Odd This Day
@oddthisday
Chris Coates, purveyor of niche drivel:
OBVIOUSLY, many residents reported “a rustling of silk … followed by the apparition of a lady in black, who would glide through the room towards the parlour, where she would disappear at one particular flagstone”
She was kept in a glass-fronted coffin until Dr White retired, at which point, inexplicably, she was apparently stuck on the roof of his house, Sale Priory – or possibly on the portico, if this illustration is accurate
The story starts with her brother being almost buried alive. According to ‘Around the M60: Manchester’s Orbital Motorway’, “he had actually been placed in his coffin and it was only just before the lid was to be screwed down that it was noticed his eyelids were flickering”
On this day in 1868, Hannah Beswick was buried. Given that she was dead, this was not in itself unusual. It was the fact that she’d been dead over 110 years that made it... somewhat noteworthy. Hannah, you see, was The Manchester Mummy 🧵
And—still in the animal kingdom—it’s the 87th anniversary of this headline in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph, but I haven’t had time to research winged cats properly yet, so you’ll just have to rely on this Newspaper Archive blog blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2023/05/10/r...
Apparently, something happened 57 years ago in, like, space or something? I think the best take on it is still probably that of Dinah Hall...
30 years ago today, Alan McGee made an important statement to the world—so important (he’d just seen the Sex Pistols), it required a full page ad in the NME. A week later, the NME took the piss out of him
There was a happier ending for the coachman James Byrne. The Times called for public indemnity for him, there was a dinner in his honour in London, and a public subscription raised £300 for him (around £33,000 today)
‘Poets’, too... (English ‘poets’ rather than Irish ones, who would have known that ‘Clogher’ doesn’t rhyme there)
Soon, of course, the news was out, and pamphleteers were doing brisk trade
George Dawson, private secretary to Home Secretary Robert Peel, had to write to the Archbishop of Armagh, prefacing his words with “Excuse me, my dear Archbishop for offending your eye with the following detail, I blush while I write it…”
He was defended in court by the Solicitor General of Ireland, who said he couldn’t have done it because the sexual practice in question was a “contagion” that hadn’t reached Ireland. “There is no instance of its existence in the memory of any professional man,” he said
Well, if it’s 19 July, it must be... yes, of course: the 204th anniversary of Percy Jocelyn, the 58-year-old Bishop of Clogher, being caught with his trousers round his ankles in the back room of a pub with a 22-year-old soldier. He soon ceased to be a bishop and skipped the country... 🧵
Our first historical anniversary today is the 11th birthday of this headline:
The SPAM-mobile, which looks to me like a SPAM mobile library (free SPAM with every book read? Free book for every tin of SPAM devoured?)
Mind you, I may not have turned up a huge amount of information about Weinermobiles, but I did find other amusingly shaped vehicles, including the Planters peanuts truck...
I found the text of an address given by Oscar G Mayer Jr to the Newcomen Society on 30 April 1970, which—in an appalling dereliction of duty—fails to mention these amusingly sausage-shaped vehicles. However, it does include a photo of an early delivery method for their products
Wikipedia says its “first public appearance was in Janesville, Wisconsin on October 16-17, 1936, having been completed in Chicago the previous day”. (I have approached Kraft Heinz for clarification and they have inexplicably not got back to me within 24 hours)
Today may be the 90th anniversary of the Wienermobile. According to some unreliable sources (and the semi-reliable HuffPo), the first one rolled off the production line at the General Body Assembly plant in Chicago on 18 July 1936 🧵 www.huffpost.com/entry/my-rid...