CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
At first glance, we thought she was holding her own severed head. The effect is more dramatic when the photo is seen as a thumbnail. It's a portrait of Myrtle Vane, from San Francisco Dramatic Review, 1899.
From the University of North Carolina at Asheville's 1971 yearbook. For an explanation of how this scanned page captures a genuine spirit, see that remarkable book The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine, which makes good on its promises of real ghosts, actual hauntings, and necromancy by proxy.
Atlas Obscura says that old cinema cliché of a dastardly villain trying a damsel-in-distress to the railroad tracks never actually happened. But it did happen in the 1980s. From Lebanon Valley's 1981 yearbook.