After she hung up the journalists approached her for an interview. It turned out that she was an Italian.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS AND EPITAPHS
Oscar Wilde, novelist, playwright, currently a gay icon, died 1900:
"Either that wallpaper goes, or I do."
Dominique Bonhours, grammarian, d. 1702 (translated from the French):
"I am about to die ... or I am going to die ... either construction is correct."
Ludwig Van Beethoven, d. 1827:
"Friends, applaud. The comedy is finished."
Why, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist…
Col. John Sedgewick, a Union officer during the Civil War, at the commencement of battle, d. 1864:
"Why, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."
Vespasian, Roman Emperor, d. 79 A.D., referring to the Roman custom of deifying emperors posthumously:
"Alas! I seem to be turning into a god!"
James M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, d. 1927:
"I can't sleep."
Winston Churchill, d. 1965:
"I'm bored with it all."
Julius Caesar assassinated 44 BC: "And you, child? (Kai su, teknon? ( Kai su teknon?) (Note: Shakespeare to the contrary notwithstanding, Caesar did not say the Latin words, Et tu Brute? He asked, in Greek, why Brutus was stabbing him.)
Lady Astor, British politician, d. 1954, upon opening her dying eyes and seeing her family and friends gathered around her death bed:
"Is it my birthday?" (Addendum: when Winston Churchill was told of Lady Astor's death, he reportedly muttered, "Better late than never.")
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, novelist, dramatist, premier German figure in the Enlightenment, d. 1832:
"Mehr Licht, " 'more light.' (Note: it has been debated whether he called for the spread of enlightened thought, or merely wanted the drapes opened.)
Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary, d. 1923:
"Don't let it end this way. Tell everybody that I said something."
Hans Frank, governor of German-occupied Poland during World War Two, shortly before being hanged for crimes against humanity, 1946:
"A thousand years shall pass away, and the guilt of Germany shall not have been erased." Other reports say that just before being hanged he murmured, "Verzeihen Sie mir, Herr Jesu.” Forgive me, Lord Jesus..
John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln, d. 1865:
"Tell mother, tell mother, I died for my country ... (looking at his hands) ... useless ... useless ..."
Errol Flynn, actor, d. 1959:
"I've had a hell of a lot of fun, and I've enjoyed every minute."
Adam Smith, philosopher, economist, d. 1790: "Gentlemen, I believe we should adjourn this meeting to another place."
Lord Palmerston, British statesman, d. 1865, when implored by his physician not to die:
"Die, my dear doctor? That is the last thing I shall do."
George Armstrong Custer, just before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, d. 1876:
"Hurrah boys! Let's get these last few reds and then head back to camp. Hurrah!"
Voltaire, French philosopher, d. 1778; when, after making confession, receiving absolution, and taking Communion, was asked if he forswore Satan:
"This is no time to make new enemies."
Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany; the last sentence of his political testament, completed, signed, and witnessed immediately before his suicide; d. 1945:
"Above all, I charge the leadership of the nation and their followers with the strict observance of the racial laws and with merciless resistance against the universal poisoners of all peoples, international Jewry."
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, d. 1793; after stepping on her executioner's foot just before being guillotined:
"Monsieur, I beg your pardon."
Stan Laurel of the comedy duo of Laurel and Hardy, d. 1965:
"I wish I were skiing." Nurse: "Oh, do you ski, Mr. Laurel?" "No, but I'd rather be doing that than doing this."
Woodrow Wilson, president and lover of limericks, d. 1924; his last limerick, written in pencil on a notepad soon before his death:
Such a wondrous bird is the pelican.
His mouth can hold more than his belly can.
He can keep in his beak
Enough food for a week.
I am wondering how in the hell he can.
*(Unless otherwise noted, the following epitaphs were composed by their subjects.)
The epitaph of William Shakespeare:
Good Frend for Jesus sake Forbeare
To Digg the Dust Enclosed Heare. Blest be Ye Man Yt Spares thes stones And Curst Be He Yt Moves My Bones.
