It’s 13 December, which can only possibly mean one thing. YES, it’s 14 years to the day since I learnt that Aristotle Onassis had his bar stools upholstered with whale foreskins, of course!
Unfortunately, being a man of a certain kind, Onassis didn’t choose this because of the quality of the leather, but to make off-colour jokes as a display of wealth and power.
Disappointing, if not exactly surprising.
The whole article (by Kate Simon, published by the Independent on this day in 2009) is a fascinating look into a “floating homage to testosterone” and a vanished world of starry parties, lapis lazuli fireplaces, and a snuff box made from the bill of an albatross.
Also…
It’s the 160th anniversary of the death of Coleridge’s literary executor Joseph Henry Green. He was also a noted surgeon, and — according to legend — called the time of his own death.
A memoir of his life by his friend Sir John Simon says he uttered a “few tender parting words”, and then his doctor came in, at which Green “significantly, and pointing to the region of his heart, said — “congestion.””
