The very worst case of delerium tremens on record is one told of by the Bonham (Texas) Enterprise, which says that a few days ago a man residing five or six miles from that place ‘saw something resembling an enormous serpent floating in a cloud that was passing over his farm. Several parties of men and boys, at work in the fields, observed the same thing, and were seriously frightened. It seemed to be as large and long as a telegraph-pole, was of a yellow striped color, and seemed to float along without any effort. They could see it coil itself up, turn over, and thrust forward its huge head as if striking at something.’

— New York Times, July 8, 1873

See The Crawfordsville Monster.

Dubious but worth recording: A tract dated 1622 reports a vast war of starlings over Cork, Ireland, Oct. 12-14, 1621. Armies of birds had reportedly converged from the east and west some four or five days before, and on Oct. 12 “they forthwith, at one Instant, took Wing, and so mounting up into the Skies, encountered one another with such a terrible Shock, as the Sound amazed the whole City and the Beholders,” until “there fell down in the City, and into the Rivers, Multitudes of Starlings or Stares, some with Wings broken, some with Legs and Necks broken, some with Eyes picked out, some their Bills thrust into the Breast and Sides of their Adversaries, on so strage [sic] a Manner, that it were incredible, except it were confirmed by Letters of Credit, and by Eye-Witnesses with that Assurance which is without all Exception.”

The birds adjourned, for some reason, on Sunday, though visitors from Suffolk reported seeing a similar war over remote woods there. On Monday the fight resumed over Cork, and this time the dead included a kite, a raven, and a crow.

I can’t find the original pamphlet, but it’s referenced by Johns Hopkins (1905), the London Library (1888), the New York State Library (1882), and the Bodleian Library (1860), among others. Starlings do have a colorful history — see Oops and Fragments of Night.

Back in 2005 we noted that 7’9″ M.V. Bates had married 7’5″ Anna Swan in 1871. They conceived two sons; the first was stillborn, but the second was delivered successfully in 1879, weighing 23.75 pounds. Obstetrician A.P. Beach published an account of the delivery that year in the New York Medical Record. Excerpts:

• “After a convenient time, with my patient in the usual position, I proceeded to make an examination, but was unable to reach the os uteri, it being so far up. I could not, with my hand, by any ordinary effort, make a satisfactory examination, but concluded that she was in the initial stage of labor.”
• “At 4 P.M., on the 18th, while conducting an examination during pain, the membranes gave way spontaneously and the amniotic fluid came pouring out so profusely as to startle every one. … The bed was well protected by rubber blankets, which carried the waters over the side of the bed, where they were caught in vessels to the amount of five gallons.”
• “The forceps could not be successfully applied because of the unusually large head which lay, with the neck, in a vagina that would measure on its posterior aspect 12 inches at least, and from 7 to 9 in its anterior.”
• “After further consultation, as it was our great desire to deliver if possible, without mutilation, we passed a strong bandage over the neck of the child, and while one made downward and lateral traction, the other, after several attempts, succeeded in bringing down an arm, and finally after a laborious seige we succeeded in delivering our patient of a male child.”

“We believe that this is the largest infant at birth of which there is any authenticated record,” note the editors. “The placenta usually weighs one-sixth as much as the foetus. In this case the secundines in all weighed nearly half as much as the child.”

According to legend, pearl-hunting Spaniards sailed up the Gulf of California in 1610 and became grounded in a vanishing inland sea, leaving a ship full of treasure in the California desert. Reports are curiously specific:

• In January 1870 an Albert S. Evans told the New York Galaxy that, looking south in 1863 from the summit of the divide between Dos Palmas and the Palma Seca, he’d seen “what appeared in the distance the wreck of a gallant ship.”
• The Sacramento Union, Oct. 6, 1870, reported that a party of four had left San Bernardino to visit the ship. “The bow and stern are plainly visible, and she is 240 miles from the Gulf of California.” The party returned six days later and set out again in November; no further details are recorded.
• In a 1933 book, The Journey of the Flame, Antonio de Fierro Blanco tells of a young mule driver named Tiburcio Manquerna who stumbled across a lost galleon and saw a vast cargo of pearls in its hold. He was later unable to relocate it.
• In January 1939, Desert magazine quoted a Perta Socia Tucker who said that her first husband knew of the ship’s location, “a narrow box canyon with high sheer walls, and a sandy bottom; and partially buried there, a boat of ancient appearance — an open boat but big, with round metal disks on its sides.”

In 1949 the Los Angeles Times reported that three UCLA students set out with 1910 Imperial Irrigation District maps and a story from a Cahuilla Indian who said he’d seen a “serpent-necked” canoe near the Salton Sea in 1917. The Times doesn’t report the result — but if you found a fortune in pearls, you wouldn’t tell a newspaper, would you?