The epitaph of Benjamin Franklin:
The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer (like the cover of an old book, its contents worn out, and stript of its lettering and gilding), lies here, food for worms. Yet the work itself shall not be lost, for it will, as he believed, appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by its Author.
The epitaph of academy award-winning stage and screen actor Jack Lemon:
Jack Lemon
In
The epitaph of Winston Churchill:
I am prepared to meet my Maker.
Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal
Of meeting me is another matter.
The epitaph of Mel Blanc, Warner Brothers cartoon vocalist, the voice of Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, et.al.:
That's all, folks
The epitaph of William H. Bonney (not his own composition):
Truth and History.
21 Men. The boy bandit king.
He died as he lived.
William H. Bonney.
Billy the Kid.
The epitaph of an otherwise nondescript gentleman named George Johnson, d. 1882, buried in Tombstone, Arizona (not his own composition):
Here lies George Johnson
Hanged by mistake, 1882.
He was right
We was wrong.
We strung him up
And now he’s gone.
We’re sorry.
The epitaph of Alexander the Great (not his own composition), reportedly engraved on his alabaster sarcophagus in Alexandria, Egypt:
A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough
The epitaph of Nicolas Copernicus, astronomer, mathematician, proponent of heliocentrism (not his own composition):
STA SOL NE MOEARE (translation: Stand, sun, move not)
The epitaph of Arthur, King of the Britons, unearthed near Glastonbury Abbey (not his own composition; the authenticity of this epitaph is disputed):
HIC JACET ARTURUS
REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS
(Translation: Here lies Arthur, the once and future king.)
Robin Hood, rebel and outlaw, d. 1247 (not his own composition; the authenticity of this epitaph is disputed):
Here underneath this laiti stean
Laiz Robert Earl of Huntingdon
Nea arcer ver az hie sae geud,
An pipl kauld im Robin Heud:
Sic an utlaw as hi an his men
Will England niver si agen.
-Obit 24 Kal, dekembris 1247
(Translation:
Here underneath this little stone
Lies Robert, Earl of Huntington.
No archer was as he so good,
And people called him Robin Hood.
Such an outlaw as he and his men
Will England never see again.
Died on the calendar December 24, 1247)
Robert Louis Stevenson, author of The Strange Case of Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and other stories:
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And laid me down with a will
This be the verse that you greave for me:
“Here he lies where he longed to be.
&
nbsp; Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
And, of course, the venerable old epitaph, found in graveyards all over the English-speaking world, in numerous variations:
As you are
Once was I.
As I am,
So shall you be.
AN AUF WIEDERSEHEN FROM DR. SACKETT: THE STORY I COULD NOT TELL IN CLASS
There are certain tales, true stories, which are so, well, indecent and/or vulgar that it would be completely inappropriate (not to mention actionable) to relate them in a public school classroom. (And the sensitive, impressionable minds of innocent adolescents should be protected from them as well.) But many such stories just cry out to be told, and what follows is one of them. Though I now teach college, where basically anything goes in the classroom, I have never had occasion to tell this tale, a tale I have been dying to tell for over a decade. Well, here it goes:
In 1999, President Bill Clinton was impeached by the House and subsequently tried (and acquitted) by the Senate on a number of charges, the most important of which was perjury. Clinton had had a sexual relationship with a young woman named Monica Lewinsky, and had lied about it under oath. (He was scared of his wife, apparently, and thought he could get away with denying it. He didn’t.)
Of course, as a History teacher, I was glued to the TV set during the entire impeachment and trial, and thus watched the following incident live on cable news. (I do not name the cable news station because, number one, its identity is obvious, and number two, I don’t want to have to pay for permission to relate specifics.)
During the impeachment proceedings Republican Senator Strom Thurmond (1902-2003) was exiting the Capitol when a young reporter, the ink on her newly printed diploma from the Columbia School of Journalism doubtless still wet, accosted him on the Capitol steps. Thurmond, a genial and flirtatious man of advanced years—he was 96 at the time—was always willing to take the time to speak with a pretty young woman, and the look of enthusiasm on her face bespoke the great sense of excitement she was feeling. (I mean, here she was, in her early twenties, in what was probably her first post-college job, on what was probably her first major assignment, about to interview the longest-serving senator in U.S. History on live TV!) Her glee was palpable. What she had not taken into account, possibly because she was unaware of it at her tender age, was that when people get old, I mean really old, they say whatever they damn well please, and to hell with the consequences.
