posthumous fame
Recognized at last — unfortunately, after the funeral.
The Rope
What do you call a woman who wouldn't cross the lawn for Emerson, but rigged a rope from her window for children she refused to greet at the door?
The Man Who Was Seventy-Five People
He cast a horoscope for a man who didn't exist and determined he'd been born nine and a half hours before his own conception.
The Same Bone, Twice
What does it take for a state to kill the same man twice, nearly thirty years apart, using the same injury?
The Cure He Boiled Away
In 1747 he proved two oranges and a lemon cured scurvy. Then he spent forty years boiling the cure into a syrup that didn't work.
The Bandit Queen's Funeral
Her husband, her son, and the neighbor all had reasons — and the mourners brought cornbread to the grave.
The Paintings the Spirits Told Her to Hide
What if the first abstract paintings in Western art were commissioned by a spirit named Amaliel for a temple that didn't exist?
The Guest of Honor
What does it take for a toll collector who painted tigers in his off-hours to end up enthroned on a packing crate at a banquet thrown by Picasso?
The Weatherman Was Wrong Again
For ten years, a Chicago dishwasher kept a secret diary grading the local weatherman against reality.
The Code That Wasn't
For decades scholars thought a Swiss novelist's tiny notebooks were a secret code written from inside an asylum.
The Birthday Cake
A deaf arithmetic teacher in a Kaluga log cabin derived the rocket equation between marking schoolboys' sums, and kept a trapdoor in his ceiling his family called the door to outer space.
The Clockmaker Who Retuned the Universe
What does an 82-year-old who just solved the longitude problem do for an encore?
The Prince Who Painted Hell
What kind of man commissions an altarpiece of himself praying, then hangs it in the room where he prays?