Did you know the everyman John Doe shortened his name when he immigrated (as did John Q. Public, who was originally of the proud Publicus line)?  We find John Doughgob's original signature in The American Legion Weekly, Dec. 23, 1921.

The alphabet departed this life on May 15, 1898, as we learn in Out-of-Door Memorials: Mausoleums, Tombs, Headstones and All Forms of Mortuary Monuments, 1898.

At the end of The Maltese Falcon, the priceless statuette is at large.  But did you know it ended up at stately Wayne Manor?  Our proof appears in episode 22 of Batman.  This is perhaps not so very surprising, as "the world of The Maltese Falcon is similar to that of the TV version of Batman and Robin" (John Docker, Postmodernism and Popular Culture, 1994).

There is a way that a writer can make a reader disappear like magic, but this secret is not for general knowledge (and is, indeed, meant for the "maybe five" readers that Machado de Assis expected to discover his novel Epitaph of a Small Winner).  And so we will present the secret in black text over a black background, to be highlighted by and thereby revealed to only a select few:

"The book must suffice in itself: if it please you, excellent reader, I shall be rewarded for my labor; if it please you not, I shall reward you with a snap of my fingers, and good riddance to you."  (Translated from the Portuguese by William L. Grossman.)

Historically, a person could not take umbrage just anywhere. From The Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste, 1846.

"The piano is a wonder box," from St. Nicholas magazine.

You know the finger game "Here's the church, here's the steeple," in which hands are clasped to represent a church, then pointer fingers are raised to form a spire, then the remaining fingers are revealed as a congregation?  Well, it's not just a game.  From Blasts from The Ram's Horn, 1902.

This vintage Colgate ad (from 1873) reminds us that we know our own teeth only through the looking glass!

Animals have horns "to introduce to an element of strangeness into their lives, a whimsical or irrational joke.  An idée fixe, transgressing the limits of their being, reaching high above their heads and emerging suddenly into light, frozen into matter palpable and hard." —Bruno Schulz, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

"Do you know, sir, that most of the people you see in the street are dead?"  From La Belle Captive, 1983, directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet.

Separated at birth: Concrete pottery and concrete poetry.

Asclepius [Aesculapius] originated as a sideshow attraction.  This we find documented in The Comic History of Rome by Gilbert Abbott A'Beckett, 1897.

Clouds are named after bird formations, as we learn in Aide-mémoire du Voyageur by D. Kaltbrunner, 1881.  [For Gary Barwin.]

You've heard of sticking inhuman pins into a voodoo doll, but the old-school sticks human pins into a pseudo doll.  From The Baby's Museum by Uncle Charlie, 1882.

"Old comics would be even more cluttered with tin cans if comic-strip goats didn’t keep their numbers down." —Christoher Miller, American Cornball

"Yuletide" is an anagram of "Yeti duel."

Here's King Arthur's round table, from The Book of South Wales, the Wye, and the Coast by Samuel Carter Hall, 1861.