In 1620 the Duke of Buckingham dug a hole at the center of Stonehenge.
John Aubrey, who interviewed local residents about it in 1666, reports that “something was found, but what it was Mrs. Mary Trotman … hath forgot.”
History
Fan Club
Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford admired one another. “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” Hitler told the Detroit News in 1931, explaining why kept a portrait of Ford next to his desk.
Four months after Hitler invaded Austria, Ford accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal the Nazis bestowed on foreigners.
Ford elsewhere said, “History is more or less bunk.”
Fulfilled
A prophecy told that Henry IV would die in Jerusalem. He assumed this meant he would die on crusade.
In fact, he died in the house of the abbot of Westminster — in the Jerusalem Chamber.
Mirror, Mirror
The following curious effect of the combination of figures has been sent to us by a friend in Paris, who states that it has been extensively circulated in that capital. We have not yet seen it in print here.
The votes upon the Presidency of Louis Napoleon were,–
Place the above in front of a mirror, so that the reflection of it may be visible:
This reflection will read, ‘III Empereur‘–Third Emperor. Louis Napoleon affects hereditary superstition, and it is stated that this singular coincidence confirmed him in the belief which he has always entertained of the exalted destiny for which Providence reserved him.
— Harper’s Magazine, 1857, quoted in Appleton Morgan, Macaronic Poetry, 1872
One Foot in the Grave
When a surgeon took off Lord Uxbridge’s leg after the Battle of Waterloo, a local resident asked permission to bury the limb in his garden in a sort of shrine. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned gruesomely bathetic: Visitors were shown the bloody chair on which Uxbridge had sat during the amputation, the boot he had worn, and finally a tombstone that read “Here lies the Leg of the illustrious and valiant Earl Uxbridge … who, by his heroism, assisted in the triumph of the cause of mankind, gloriously decided by the resounding victory [in 1815].”
By 1862 the grave was being mocked openly; a poem by Thomas Gaspey included this verse:
A leg and foot to speak more plain
Lie here, of one commanding;
Who, though his wits he might retain,
Lost half his understanding.
Get it? Things went downhill from there. A steady stream of paying customers visited the tomb, including the king of Prussia and the Prince of Orange, but in 1878 Uxbridge’s son discovered that the family were displaying only the naked bones, which had been exposed in a storm. Rather than rebury them as ordered, the proprietors merely hid them, and in 1934 a widow finally burned them ignominiously in her furnace. C’est la guerre.
Et Tu?
Stonewall Jackson was killed by his own troops. As he was reconnoitering after the Battle of Chancellorsville, a Confederate infantry regiment mistook him for Union cavalry and fired. He died a week later.
Tableau
In Hitler Moves East, former SS officer Paul Carell records a bizarre scene from the bitterly cold winter of 1941 on the eastern front. At Ozarovo a rearguard of the German 3rd Rifle Regiment came across a group of Russian troops standing motionless in waist-deep snow. On investigating, they found that the Soviets, horses and men, had frozen to death where they stood:
Over on one side was a soldier, leaning against the flank of his horse. Next to him a wounded man in the saddle, one leg in a splint, his eyes wide open under iced-up eyebrows, his right hand still gripping the dishevelled mane of his mount. The second lieutenant and the sergeant slumped forward in their saddles, their clenched fists still gripping their reins. Wedged in between two horses were three soldiers: evidently they had tried to keep warm against the animals’ bodies. The horses themselves were like the horses on the plinths of equestrian statues — heads held high, eyes closed, their skin covered with ice, their tails whipped by the wind, but frozen into immobility.
Lance Corporal Tietz couldn’t take photos because “the view-finder froze over with his tears” and the shutter refused to work. “The god of war was holding his hand over the infernal picture,” Carell writes. “It was not to become a memento for others.”
Tecumseh’s Curse
“Tecumseh’s curse” refers to an odd coincidence in U.S. history: Every 20 years, we elect a president who dies in office:
- William Henry Harrison, elected in 1840, died of pneumonia in 1841.
- Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860, was assassinated in 1865.
- James Garfield, elected in 1880, was assassinated in 1881.
- William McKinley, elected in 1900, was assassinated in 1901.
- Warren G. Harding, elected in 1920, died of a heart attack in 1923.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected in 1940, died of cerebral hemorrhage in 1945.
- John F. Kennedy, elected in 1960, was assassinated in 1963.
The curse was supposedly invoked by a Native American chief’s mother as he died. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, for some reason, seem to have escaped.
Jumbo Jet
Say what you will about the French, they know how to build an elephant:
This one, proposed for the Champs-Élysées in 1758, had air conditioning, a spiral staircase, and a drainage system in the trunk.
The French government said no. There’s no accounting for taste.
The Potsdam Giants
Friedrich Wilhelm I believed in stretching his military — when the Prussian king took the throne in 1713, he founded a special infantry regiment made up of taller-than-average soldiers.
“The men who stood in the first rank in this regiment were none of them less than seven feet high,” wrote Voltaire, “and he sent to purchase them from the farthest parts of Europe to the borders of Asia.” The diminutive king once told a French ambassador, “The most beautiful girl or woman in the world would be a matter of indifference to me, but tall soldiers — they are my weakness.”
They would have made an impressive force on the battlefield, but the “long guys” never saw action — and when Friedrich died in 1740 the crown prince dismissed the regiment.