So in 1896 we had already sliced open the sun (to discover its labyrinthine innards), and yet NASA's launch of a solar probe has been pushed back to 2018.  One step forward, two steps back.  From The Half Hour Library of Travel, Nature and Science for Young Readers, 1896.

You've heard of "turning it up to eleven," but here's what happens when you do.  From Psychical Research and the Resurrection by James H. Hyslop, 1908, from the Harry Houdini Collection.

The following quotation does not [technically] relate to the diagram: "The goal is to let the sense lines sing themselves by letting them ride on a line of breath that does not die out before the end of the thought has been reached.  Imagine an arrow of breath that you are directing to that target" (Kathleen A. Harmon, The Ministry of Cantors, 2004).  The diagram appears in Health in Home and Town by Bertha Millard Brown, 1912.

"There are negatives and positives to every move, but hopefully they will settle into a realistic acceptance that everything will work out just fine." —Sammie Stevenson

Our illustration is from The Decorative Periods by Chandler Robbins Clifford, 1906.

Here's one way to diagram a sentence about a fairy-like creature emerging from a portal.  From Community English by Mildred Flagg, 1921.

The colors combine into a six-pointed ghostly star.  From The Principles of Light and Color by Edwin Dwight Babbitt, 1878.

Here's the ladder to the heaven of the moon, from The Epic of the Fall of Man: A Comparative Study of Caedmon, Dante and Milton by Stephen Humphreys Villiers Gurteen, 1896.

In this graph from Advanced Calculus by Edwin Bidwell Wilson (1911), we learn a lot about how stationery is related.  A1, A2, and A3 are, of course, paper sizes.  The X and O at the bottom of the graph stand for kisses and hugs.

How to transform into an octopus, Step One (apparently).  From The Illinois Teacher, 1855.

You knew that a rainbow can cast a shadow, but did you know that a shadow can also cast a rainbow?  We find the proof in Ceylon in the “Jubilee Year” by John Ferguson, 1887.

You've heard the idiom that "blood is thicker than water," but what does water have to do with anything?  Rather, it's oil, as we see in this diagram from An American Text-Book of Physiology by William Henry Howell, 1897.