Parker

“At least one brand of toilet paper was also in perilously short supply, as the king himself discovered. He managed to sidestep this particular scarcity by arranging shipments direct from the British embassy in Washington, D.C. With kingly discretion, he wrote to his ambassador, “We are getting short of a certain type of paper which is made in America and is unprocurable here. A packet or two of 500 sheets at intervals would be most acceptable. You will understand this and its name begins with B!!!” The paper in question was identified by historian Andrew Roberts as Bromo soft lavatory paper.”
― Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

“After one raid set London’s Natural History Museum on fire, water from firemen’s hoses caused seeds in its collection to germinate, among them those from an ancient Persian silk tree, or mimosa—Albizia julibrissin. The seeds were said to be 147 years old.”
― Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

“When the helper is strong, the nation is secure; when the helper is weak, the nation is in peril.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“It is desolation,” wrote Teresa Dean, the columnist, about a visit she made to Jackson Park on January 2, 1894. “You wish you had not come. If there were not so many around, you would reach out your arms, with the prayer on your lips for it all to come back to you. It seems cruel, cruel, to give us such a vision; to let us dream and drift through heaven for six months, and then to take it out of our lives.”
― Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City