topics: |  trivia

Fed up with reading one boring dictionary after the other (who isn't!), lexicographer Eugene Ehrlich decided to publish The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate. Clearly, the act of a modest man.

The first escalator

In 1891, Jesse Reno patented the first escalator - more of an inclined ramp than the escalator we know today, where passengers hooked into cleats on the belt and scooted up at a 25-degree angle. Fairly soon after, he built a spiral escalator—the mere thought of which nauseates us—in London... Reno's first escalator was installed at Coney Island, and 75,000 people rode Reno's "inclined elevator" during a two-week exhibition in 1896. Let's be clear: The escalator was not the means by which one traveled to a ride. It was the ride itself...

 
		you needed to sit on the first "escalator";
		    ladies were expected to side-saddle.

Guillotine invention story guillotined

Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin did not invent the guillotine, though the
contraption is named for him.  The doctor's name was Guillotin, with no final
e, and he was deputy to the French States-General (predecessor to the General
Assembly) in 1789. A supporter of capital punishment, he thought it should be
done uniformly, with merciful efficiency, and proposed a head-chopping
device. Of course, such machines had been around for centuries. Later, French
Procureur General Syndic Pierre-Louis Roederer turned not to Guillotin, but
another doctor, Antoine Louis, for a design. And, in fact, it was a German
engineer who built the first working model. While it's not clear how the
machine came to be named for Guillotin, we do know why it's spelled that
way. The final e was added to make it easier to rhyme with in revolutionary
ballads.