“Senator,” she asked into her hand-held microphone, glancing at the cameraman with a grin, “do you have anything to say about today’s proceedings?” She then held the mike up to Thurmond.
“Well, Ah’m probly gonna vote guilty, but Ah think the whole damn thang is a waste a tahme,” the South Carolinian responded.
Oh boy, she probably thought. Controversy! “And why is that, sir?”
“Cawse all he hadda do was jus’ come clean in the first place, and we coulda avoided all this nonsense. He woulda got in hot watah with his missus, but so what? None o’ this wuz necessary.”
The young lady had probably studied the Watergate scandal in college, because she then asked (using a well-worn phrase from that era), “Do you mean that the cover-up was worse than the crime?”
“Yep,” Thurmond answered, and then paused and furrowed his brow. “Now that y’all mention it, this reminds me of somthin that happened back in Jackson County South Carolina back when I was a youngun. The sheriff of Jackson County was a fella name of Billy Bob McGillicuddy, and Billy Bob got hiself elected an re-elected sheriff evy yeah, cawse he was friends with half the country and was kin to the other half.”
The reporter nodded eagerly, smiling and glancing again at the camera.
“The otha party got itself sick and tired of havin to waste tahme, money, and effit tryin to defeat Billy Bob, so they got theyselves a plan one yeah. They hired theyselves a prositute, and they had that prositute tell Billy Bob to meet her at her hotel room that night. Unbenowenst to Billy Bob, they wuz gonna have reportahs alayin in wait.”
She nodded and smiled again. Scandal!
“That night,” Thurmond went on, “Billy Bob McGillicuddy showed up at the hotel in the wee owahs of the mornin, and the prositute invited him into her room. The reportahs waited a little tahme, and then they kicked open the doah and found Billy Bob and the prositute in fragmentary delicious.” (Author’s note: he meant in flagrante delicto, “in the midst of an indecent act.”) “An seconds latah, the flash-bulbs was aflashin, the prositute was alaffin, and Billy Bob was agrabbin his trousers and was arunnin down the road.”
I recall the reporter bouncing up and down slightly on the balls of her feet as Thurmond spoke. A political career in ruins because of sex with a hooker! Fantastic!
“Three days went by,” Thurmond continued, “without a word to anybody from Billy Bob McGillicuddy. An then the word went out that he was agonna have a meetin with the reportahs, what nowadays we’d call a press confence, the next day, one week from election day. An the next day at twelve noon, Billy Bob McGillicuddy walked down the steps of the county courthouse of Jackson County and said to the assembled reportahs, ‘Ah got jus three thangs to say to you boys. The first thang is that Ah am not gonna … Ah say, Ah say, Ah am not gonna drop outta this race! The second thang is that one week from today, Ah’m agonna be re-elected sheriff of Jackson County.’”
She nodded as Thurmond paused, and said, “And the third thing?”
“The third thang, the last thang, Billy Bob McGillicuddy said was this,” Thurmond went on in a serious tone of voice. “‘If you set a trap for me, and you bait that trap with pussy, you’re agonna catch me evy tahme!’”
I did a double take when I heard Thurmond say those words. The reporter did a quadruple take. She then stood frozen, an expression of stunned disbelief on her face, as Thurmond turned to the camera and said, “An one week latah, Billy Bob McGillicuddy was re-elected in a landslide!”
After a long moment, the reporter herself turned to the camera with a sad, sick look on her face, and said weakly, “Back to you, Bob.” The TV screen faded briefly to black.
I jumped from my seat, thrust an 8 hour VHS tape into my VCR, and began to record on extended play, but for obvious reasons the cable station did not replay a tape of the interview.
As noted at the beginning of this little book, all of this is History. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. Nothing is stranger than reality.
Auf Wiedersehen.
Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun Page 13