About Elizabeth

Details matter

Getting exactly the right detail makes a text memorable. These details also stick with you. Here are some of my favorite random details, in particular order:

• Warehouses must be built with reinforced structural columns and secured storage racks, because forklift drivers are hell on wheels and frequently ram into them.
• The artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti had, in addition to the best name in art history and a debilitating laudanum addiction, a pet wombat named after his friend and romantic rival*, William Morris. (Not sure if rival is the right word–Rossetti was having a torrid affair with Morris’s wife.)
• The head of composer Joseph Haydn was stolen after his death by two aspiring phrenologists. When the theft was discovered years later (Haydn’s body was to be moved to a more impressive tomb), there were Shenanigans, the phrenologists passed off a different head, and Haydn’s skull was not reunited with the rest of his body until 1954.
• You would not believe the things college students try to flush down their toilets.
• More vegetables than you might think are actually cabbages. One species of plant, Brassica oleracea, has been bred over centuries into an amazing number of vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, collard greens, savoy cabbage, ornamental cabbage, kale and kohrabi.
• If you want to trigger an archaeologist, just whisper the name “Indiana Jones.”