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For The Emigre

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For the Sri Lankan Sunday Times

— The Nelson Evening Mail, Wednesday, April 10 1907
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All the best people are born in October.

In Moldova (and Czechoslovakia), ‘carp’ is spelled ‘crap’.

In 1492 Native Americans discovered Columbus lost at sea.

Exultant language is reserved for the mountains.

Ye cannae shove yer granny off the bus.

You can get syphilis through wooden spoons.

Real men wear real clothes.

Termite baiting is currently in progress.

Max Hastings is the author of 27 books, most about conflict.

Not all of Mozart’s paintings were perfect.

Scotland have been knocked out of the Rugby World Cup.

One of the known properties of honey is that it drips.

Some Russian villages purposely elect the village idiot.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, October 20 1906
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‘The is cat washing dishes’ is an 18th-century expression for the reflection of water on the walls of a room.

A skate’s vagina is anatomically similar to a woman’s.

Just because a thing is true does not mean that it need have been.

A field marshal never retires.

By the time Tennessee Williams was 15 he’d lived in 16 different houses.

The code-word for the Egyptian seizure of Suez was ‘de Lesseps’.

One of the Fratellis is called Mince.

Some paper cups are five times stronger than steel.

In 1931 the Soviet Union published an erotic alphabet book to combat literacy. 

The next stop after Canterbury, heading east, is not Chatham.

Casey Affleck’s only recent cinema trip was to take his kids to brother Ben’s Batman v Superman.

Roy William Scranton’s poll has ended.

‘Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!’ is Italian for ‘Merry Christmas’.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, July 26 1906
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The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.

Though rare, there have been exactly 201 documented cases of spontaneous combustion.

J Sainbury plc is cutting 2000 Human Resources employees.

The collective noun for brown anchovies is a ‘finish’.

Typing and playing the piano can wear your fingerprints away.

Actors cheers each other up by exchanging bad reviews.

When a ship sinks, the crew are released from their oath of loyalty to the captain.

Translator and poet Paul Celan committed suicide in 1970.

It’s Van Month this October at Renault.

Just because it’s in the Guardian doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

The men of Crete are mostly fair, very tall, sometimes gigantic.

It looks very much as if Everton will be looking for a new manager in the morning.

Without George W Bush there would have been no President Trump.
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