Loitering at Library Can Mean Ticket to Enrichment

Mindful that the county’s libraries are feeling the budget squeeze, I browsed one for three hours just to get that buzz from books.

Here’s some stuff I know now that I didn’t know before I went to the library:

* Ernest Lawrence Thayer, the author of “Casey at the Bat,” never understood the poem’s popularity. He refused to take any royalties from it, saying at one point: “All I ask is never to be reminded of it again.” The poem, an American classic about the Mudville 9, was first published in 1888 in the San Francisco Examiner among a group of editorials.

* Before he invented the steamboat and made “Fulton’s Folly” part of American lore, Robert Fulton tried to interest both France and Britain, which were warring with one another, in submarines. Napoleon considered but eventually rejected Fulton’s offer. The British weren’t interested either.

* Umbrellas probably originated in Egypt. Their design may have been used to symbolize the heavenly status of the royalty who used them rather than to protect them from the elements.

* Most of the money that Albert Schweitzer used to set up his African hospital in 1913 came from royalties he received from a book he wrote on composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

* Stung by criticism that he had never personally arrested anyone, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy No. 1, into custody in 1936. The arrest was made on Canal Street in New Orleans, and Hoover allegedly said “Put the cuffs on him, boys.” However, no one had remembered to bring any handcuffs, so Karpis’ hands were tied behind his back with an agent’s necktie.

* Herman Melville moved in 1850 to rural Massachusetts, where he began working on “Moby Dick.” At the same time and living just six miles away, Nathaniel Hawthorne was writing “The House of the Seven Gables.”

* In ancient times, pigeons were used to deliver messages about troop movements. Julius Caesar used them in many of his campaigns. Domesticated pigeons have been dated to at least 3000 BC.

* Many Roman Catholics were among the throngs of Germans and Italians who emigrated to America in the 1800s. When they began building Catholic churches and convents, it frightened many Protestants, who believed the Pope was trying to expand the church’s empire. Many wondered openly why Catholics were joining police departments and the military and storing weapons if they weren’t planning a day of reckoning.

* Noah planted the first vineyard.

* After the notorious Billy the Kid was captured, a local reporter said to him, “You appear to take it easy.” To which the Kid replied: “What’s the use of looking on the gloomy side of everything? The laugh’s on me this time.”

* Fashion designer Oleg Cassini had to convince President Kennedy that it would be OK for Jackie to wear a Cassini-designed evening dress that exposed one of her shoulders. Family patriarch Joseph Kennedy once told Cassini not to bother the President or First Lady with the bill for his services, saying “I’ll take care of it.” Cassini wrote that the elder Kennedy “asked me to be discreet about the cost of the operation, as it might be used politically against the President.”

* Researchers aren’t absolutely positive about the origin of Dalmatians. However, one authoritative expert on dogs says they came from Dalmatia, a region in the former Yugoslavia. Over the centuries, Dalmatians have served as sentinels, sheep dogs and bird dogs, as well as in packs for boar and deer hunting.

* Mongol armies, such as those under Genghis Khan, are characterized as wild hordes but were models of discipline and skill. They liked to operate in winter so they could use frozen marshes and ice-covered rivers for troop movement. One trick was to use local townspeople to test the strength of the ice, using such ploys as placing a herd of cattle across a frozen river from hungry citizens. Mongols also used smoke screens as a battlefield tactic.

* Leonardo da Vinci was more than a painter. He was among the first to draw the human skeletal structure and probably made the first accurate drawing of the skull, jaw and teeth. He also described how the upper and lower teeth work together.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.