1. Funny line from John Julius Norwich’s History of Venice:
Giovanni Gradenigo, nicknamed Nasone, or Big-Nose – ‘no doubt,’ suggests one turn-of-the-century historian in a moment of reckless speculation, ‘from some peculiarity of feature’ – was elected Doge on 21 April 1355 …. (p. 230)
2. Has anyone else noticed that the title of Rothbard’s history of the American Revolution, Conceived in Liberty, is a quotation from Lincoln? Were I a Straussian I would draw the direst of inferences.
Somewhere in Norwich’s history of Byzantium, after he’s already established how routine the after-power-takeover procedure was, he writes that one guy was “…, of course, castrated.”
I noticed that a while ago, I think it was when I first heard of Conceived in Liberty. I found it ironic. But then again I’m a union man, and not a neo-reb.