🇬🇧 United Kingdom
Oddlets from United Kingdom.
Montgomery's Ribs
William Harvey, the physician who proved blood circulates, once reached through a hole in a young viscount's ribs and took hold of the beating heart.
Pantographia
In April 1817 a woman in a black turban walked into a Gloucestershire village speaking a language no one recognised; within weeks Oxford scholars had studied her script, a Portuguese sailor had translated her backstory of pirates and peacock palanquins, and Bath had thrown her a ball.
Queen Street
The second person to survive Niagara Falls in a barrel spent fifteen more years chasing bigger stunts, then was undone by a walk down Queen Street in Auckland.
Rhea darwinii
Darwin was halfway through dinner in Patagonia before he realised the small ostrich on his plate was the rare species he'd been hunting for months.
The Bread of Shame
Francis Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater — Fellow of the Royal Society, prebendary of Durham — dined every night in Paris with a dozen dogs in tailored coats and linen napkins, each attended by its own footman.
Too Great a Strain
Gertrude Bell took a first at Oxford before Oxford gave women degrees, climbed ten new Alpine routes in a single season, and in March 1921, in a Cairo hotel, picked Iraq's king.
Sir Roger Had Gotten So Stout
A slim, asthmatic, French-speaking heir to a Hampshire baronetcy was lost off Rio in 1854; twelve years later a butcher from Wagga Wagga arrived at Tilbury weighing eighteen stone, unable to speak one word of French, and the family's old valet accepted him.
The Newt in Her Mouth
Eleanor Ormerod, the Royal Agricultural Society's consulting entomologist, kept live insect specimens in her pockets and produced them, unannounced, at meetings with farmers.
The Baron in the Bath
On rainy mornings, a Georgian peer walked miles to the sea to swim while his liveried footman, on the peer's orders, rode dry in the empty carriage behind him.
Up to His Neck
He walked into the North Sea at night until the water reached his neck, and sang psalms until dawn.
The Man Who Counted the Posts
The man who single-handedly disciplined the English language could not walk past a post without touching it.
This Ain't an Egg-Shop
Who walks 130 miles through an Antarctic winter, in total darkness, to fetch a penguin egg?