ANECDOTES

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In 1831, while studying at West Point (the famed military academy in New York state), Edgar Allen Poe appeared for parade one day wearing "white belt and gloves, under arms," as required by official parade dress instructions. For this "gross neglect of duty," he was shortly expelled. Why? Having taken the instructions literally, Poe had appeared with a rifle over his shoulder wearing a belt and gloves—and nothing else. He was expelled.

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Frederick the Great conducted a tour of inspection of a prison in Berlin. While most prisoners approached the king, prostrating themselves and protesting their innocence, one man remained unusually silent. It was to this man that Frederick turned: "You..." "Yes?" "Why are you here?" "Armed robbery, Your Majesty." "Are you guilty?" "Yes, Your Majesty. I deserve my punishment." At this, Frederick summoned the warden. "Release this guilty wretch at once," he commanded. "I will not have him kept in this prison, where he will corrupt all of its innocent occupants."

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While serving in the British merchant marine during World War I, actor Herbert Marshall was engaged in an operation requiring all hands to wear life jackets almost continuously. "They got terribly soiled and foul-smelling," he later recalled, "and after a while you detested them. Coming to port, finally, at the conclusion of my tour of duty, I threw mine overboard. And watched it sink."

BTW:

Marshall served on the Western Front during WW1, was shot in the knee by a sniper and had his leg amputated.

Marshall and Miriam Hopkins in a publicity photo for Trouble in Paradise (1932)

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The renowned MIT professor Norbert Wiener was famed for his absent-mindedness. While crossing the MIT campus one day, he was stopped by a student with a mathematical problem. The perplexing question answered, Norbert followed with one of his own: "In which direction was I walking when you stopped me?" he asked, prompting an answer from the curious student. "Ah," Wiener declared, "then I've had my lunch."

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President Calvin Coolidge and his wife visited a government farm one day and were taken around on separate tours. Mrs. Coolidge, passing the chicken pens, inquired of a supervisor whether the roosters copulated more than once a day. "Yes," the man said. "Dozens of times." "Tell that," Mrs. Coolidge replied, "to the President!" Some time later the President, passing the same pens, was told about the roosters—and about his wife's remark. "Same hen every time?" he asked. "Oh, no, a different one each time," the supervisor replied. "Tell that," Coolidge said with a sly nod, "to Mrs. Coolidge."

BTW:

The term "Coolidge effect" is used to describe the re-arousal of a male animal by the introduction of a new female.

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In 1978, President Jimmy Carter attended a service at the Chapel of the Transfiguration, a small Episcopal log chapel in Grand Teton National Park, beneath the towering Tetons near Jackson, Wyoming. (The chapel was sited and built to frame a view of the Cathedral Group of peaks in a large window behind the altar.) Following a long-standing tradition, worshipers were asked to introduce themselves. When his turn arrived, Carter rose and remarked, "I'm Jimmy Carter from Plains, Georgia, but I'm living for a while in Washington, D.C."

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In September 1994, Johnny Depp trashed his $2,200-a-night Presidential suite at New York's exclusive Mark Hotel. Though he offered to pay for the damages, he refused to leave and was forcibly evicted. His accommodation for the night was generously provided by the NYPD: Depp was taken to three different jail cells (and was mobbed by female cops at each location).

Ironically, the guest who first complained about Depp's behavioru at the Mark was The Who's Roger Daltrey, who, with Keith Moon and his other bandmates, had once taken the art of hotel vandalism to dizzying new heights.

Depp later attributed the damage to various animals running amok in the room, among them a dog, a rat, an armadillo, and a cockroach the size of a baseball. And speaking of size... according to one witness, the destruction was sparked by Kate Moss declaring, "You know what your problem is?"—and commenting on Depp's supposedly miniscule manhood. Years later, Depp was asked about the "notorious hotel incident." His reply? "Which one!"

Depp had been arrested in Vancouver in 1989 for fighting with hotel security and would be again, in 1999, for scrapping with the paparazzi. Ironically, the Mark bore no ill-will toward Depp. "The owner approached my publicist about two years after the incident," he recalled, "and thanked her—said, 'It was so great for us that Johnny got arrested at our hotel and sent to jail. You can't imagine the business we got out of it!'"

Johnny Depp being escorted out of the police station in New York following his arrest, accused of breaking up furnishings in the room at the Mark Hotel.

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While filming The Hunger Games in Hawaii in 2012, Jennifer Lawrence, who was in a wetsuit for the entire shoot, found a great way to relieve her itchy bum - by sitting on, and rubbing against, some special rocks. Unfortunately, these rocks are sacred to the local Hawaiian people.

"You're not supposed to sit on them," she later explained, "because you're not supposed to expose your genitalia to them, ... but oh my God, they were so good for butt-itches. But one rock that I was butt-scratching on ended up coming loose.

"It was a giant boulder and it rolled down this mountain and almost killed our sound guy. His whole station got destroyed, it was a huge dramatic deal and all the Hawaiians were like 'Oh my god, it's the curse!' And I'm around the corner going, 'I'm your curse - I wedged it loose with my ass'."

Lawrence was filming in Oahu's Waimea Valley, which is managed by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. After Lawrence told this story on The Graham Norton Show, the BBC got so many complaints that she apologised on her Facebook page. "I meant absolutely no disrespect to the Hawaiian people," she said. "I really thought that I was being self-deprecating about the fact that I was 'the curse', but I understand the way it was perceived was not funny and I apologise if I offended anyone."

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While attending a British Book Week event with a friend at Buckingham Palace, actress Miriam Margolyes was delighted to meet Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth was a bit less delighted to meet Miriam Margolyes.

"She came towards me," Margolyes later recalled, "and she said, 'And what do you do?' And instead of saying, 'Mum, I record books,' I said - and I cringe as I tell you - 'Mum, I am the best reader of stories in the whole world.' And Her Majesty quite understandably recoiled, took a deep breath, raised her eyes to heaven, and smartly moved to the next person. And she said to him, 'And what do you do?' Well, he said, 'I teach children to read, and we found that if the letters are in different colours, the information is absorbed by the children more quickly and easily.' I, standing next to him, said, 'My goodness, how fantastic! I didn't know that.' And Her Majesty, incensed at my interruption, turned back to me and said, 'Be quiet!'

"And instead of being quiet, I said, 'Oh my goodness, Your Majesty, I'm so sorry. I was carried away with excitement.' And she again raised her eyes to heaven and moved slightly away and started talking about something else. I then interrupted her and said, 'You see, Your Majesty, we are so lucky to have English as our language. We have Dickens, Keats, Shakespeare, Wordsworth,' and I went through the syllabus...

"I said, 'Imagine, for example, Your Majesty, if we have been born' - and I was searching for a nation with a small literature, and I came across, 'Albanian.' And at that, she really did take fright, clutched her handbag to her, and tottered off, muttering. She got away from us as fast as she could."

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Evelyn Waugh was no fan of Winston Churchill's obnoxious journalist son, Randolph. Shortly after the younger Churchill was hospitalized to have a malfunctioning lung removed, it was announced in the press that, contrary to initial suspicions, the source of his problem was not in fact cancer. "A typical triumph of modern science," Waugh drily declared, "to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it."

Evelyn Waugh

Randolph Churchill

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