This May Surprise You

The "four corners of the world" technically meet at the center, as we see in this diagram from Grundzüge der mathematischen Geographie und der Landkartenprojection by Anton Steinhauser, 1857.

By jingo, that's Jingo himself on the right.   From Poems by Louisa Shore (1897).  The caption reads: "Tracts, by Jingo."

"This may surprise you, but I also can see what is coming, and I am not at all sure that I like it." —Achim Zahren, The Last Polar Bear

Here's how to imbue majesty into something as ordinary as a library stamp.  (We find this majestic library stamp in the Commercial Intelligence Journal, 1921.)

You've heard of magic dust, woofle dust, pixie dust, fairy dust, and foo foo powder, but these aren't mere figures of speech, as we see in the Catalogue of Sharp & Smith, 1889, p. 670 — a genuine magic atomizer.

It's been said that "writers lose themselves in their words, carefully woven into sentences" (Jason Skinner), but did you know that each letter of those words is a carefully woven tapestry in itself?  We find our proof in Oracles from the Poets: A Fanciful Diversion for the Drawing Room by Caroline Howard Gilman, 1845.

Every nightingale has a colon, which absorbs water and electrolytes.  From The Nightingale by Richard Andre (1899).

"A book is a myth we believe in when we're young.  We stop treating it seriously as we get older." —The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973, Poland)

"This may surprise you, but one animal of the Everglades that has the potential to cause harm is the oyster." —Paddling the Everglades Wilderness Waterway

"A surprising truth is, that the 'value of money,' in fact, is in no way affected by a change in the quantity." —Money: A Free Magazine and Forum (1921)

The reason cats dart is revealed in this illustrarion from Phantastes: A Faerie Romance by George MacDonald (1894).

The theory that Humpty Dumpty was pushed is nearly as old as the chicken-or-the-egg conundrum, but we finally lay the matter to rest with this evidence of the culprit, from The Baby's Museum by Uncle Charlie, 1882.

"The surprising truth is, a more diverse, bountiful natural environment exists within the city and county limits of Los Angeles than within perhaps any other city in the United States." —Wild L.A.: A Celebration of the Natural Areas In and Around the City

Exquisite things are invariably surrounded by fairies.  From A Tramp Abroad Etc. by Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1897).  The caption reads: "An exquisite thing."

"The surprising truth is that sharks can be rendered harmless fairly easily — you just flip them upside-down." —BBC Wildlife

Ornate capitals have physical counterparts.  For example, this is the U of Ulram Chapel as it appeared before 1876.  It is preserved in Holderness and Hullshire Historic Gleanings, 1886.

It's little known that between hither and thither is this:

"The surprising truth is all golfers, from Ben Hogan to Hulk Hogan, actually strike the ball with the club in a decelerating mode." —The Impact Zone: Mastering Golf's Moment of Truth

The folks at Scribd recently named our One-Letter Words: A Dictionary as the #5 best e-book for short daily commutes.  The folks at Mashable covered the story.

It's little known that Aesop couldn't resist sneezing at dust mites, but 'allergy' and 'allegory' have the same Greek root. From Comic History of Greece by Charles Snyder (1898).