Curious Facts

Everything below is in the book — each fact links straight to the page it comes from.

1. London's most famous ghost charged admission at the door. So many people crowded Cock-lane to hear the knockings of "poor Fanny" that a fee was fixed to keep out the rabble — "an arrangement highly satisfactory to the needy and villainous Mr. Parsons." As the book puts it, "The ghost, in consequence, played to a select audience every night." Read it in the book →
2. The ghost was cross-examined by knocks — and swore it was poisoned in purl. One knock meant yes, two meant no, and a scratching noise meant displeasure. A clergyman worked through the menu of possible poisons: "Was the poison administered in beer?" No. "In purl?" Yes — about three hours before death. Read it in the book →
3. The ghost's grand test was scheduled for the night of April 1st. Held down by a room of ladies and gentlemen, the girl said she could not see the ghost "but that she felt it on her back like a mouse." At one in the morning the whole company descended into the vault of St. John, Clerkenwell, stood beside the coffin, and got nothing: "walls, ceiling and flooring were alike mute." Read it in the book →
4. A Ceylon lake really did sing, and the fishermen blamed a "Crying shell". Sir Emerson Tennant was rowed out at Batticaloa on a windless moonlit night and heard sounds rising from the water like "the faint vibrations of a wine-glass when its rim is rubbed by a wet finger" — loudest at particular spots, and amplified when he pressed his ear to the boat's woodwork. The local fishermen called the source *oorie coolooroo cradoo*, the "Crying shell," and he concluded the music was made by shell-fish. Read it in the book →
5. Even executions had etiquette at the court of Mtesa of Uganda. Prisoners were dismembered to feed the king's pet vultures, sometimes killed first and sometimes not — and the work was done "slowly cut to pieces with grass blades, as it is against etiquette to use knives for this purpose." Read it in the book →
6. Comma-free newspapers built a school-house five storeys high for 500 scholars. The book reprints specimens of ruinous punctuation from the *Printers' Register*: "A man was killed by a railroad car running into Boston, supposed to be deaf," and an old geography's report that Albany has 400 inhabitants, "all standing with their gable-ends to the street." Read it in the book →
7. An escaped circus goat knocked on a door on Halloween night and was taken for a ghost. Six children opened the door to "a tall white figure with a long white beard" and fled — then watched their visitor eat their apple-cores, waltz on its hind legs to a mouth-organ, leap a chair to "Marching Through Georgia," and play dead. When Ned stroked him, "the goat stood erect upon his hind legs, and, bowing politely, offered his right forefoot." The menagerie's winter quarters had burned down that evening. Read it in the book →
8. A ploughman explained his eight groschen a day, and the king paid him fifty times over. Two groschen kept himself and his wife, "two I pay my old debts; two I lend away, and two I give away for the Lord's sake" — the debts being his aged parents, the loan his children's schooling, the gift two sick sisters. The king then set him a riddle: "In less than five minutes you shall see me fifty times" — and counted fifty new gold pieces stamped with the royal likeness into his hand. Read it in the book →
9. Solon told the richest king on earth that a pheasant had already spoiled him for splendour. Croesus, seated on his throne in full magnificence, asked the philosopher whether he had ever seen anything so fine. Solon replied that having seen the plumage of the pheasant, "he could not be surprised by any other grandeur that might be displayed." Read it in the book →
10. A jealous mistress is blamed for the shot that killed Gustavus III at a masked ball. The nobles' conspiracy is history, but "the private history of those times" adds that the chief plotter was the Countess Christina: "It is said that the king incurred her jealousy by his attentions to his own wife." She killed herself a few days after his funeral. Read it in the book →
11. Pirates were hanged at Execution Dock and left until the bones crumbled. The Thames stairs below London Bridge included one whose proper name was King Henry's Stairs: "Here, in the ghastly old times, pirates were hanged in chains, as a warning to sailors, and there remained until time reduced the bones to dust." Read it in the book →
12. Princess Elizabeth staged a sit-down protest on the steps of Traitors' Gate. Brought to the Tower during the reign of her half-sister Mary, she "sat down and refused to move, vowing herself the queen's truest subject." She rose at last and was imprisoned in the tower where the crown jewels are now kept. Read it in the book →
13. During the civil wars of the Fronde, Montaigne left his gate open. He "was the only man among the French gentry who kept his castle gate unbarred; and it is said of him that his personal character was worth more to him than a regiment of horse." Of Tsar Alexander I it was likewise said that his character "was equivalent to a constitution." Read it in the book →
14. Exiled from Granada, the Moors carried their house keys with them. "Each man locked his home behind him, taking in his flight the key," waiting for a return that never came while the mansions crumbled. The poem's twist: we all keep such a key, and "Our Granada's name is Youth." Read it in the book →
15. Oysters, the book reports, possess an acoustic apparatus. Offered in support of the singing lake at Batticaloa: "some fishes grunt when disturbed, and even oysters have an acoustic apparatus, though it does not rise to the dignity of an ear." Read it in the book →