A fragment from Italo Calvino’s quasi-17th century folk romance, Il visconte dimezzato/The cloven viscount, uses storks as a portent of battle. Several unconnected 2nd century Greek accounts might appear to do the same, perhaps particularly if one’s a lazy sod and doesn’t read anything but scraps of stuff on Google Books.
This is not Bert Gilbert, the actor, wife-beater and adulterer (although possibly solely for the purposes of the decree nisi) who starred as ‘Arry Wilkins in the 1906 demonstration at the Hippodrome of the effects of The flood on London, of which was wrote: Three hundred thousand gallons of water sweep away the bridges, pull…
On the same day the Enola Gay dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, a small Mexico City pharmaceutical manufacturer offered the distinguished Hungarian Jewish contract bridge player, George Rosenkranz, work synthesising progesterone from inedible yams. He fell in love with the city immediately: I saw the blue sky, the volcano, and heard this music outside my…
