love
Hearts given away — to people, pigeons, or the work itself.
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.
Fifty Copies
The only Black member of the Edison Pioneers, the man who drafted Bell's telephone patent and fixed the lightbulb, wrote love poems on the side.
The Girl Who Shot the Kaiser
In 1889, a five-foot Quaker in an ankle-length skirt asked the audience for a volunteer, and Kaiser Wilhelm II stood up.
The Return to Life
In 1831, a jilted composer sketched a two-minute plan involving a lady's maid disguise, a pair of double-barrelled pistols, and two vials of poison in case the pistols failed.
Vogel Stahrl, 34 Kreuzer
What does a composer owe a shop bird that whistles his six-week-old concerto back at him, holds a fermata he never wrote, and sharpens a single G?
The Lady Must Go Home
What kind of master criminal steals a Gainsborough, then sleeps on top of her for twenty-five years?
Lights Off
She was being read by twelve million people a day and answered every fan letter by hand. So she dynamited a boulder on a treeless rock and built somewhere to hide.