It's commonly thought that there are no corners on a globe, yet here's one from Man and Nature on the Broads by Arthur Henry Patterson (1895).  The caption reads: "A quiet corner."

An illustration from a 1901 issue of The Lady's Realm magazine.  The caption reads: "'Hush', she whispered, 'it is clearing now.'"

Architecture within architecture from The Cruise of Her Majesty's Ship Bacchante, 1879-1882 by John Neale Dalton (1886).  The caption reads: "Section of the great pyramid, from north to south."

An illustration from an 1883 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

It's "funny only if you remember those times, when the wondrous could be something very simple."
—Tempo: Indonesia's Weekly News Magazine (2008)

An illustration from The Letters of Charles Dickens (1893).  The caption reads: "Mr. Moddle is both particular and peculiar in his attentions."

An illustration from an 1877 issue of The Quiver magazine.

"The Crystal Ball": an illustration from a 1901 issue of The Lady's Realm magazine.

"Towards the Unknown": a illustration from Great Explorers of Africa (1894).

An illustration from an 1885 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

An illustration from an 1881 issue of Little Wide Awake magazine.

"Benighted": an illustration from The Portsmouth Road and its Tributaries by Charles George Harper (1895).

"The Haunted Nursery": an illustration from an 1887 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

An illustration from A Bid for Fortune by Guy Newell Boothby (1895). The caption reads: "Could this be the solution of the whole mystery?"

"The Revel Under the Fairy Oak": an illustration from an 1885 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

An illustration from a 1900 issue of The Lady's Realm magazine.  The caption reads: "This magician carried them at will from world to world."

A precursor to the gingerbread house: Scone Palace. From Scotland Picturesque and Traditional by George Eyre Todd (1895).

"The original blighted being": an illustration from an 1855 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration from an 1877 issue of Little Wide Awake magazine.

Here's a scarecrow in its natural habitat, from Sing Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1893).

An illustration from an 1858 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration from a 1903 issue of The Lady's Realm magazine.  The caption reads: "She thought that soft voices spoke to her from the shadows."

An illustration from Shafts from an Eastern Quiver (1894).  The caption reads: "It again emerged."

An illustration from an 1873 issue of The Quiver magazine.  The caption reads: "The haunt of rook and raven, bat and owl. Drawn by A. H. Wall."

An illustration from Young Israel (1874).  The caption reads: "Here, take the key."

An illustration from The Jorrocks Edition by Robert Smith Surtees (1892).  The caption reads: "All sorts of dreams."

An illustration from an 1860 issue of Cornhill magazine.

Here's a precursor to episode 29 of Twin Peaks, in which Agent Cooper's cup of the coffee in the Otherworld turns out to be viscid.  In a scene cut from Olsen & Johnson's Crazy House, "They find [Hans Conried] reclining on a divan, sniffing a rose, and painting blindfolded.  Roco explains that he is endeavoring to paint the scent of the rose—its very essence.  Another scene has Roco offering the boys a cup of coffee, then pulling it out of a painting on the wall depicting the same.  To their disgust, the liquid turns out to be paint.  An unfazed Roco says, 'I'm an artist, not a magician!'" (Hans Conried: A Biography by Suzanne Gargiulo).  [Thanks, Jonathan!]

"A man shot by a rabbit," from Peter Penniless: Gamekeeper and Gentleman by George Christopher Davies, 1884.

An illustration from a 1901 issue of The Lady's Realm magazine.  The caption reads: "I stepped back as she passed."

An illustration from Kate Carnegie by Ian Maclaren (1896).  The caption reads: "It's a difficult key to turn."

An illustration from an 1896 issue of The Quiver magazine.  The caption reads: "She tore the paper into a thousand minute fragments."

An illustration from an 1885 issue of Little Wide Awake magazine.

Here's a precursor to how "some states inflate their books to make themselves look better" (Democracy and Leadership by Eric Thomas Weber, 2013), from Western Wilds and the Men Who Redeem Them by John Hanson Beadle, 1878.

From Kayvan Novak's hilarious Fonejacker series 2 (unseen footage).

An illustration from an 1887 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.  The caption reads: "The story of a haunted room. —'In less time than I can take to write it, an unearthly vaporous fire spring from the wrist.'"

An illustration from Bill Nye's History of the United States (1894).  The caption reads: "Not paid their debts for years."

"The Gymnastic Grammarian": an illustration from an 1884 issue of Puck magazine.  The caption reads: "He ought to be muzzled. —Every time he opens his mouth he puts his foot in it."

An illustration from Clear as the Noon Day by Ethel Penrose (1893).  The caption reads: "Paul tried to peer into the gathering darkness."

An illustration from an 1887 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.  The caption reads: "'Will you not speak to me?' said the presence, softly.  I sprang to clasp her; only the air remained.  Still she was there!"

