Lady Godiva, in the year 1057, exasperated her husband by persistently pleading with him to reduce the taxes on the people of Coventry. To silence her, he declared he would do so only if she rode naked through the town's market place. The 17-year-old Godiva called his bluff and set out for the town the next day on horseback, completely naked. However, by concealing most of her body with her long and copious hair, she preserved both her own modesty and her husband's pride, enabling him to reduce the taxes without loss of face.

A later embellishment of this almost certainly apocryphal tale suggests that Lady Godiva made a pact with the townspeople that they would remain indoors, behind shuttered windows, if they wanted their taxes reduced. Everyone complied except a tailor called Tom. This prurient citizen peeped through his curtains and was instantly struck blind (or, in some versions, dead). Poor voyeuristic Tom, blind or dead as the case may be, left the epithet "a peeping Tom" as a permanent legacy to the English language.

As he was driving back to his mansion, Pickfair, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. saw an aristocratic Englishman with a familiar face walking along the road in the heat. He stopped to offer him a ride, which the stranger accepted. Unable to remember the man's name, Fairbanks invited him in for a drink, and in the course of conversation attempted to elicit some clues as to his visitor's identity. The Englishman seemed to know many of Fairbanks's friends and was evidently well acquainted with the estate, for he made approving comments on some recent changes. Eventually Fairbanks's secretary entered the room and Fairbanks whispered "Who's this Englishman? I know he's Lord Somebody, but I just can't remember his name."

"That," replied the secretary, "is the English butler you fired last month for getting drunk."

How many times in our lives, have we absolutely known that something
was a certain way, only to discover later that what we believed to be
true ... was not?

The Cookie Thief By Valerie Cox

A woman was waiting at an airport one night,
With several long hours before her flight.
She hunted for a book in the airport shops.
Bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book but happened to see,
That the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be
Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between,
Which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.

So she munched the cookies and watched the clock,
As the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock.
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by,
Thinking, 'If I wasn't so nice, I would blacken his eye.'

With each cookie she took, he took one too,
When only one was left, she wondered what he would do.
With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh,
He took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, as he ate the other,
She snatched it from him and thought... oooh, brother.
This guy has some nerve and he's also rude,
Why he didn't even show any gratitude!

She had never known when she had been so galled,
And sighed with relief when her flight was called.
She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate,
Refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.

She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat,
Then she sought her book, which was almost complete.
As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise,
There was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.

If mine are here, she moaned in despair,
The others were his, and he tried to share.
Too late to apologize, she realized with grief,
That she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.

One of Cornelius Vanderbilt's sons-in-law, needing $50,000 to set up a business, approached the Commodore for the loan. The old man inquired how how much he expected to make from the investment.

"About five thousand a year," was the reply.

"I can do better than that with fifty thousand dollars," said Vanderbilt. "Tell you what I'll do. I'll pay you five thousand a year hereafter, and you may consider yourself in my employ at that salary."

"The Cookie Thief" is a blatent rip-off of an anecdote told in "So long, and thanks for all the fish", Part 3 of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, by Douglas Adams.

I hate plagiarism....