Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime

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Collyer brothers

Homer Lusk Collyer and Langley Collyer were two American brothers who became famous because of their snobbish nature, filth in their homes, and compulsive hoarding. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders.

Lord Lucan

Lord Lucan was a British peer suspected of murder who disappeared in 1974. Once considered for the role of James Bond in the cinematic adaptations of Ian Fleming's novels, Lucan was known for his expensive tastes; he raced powerboats and drove an Aston Martin. On the evening of 7 November 1974, his children's nanny, Sandra Rivett, was bludgeoned to death in the basement of the Lucan family home. As the police began their murder investigation, Lucan telephoned his mother, asking her to collect the children, and then drove a borrowed Ford Corsair to a friend's house in Uckfield, East Sussex. Hours later, he left the property and vanished without trace.

Jack Parsons

Jack Parsons was an American rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology and co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. An enthusiastic occultist, he was one of the earliest American devotees of Aleister Crowley, and a leading member of his organization, Ordo Templi Orientis. Amongst many other things, Parsons and an associate attempted to bring about some sort of incarnation of the goddess Babalon. Parsons performed rituals (reportedly to the background music of Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff records) for 11 days in a process known as the Babalon Working.

Julie d’Aubigny

Julie d'Aubigny was a 17th century swordswoman and opera singer. Her tumultuous career and flamboyant life were the subject of gossip and colorful stories in her own time, and inspired romances and novels afterwards. In the following years, d'Aubigny gathered a reputation as a wild woman who hit shopkeepers and fought duels with young aristocrats. She became involved with an assistant fencing master named Serannes. In about 1688, when lieutenant-general of the police Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie tried to apprehend Serannes for killing a man in an illegal duel, the pair fled the city to Marseille. In Villeperdue she fought a victorious duel against three squires and drove her blade through the shoulder of one of them. Next day she asked for his health and found out he was Louis-Joseph d'Albert Luynes, son of the Duke of Luynes. Next evening one of his companions came to offer his apologies and she appeared in his room in female clothing. They became lovers.

René Dagron

René Dagron was a French photographer and inventor. During the siege of Paris, Dagron proposed to the authorities to use his microfilming process to carry the messages by carrier pigeons. Dagron photographed pages of newspapers in their entirety which he then converted into miniature photographs. He subsequently removed the collodion film from the glass base and rolled it tightly into a cylindrical shape which he then inserted into miniature tubes that were transported fastened on the wings of pigeons. Upon receipt the microphotograph was reattached to a glass frame and was then projected by magic lantern on the wall. The message contained in the microfilm could then be transcribed or copied. By 28 January 1871, when Paris and the Government of National Defense surrendered, Dagron had delivered 115,000 messages to Paris by carrier pigeon.