It's "funny only if you've lived it."
—Rachel Lloyd, Girls Like Us (2011)

Unicorn Sonnet, by Gary Barwin

I send you this email. I am no unicorn. You ask the number of my horns. A hundred? A thousand? Perhaps they are uncountable, considering body surface area and thickness. Needle-like, perhaps they mirror flesh in slivers, a silver aura of pixels or data points, a fiber optic network of breath or light.  Perhaps they are beams sent from the cemeteries of distant stars, or broad as trees, root you to the ground while reaching toward a rhizomatic sun. 

I reply: No, I have no horn. Unscrewed from my forehead, I keep it in my desk at work, my mother, father, sister, son. Springtime a shopping cart or unicorn, moving air and light in its chrome matrix. Soft familiar music from everywhere, winter, its white pelt & warm skin now also in a desk. I am no unicorn, but send this email. I am a spammer of friends and of feelings that bud like sticky leaves now unfolding.

Not only is light both a particle and a wave, but so is time.   From Castle Rackrent and The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth (1895).  The caption reads: "If you could stand still for one single particle of a second."

An illustration from an 1894 issue of The Quiver magazine.  The caption reads: "Mrs. Clarke displayed her latent powers of abuse."

An illustration from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.  The caption reads: "'It's charcoal,' he cried."

An illustration from an 1877 issue of Cornhill magazine.

An illustration from an 1868 issue of The Tomahawk magazine.

"The Dismal Family": an illustration from The Leisure Hour (1895).

An illustration from an 1874 issue of The Quiver magazine.  The caption reads: "The future mocks the present."

"I began wondering": an illustration from an 1899 issue of The Lady's Realm magazine.

"Lyrics no longer have the power they used to." —Shindō Kazuma

An illustration from an 1870 issue of The Quiver magazine.  The caption reads: "Mr. Dalrymple had to carry off his jelly in a kind of defeat."

An illustration from an 1854 issue of Arthur's Home magazine.  The caption reads: "Good and evil animals."

Before the cursed videotape that caused viewers to die seven days after watching it (in Hideo Nakata's Ring), it was a mere photograph that proved deadly (In the Forbidden Land by Arnold Henry Savage Landor, 1898).  Please view the image at your discretion.

An illustration from an 1884 issue of Little Wide Awake magazine.

Forget the (hilarious) twelve meals of Britain.  We learn in the British comedy series Fonejacker that plumbers and builders enjoy an additional eight tea breaks per working day: 10:30 a.m., 11:45 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2:00 p.m., 2:37 p.m., 3:00 p.m., 3:30 p.m., and 4:03 p.m.

But they also enjoy no fewer than sixteen biscuit breaks, at 10:30 a.m., 10:50 a.m., 11:45 a.m., 11:52 a.m., 12:01 p.m., 12:30 p.m., 1:00 p.m. (lunch), 2:00 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 3:00 p.m., 3:14 p.m., 3:30 p.m., 3:41 p.m., 4:03 p.m., 4:06 p.m., and 4:13 p.m.

We've included a picture of "as many tea breaks as you like," also courtesy of Fonejacker.

[For Jonathan.]

An illustration from a 1917 issue of Saturday Evening Post.

An illustration from a 1907 issue of The Reader magazine.

Pollen was once considered fairy gold.  "Did you ever wish with it?  Just touch your finger to the pollen, and then wish.  After you wish, blow hard twice to get the pollen off.  If it goes, your wish will come true, but if not, you will not have your wish" (E. M. J., "A March Ramble," Primary Education 1906).  Our illustration of the pollen fairy appears in Blossoms by the Way by Carrie Adelaide Cooke, 1882.

"What about what happens to words when you're asleep?": a still from the extraordinary Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, series three.

"The number ninety-nine should not be taken too literally." —Anthromorphic Depictions of God (2012)

While this illustration isn't literally a simile, it's (ahem) very like one.  From The Argonauts of California by Charles Waldo Haskins, 1890.

An illustration from an 1890 issue of The Quiver magazine.  The caption reads: "No waterproof or umbrella for me!"

Here's a precursor to Disneyland's submarine lagoon.  The Disney version appears to have been inspired by the Grande Cascade Waterfall at Bois de Bologne, Paris, created by Baron Haussmann in 1852.  Our illustration appears in Fra Det Moderne Frankrig by Richard Kaufmann, 1882.

Momus suggests that there are "few tales which would not be improved by the addition of the phrase 'suddenly, a shot rang out.'"
Decide for yourself as we alter the opening lines of . . .

Gain by Richard Powers

We've looked at tens of thousands of vintage illustrations in the course of our research, but this is the very first portrait we've encountered that identifies what the portrayed is doing!  The caption puts this portrait ... ahem ... head-and-shoulders above the rest!  Luckily, we can mentally search and replace all the captions we've seen to date with "sight-seeing."  So very much of what our beleaguered eyes have seen makes better sense now!  Whew!

Here are two rather excruciating vintage names: Grisette and Orthodocia.

"The Devil Tree": an illustration from an 1883 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

An illustration from an 1854 issue of Arthur's Home magazine.  The caption reads: "Private practice in homeopathy."