Karl Baedecker, the German publisher, died today in 1859. This is quite remarkable and an astonishing piece of research on my part (eat your heart out, Eric Hobsbawm RIP). Because during WW2 the Baedecker raids hit the very cities in Britain listed by Baedecker nearly a century earlier. Coincidence? I think not! Clearly, Karl Baedecker was an early member of the Nazi Party. Has nobody else noticed this?
In other news ...
As a kid I could never understand how the gadget developed by Paul Zoll at the Harvard Medical School actually worked. It was designed to control heartbeat and, as far as I knew, was called a peacemaker. I couldn't understand how a six-shot revolver carried by cowboys could be any help at all in that respect. That's why I became an historian rather than a cardiac surgeon and probably just as well.
