Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime

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Emperor Norton

Emperor Norton was a celebrated citizen of San Francisco, California, who in 1859 proclaimed himself "Emperor of these United States" and subsequently "Protector of Mexico." Though he was considered insane, or at least highly eccentric, the citizens of San Francisco celebrated his regal presence and his proclamations, most famously, his "order" that the United States Congress be dissolved by force (which Congress and the U.S. Army ignored) and his numerous decrees calling for a bridge and a tunnel to be built across San Francisco Bay (which both happened long after his death in the form of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge and the Transbay Tube).

Attila Ambrus

Attila Ambrus was a gentleman thief, a sort of Cary Grant - if only Grant came from Transylvania, was a terrible professional hockey goalkeeper, and preferred women in leopard-skin hot pants. During the 1990s, while playing for the biggest hockey team in Budapest, Ambrus took up bank robbery to make ends meet. His opponents: a police chief who learned how to be a detective via dubbed episodes of Columbo; a deputy so dense he was known only by his Hungarian nickname, Mound of Asshead; and a forensics expert-cum-ballet teacher who wore a top hat and tails on the job.

Mario Praz

Mario Praz was among the great scholars of the 20th century. His studies of icon­ography and seventeenth-century art remain unsurpassed and indispensable. His most famous work, The Romantic Agony, examines the themes of sexuality and morbidity that permeated so much late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature. But The House of Life comes as close to his autobiography as anything we are likely to encounter, and it is a quirky and magical book. In simplest terms, it is a house tour, but Praz's Roman apartment was no ordinary house it was a wunderkammer, a house of wonders, rooms replete with objets d'art and sculpture, walls hung with paintings and prints, bureaus overflowing with postcards and ephemera. And Praz is no ordinary guide; he leads you, the reader, through each room lecturing on the objects therein. What emerges are his passions, his immense erudition, his insatiable curiosity, his undeniable amiability, his infectious enthusiasm. What might have been a predictable didactic exercise is transformed and expanded into a multi-layered disquisition on the nature of art, on the challenge of investigation and discovery, on the idiosyncrasies of personalities, on the serendipitous way in which art and the objects we choose to surround us tell stories that go far beyond their purely physical attributes.

Strom Thurmond

Strom Thurmond left office as the only senator to reach the age of 100 while still in office and as the oldest-serving and longest-serving senator in U.S. history (although he was later surpassed in the latter by Robert Byrd). Thurmond holds the record for the longest serving Dean of the United States Senate in U.S. history at 14 years. He conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone senator in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. He later moderated his position on race, but continued to defend his early segregationist campaigns on the basis of states' rights in the context of Southern society at the time, never fully renouncing his earlier viewpoints. After his death it was revealed that Thurmond and a black maid, Carrie Butler, had a daughter whom Thurmond never publicly acknowledged.

Timothy Dexter

Timothy Dexter was an American eccentric businessman who was peculiarly lucky and never bothered to learn to spell. Dexter bought a huge estate in Chester, New Hampshire. He also bought a new house in Newburyport and decorated it with minarets, a golden eagle on the top of the cupola, a mausoleum for himself and a garden of 40 wooden statues of famous men, including George Washington, William Pitt, Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas Jefferson and of course, himself. It had an inscription "I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western World." People flocked to gawk at this collection. Dexter also had his own way with household staff. He had a black and protective housekeeper called Lucy, whom he claimed to be a daughter of an African prince. Other servants included a large idiot, a fortune teller and his "poet laureate" Jonathan Plummer. At the age of 50 he decided to write a book about himself - A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress. He wrote about himself and complained about politicians, clergy and his wife. The book contained 8,847 words and 33,864 letters, but absolutely no punctuation, and capital letters were sprinkled about at random. At first, he handed his book out for free, but it rapidly became popular and ran into eight editions in total. When people complained that it was hard to read, for the second edition he added an extra page - 13 lines of punctuation marks - asking readers to "peper and solt it as they plese."

George Sitwell

George Sitwell was an unusual man. It’s tempting to dismiss the designer of a small pistol for shooting wasps as either a madman or a joker. The ever-serious Sir George was neither. He had a lot of time on his hands, that’s all. At a loss for something to do, Sir George began to compile a family history. When he wasn’t writing about his own family’s history, he was writing about the history of almost everything else, from Acorns As an Article of the Medieval Diet, The History of the Fork, and, The Errors of Modern Parents. He was careful, however, not to get too into writing, as he believed that novel writing had an ill effect on one’s health.

Bedaux Canadian subarctic expedition

The Bedaux Canadian subarctic expedition has been described as one of the strangest journeys in the history of modern exploration. The brainchild of Charles Bedaux, a French-born naturalized American millionaire, it centred on an implausible scheme to drive five Citroen half-tracks and fifteen tonnes of supplies--including bottles of champagne and candied fruits--through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, following a trail that had not been attempted since Alexander Mackenzie in 1793. Bedaux was to be accompanied by an eclectic entourage that included: his wife, Fern; an Italian countess thought to be his mistress; an Academy-award winning Hollywood cameraman; a Swiss skiing instructor; a host of wranglers and cowboys; a dental student; an unemployed bush pilot; guides; geologists; and a British Columbia provincial surveyor.

Hetty Green

Hetty Green nicknamed "The Witch of Wall Street", was an American businesswoman, remarkable for her frugality during the Gilded Age, as well as for being the first American woman to make a substantial impact on Wall Street. There are many tales about Hetty Green's stinginess. She never turned on the heat nor used hot water. She wore one old black dress and undergarments that she changed only after they had been worn out. She did not wash her hands and rode an old carriage. She ate mostly pies that cost fifteen cents. One tale claims that she spent half a night searching her carriage for a lost stamp worth two cents. Another asserts that she instructed her laundress to wash only the dirtiest parts of her dresses (the hems) to save money on soap.

Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher was a Jesuit priest and scholar, sometimes called the last Renaissance man, important for his prodigious activity in disseminating knowledge. To illustrate his belief in the magnetic relationship between the sun and the vegetable kingdom, Kircher designed this heliotropic sunflower clock by attaching a sunflower to a cork and floating it in a reservoir of water. As the blossom rotated to face the sun, a pointer through its center indicated the time on the inner side of a suspended ring.