The story about the Dabneys’ clothesline telegraph appears in David Williams’ I Freed Myself: African American Self-Emancipation in the Civil War Era, 2014, among other modern sources. Horace Walpole’s owl whistles are mentioned in Arthur Michael Samuel’s Mancroft Essays, 1912. Wikipedia gives a long list of reputed reasons the 9 of diamonds is called the “curse of Scotland.”Įnglish curate Francis Kilvert mentions a mysterious organ grinder in his diary entry for May 12, 1874.

Wodehouse’s characterization of his comic novels in his 2004 book The Complete Lyrics of P.G. Here’s a diagram of the Woodingdean Well, the deepest hand-dug well in the world.īarry Day mentions P.G.

Jones describes the Cincinnati privy disaster of 1904 in this Belt Magazine article of Nov. The observation about William Byrd’s diary is in Margaret Fleming’s “Analysis of a Four-Letter Word,” in Maledicta 1:2 (1977).īill James’ book about the Villisca ax murders is The Man From the Train, co-written with his daughter Rachel McCarthy James. The anecdote about Maidenhead, Berkshire, is from Gordon Snell’s The Book of Theatre Quotes, 1982. “Icy Mike,” the bull elephant skeleton discovered on Mount Kenya, is mentioned in Matthew Power and Keridwen Cornelius’ article “Escape to Mount Kenya” in National Geographic Adventure 9:7 (September 2007), 65-71.īernard Suits defines games in The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, 1978. But I don’t know any source that makes a decided claim as to his identity. Wagner III’s 2016 Participants in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The identity of the “bravest man” at the Battle of the Little Bighorn is discussed in Thom Hatch’s 2000 Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn: An Encyclopedia and Frederic C. Oxford mathematician Nick Trefethen’s jotted thoughts are collected in Trefethen’s Index Cards, 2011. The anecdote about Fred Astaire and the editor is from Brian Seibert’s 2015 history of tap dancing, What the Eye Hears, supplemented by this New Yorker letter. Turner’s 1975 book The Making of King Kong. The anecdote about the King Kong animator is from Orville Goldner and George E. Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays mention the naming of Deathball Rock, Oregon, in their 1999 book The Language of Names: What We Call Ourselves and Why It Matters.

Sources for our feature on notes and queries: In 1961, psychologist Robert Sommer reflected that a person’s importance is reflected in his keyring. In 1846, geologist Adam Sedgwick sent his niece some tips on pronouncing Welsh. We’ll also revisit Michael Malloy’s resilience and puzzle over an uncommonly casual prison break. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll explore some more curiosities and unanswered questions from Greg’s research, including a misplaced elephant, a momentous biscuit failure, a peripatetic ax murderer, and the importance of the 9 of diamonds.

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