praise I sing.
The Royal banners are displayed,
And may success the standard aid.
I fain would banish far from hence
The “Rights of Man” and “Common Sense.”
Confusion to his odious reign,
That foe to princes, Thomas Paine.
Defeat and ruin seize the cause
Of France, its liberties and laws.
Connor escaped in 1807 and made his way to France, where he became a general in the army. “These two apparently loyal verses, if properly read, bear a very different meaning,” writes Henry Dudeney. “Can you discover it?”
Discovered by J.A.H. Hunter.