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The Female Stranger
Image: Wikimedia Commons This enigmatic headstone stands in in St. Paul’s Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia, over the body of an unknown woman. Nothing definite seems to be known as to the woman’s...
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On the Wing
Diagnosed with terminal melanoma at 50, Phoebe Snetsinger resolved to devote her remaining time to watching birds. Between 1981 and 1999, as her cancer went periodically into remission, she visited...
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In a Word
Image: Wikimedia Commons gliff n. an unexpected view of something that startles one; a sudden fear irrision n. the act of sneering or laughing derisively; mockery; derision mortiferous adj. bringing or...
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All’s One for That
Image: Wikimedia Commons The remains of Richard III were discovered under a Leicester car park in 2012. In the city center searchers located the site of the demolished Greyfriars Church where Richard’s...
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Wha lies here? I Johnny Dow. Hoo! Johnny, is that you? Ay, man, but a'm dead now. — Edinburgh epitaph, quoted in Horatio Edward Norfolk, Gleanings in Graveyards, 1861
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In a Word
manqueller n. a man killer; an executioner In 1014, after a decisive victory over the Bulgarian Empire at the Battle of Kleidion, Byzantine emperor Basil II followed up with a singularly cruel stroke....
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Early Arrival
Image: Flickr When his wife died in 1893, Brooklyn retiree Jonathan Reed had a tomb built in Evergreens Cemetery, where for 10 years he kept her company. “The Reed mausoleum was furnished just like a...
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Two Dire Punishments
Under Roman law, subjects found guilty of patricide were subjected to poena cullei, the “penalty of the sack” — they were sewn into a leather sack with a snake, a cock, a monkey, and a dog and thrown...
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“The Only Will Ever Written in Shorthand”
An 1897 article on curious wills in the Strand describes this 1813 will by the Rev. Hugh Worthington of Highbury Place, Islington. One side reads: Northampton Square, June 16th, 1813. I, Hugh...
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Companion
Rinaldo Carnielo’s sculpture Tenax Vitae stands in the Galleria Rinaldo Carnielo in Florence. After meeting the sculptor in 1893, Helen Zimmern observed that “for him, the shadow of death pervades all...
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