A Bad Morning

On March 14, 1887, Rhode Island evangelist Ansel Bourne woke up in an unfamiliar room. To his astonishment, he found that he was in Norristown, Pa., where he had been running a stationery and confectioner’s shop for two months, calling himself A.J. Brown.

His nephew helped him return to Providence, where psychologists diagnosed a case of dissociative fugue, multiple personality, and amnesia.

Inspired, Robert Ludlum borrowed the preacher’s surname for his novel The Bourne Identity.