Edmund Cartwright

The inventor of the power loom, Edmund Cartwright was born April 24, 1743 in Marnham in Nottinghamshire.

Edmund Cartwright by Allen & Ginter - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

He was the brother of Major John Cartwright, a political reformer and radical, and George Cartwright, explorer of Labrador.

He was educated at Wakefield grammar school and University College, Oxford, and was later elected a Fellow of Magdalen College. In 1779 he became rector of the parish of Goadby Marwood in Leicestershire.

Before turning to invention, Cartwright was a published poet. His verse tale Armine and Elvira (1771) was much admired, and his later poem The Prince of Peace (1779) deplored the war in America.

During a visit to the Matlock and Cromford area in 1784 Cartwright saw Richard Arkwright's cotton-spinning mills. These fascinated him, and he decided to construct a similar machine for weaving. The next year he created a rude contrivance, which with further improvements became the power-driven loom which was soon to replace its hand-operated forerunner.

Remarkably, Cartwright built his first loom without ever having watched an ordinary hand-loom in operation. He took out his patent on April 4, 1785, and completed a much-improved version by 1787.

In 1789 Cartwright patented a wool-combing machine. It lowered manufacturing costs, but he made little money from any of his inventions.

In 1790 Robert Grimshaw, of Gorton, Manchester, erected a weaving factory at Knott Mill which he intended to fill with 500 of Cartwright's power looms, but with only around two dozen in place the factory was burnt down in 1792, probably an act of arson inspired by the fears of hand-loom weavers.

Cartwright ran his own steam-powered weaving mill in Doncaster from 1787, but the venture failed and he assigned his patents to his brothers, giving up the works in 1793.

Cartwright also pioneered an engine run on alcohol, patented a rope-making machine (the "cordelier") in 1792, and devised notable improvements in agricultural implements.

In 1820 the tireless inventor produced a horse-free carriage called the "Centaur Carriage." Powered by two men working cranks, it was used to collect groceries and was said to manage 27 miles in a day on the level.

His power loom's real impact came abroad as well as at home: the first American power loom, based on Cartwright's principle, was built by Francis Cabot Lowell in Massachusetts in 1813.

Fifty Lancashire firms sent a special memorandum to the then Prime Minister which resulted in Cartwright being awarded, in 1809, a grant of £10,000. He used the money to purchase a farm in Kent

Inventing to the last, Edmund Cartwright died at Hastings, Sussex on October 30, 1823, aged 80, and was buried in the church at Battle.

Sources Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999, Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia

Notes on the lin

Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a visual artist who creates cartoons, and may both write and draw comics. The work often uses simplified forms, exaggeration, humour or satire to tell a story or comment on current events.

In the half-century between April 1964 and April 2013, only one issue of Mad magazine was published without new material by cartoonist Al Jaffee.

Jaffee signing in 2008 by Oiseau

Before taking up acting, actor Martin Landau began working as a staff cartoonist for the New York Daily News at the age of 17. He stayed for about five years and also worked on the comic strip The Gumps.

Mort Walker did not invent familiar cartoon symbols, but he coined or popularised playful names for many of them. In 1964 he introduced “grawlix” for typographical symbols used in place of profanity; his 1980 book The Lexicon of Comicana also catalogued “squeans” for marks indicating intoxication, dizziness or illness, and “indotherms” for wavy lines representing steam or heat.

The modern use of the word “cartoon” for a humorous or satirical drawing dates from 1843, when Punch applied it to John Leech’s “Cartoon No. 1: Substance and Shadow.” The joke played on the older meaning of a cartoon as a full-size preparatory design for a work of art.

The Washington Post cartoonist Herbert “Herblock” Block coined the word “McCarthyism” in a political cartoon published on March 29, 1950. The drawing showed Republican leaders pushing their party’s elephant towards a platform made from a tar barrel labelled “McCarthyism.”

Before becoming famous for his children’s books, Dr Seuss worked as chief editorial cartoonist for the New York newspaper PM from 1941 to 1943. He produced more than 400 editorial cartoons for the paper, many addressing the Second World War.

The first Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning was awarded in 1922 to Rollin Kirby of the New York World for “On the Road to Moscow,” a drawing about the famine in Russia.

In 1992, Signe Wilkinson of the Philadelphia Daily News became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.

Cartoon

 In the late 17th century the word ˜cartoon" was applied to any drawing on stout paper or card.

Benjamin Franklin was America's first political cartoonist. His "Join Or Die" was the first American newspaper cartoon. A drawing of a snake divided into eight parts, it was published in the Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754.  Its intention was to encourage the former colonies to unite against British rule,

The first newspaper cartoon in Britain was printed by George Townshend, later Marquis Townshend, in 1757. The cartoon was titled “The Triumph of Caesar” and was published in the London Magazine, the Political Register, and the Town and Country Magazine. It depicted the Duke of Cumberland, Prince William, driving a farm cart containing turnips. The cartoon was critical of William’s focus on the alliance with Prussia during the Seven Year’s War in Europe at the neglect of British colonial interests in North America.

Punch was a British weekly magazine established in 1841. It featured the work of men like John Leech (1817-1864) whose humorous drawings were the first to be called cartoons.

The first color cartoon in an American newspaper is thought to have been an April 2, 1893, George Turner cartoon in the New York Recorder.

"The Possibilities of the Broadway Cable Car" (1893), one of the first color cartoons in American newspapers

When Pennsylvania legislators pushed a bill banning caricatures of politicians as animals, cartoonist Walt McDougall (1858 - 1938) drew them as a tree, a beer mug, and assorted vegetables.

The teddy bear's history began when President Theodore ˜Teddy" Roosevelt, went on a hunt and refused to shoot an injured black bear. The story became the topic of a political cartoon by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902. The cartoon of the event prompted a sweet shop owner, Morris Michtom, to put a couple of stuffed toys in his window, calling them ˜Teddy's bears." The toys were an immediate success and Michtom founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co.

The 1902 political cartoon in The Washington Post that spawned the teddy bear name.

The phrase 'Back to the drawing board,' meaning to start again on a new plan after the failure of an earlier one, originated as the caption to a cartoon produced by Peter Arno for the New Yorker magazine on March 1, 1941. It showed various military men and ground crew racing towards a crashed plane, and a designer, with a roll of plans under his arm, walking away saying: "Well, back to the old drawing board."

Carthage

Carthage was founded on the gulf coast of North Africa in what is now Tunisia in 814 BC by Phoenician settlers originating from the city-state of Tyre (in modern-day Lebanon). According to Roman and Greek traditions, the city was founded by Queen Dido (Elissa), who fled Tyre after her husband was murdered by her brother, King Pygmalion.

Built on a triangular peninsula protected by low hills and the Lake of Tunis, it centered around a fortified hilltop citadel called the Byrsa.  

After the capture of Tyre by the Babylonians in the 6th century BC, Carthage became the natural leader of the Phoenician colonies in North Africa and Spain.

The Second Punic War between Carthage and the Roman Republic broke out in 218 BC. The Carthaginian general Hannibal marched an his army of 38,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry over the Pyrenees and the Alps into Italy.

By Grandiosederivative work : Augusta 89 - Shepherd, William R. (1023).

The Carthaginians occupied much of Italy for 15 years, but a Roman counter-invasion of North Africa forced Hannibal to return to Carthage, where he was decisively defeated by Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama on October 19, 202 BC.

The Roman senator Cato the Elder (234 BC – 149 BC), took the threat of Carthage so seriously that he would end all of his speeches, no matter the subject, with the phrase, "And, further, I think that Carthage should be destroyed." On the contrary, his opponent Scipio Nasica, would end his speeches with "Moreover Carthage must be spared."

The population of Carthage before its destruction by the Romans in 146 BC is said to have numbered over 700,000.

The Romans refounded Carthage, which became the empire's fourth most important city and the second most important city in the Latin West.

The refounded Carthage became a centre of early Christianity. In 397 AD at the Council at Carthage, the biblical canon for the western Church was confirmed.

It remained one of the most important Roman cities until the Muslim conquest when it was destroyed a second time in 698.

Carthage was little more than an agricultural village for nine hundred years until the middle of the 20th century; since then it has grown rapidly as an upscale coastal suburb. In 2014 it had an estimated population of 24,216.

In 1985 the mayors of Rome and Carthage signed a symbolic peace treaty to end the state of war between the two cities technically going back over 2100 years.

Sources Wikipedia, Hutchinson Encyclopedia © RM 2014. Helicon Publishing is division of RM

Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter was born on October 1, 1924, at Wise Sanitarium in Plains, Georgia. He was the first US president to be born in a hospital.

Carter grew up on his family's farm near Plains. From childhood, he wanted to attend the United States Naval Academy, obtain a college education and serve in the US Navy.

Jimmy Carter married Eleanor Rosalynn Smith on July 7, 1946, in Plains. He was 21 and she was 18.

The couple had four children: John William “Jack” (born 1947), James Earl “Chip” III (born 1950), Donnel Jeffrey “Jeff” (born 1952) and Amy Lynn (born 1967).

Amy Carter became a political activist. She was arrested during demonstrations against apartheid and in a 1986 protest against CIA recruitment at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Carter graduated with distinction from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 and served as a naval officer. After surface duty, he became a submariner and was selected for Captain Hyman Rickover's nuclear-submarine program.

In 1952, Carter led a 23-man US Navy team that helped clean up the damaged NRX reactor after a partial meltdown at Chalk River in Ontario, Canada. Team members rehearsed their tasks on a replica and were permitted to work inside the highly radioactive area for only about 90 seconds at a time. Carter later said that radioactivity remained measurable in his urine for about six months.

Following his father's death, Carter left active naval service in October 1953 and returned to Georgia to manage the family's peanut-farming and warehouse business.

Carter was elected to the Georgia State Senate in 1962 and governor of Georgia in 1970.

Initially given little chance of winning the 1976 presidential election, Carter made an inauspicious early campaign appearance in Des Moines, Iowa, in February 1975. His team rented a hotel ballroom and prepared refreshments for 200 people, but only three attended.

Carter was considered such a long-shot candidate that, according to a frequently repeated family anecdote, his mother Lillian responded to his presidential ambition by asking, “President of what?”

While campaigning for president in 1976, Carter told the National Association of Record Merchandisers that he had listened to Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin while serving as governor of Georgia.

Carter won the Democratic nomination and defeated incumbent president Gerald Ford on November 2, 1976. Carter received 50.1 percent of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes, compared with Ford's 48.0 percent and 240 electoral votes.

He served as the 39th president of the United States from January 20, 1977, to January 20, 1981.

In the summer of 1977, Elvis Presley telephoned Carter at the White House to seek help for a sheriff facing legal difficulties. Carter later recalled that Presley was “totally stoned” and that his sentences were “almost incoherent.”

On January 21, 1977, his first full day in office, Carter pardoned people who had committed specified violations of the Military Selective Service Act during the Vietnam War era. The pardon did not cover military deserters as a class and contained exceptions for serious acts of force or violence.

Carter delivered his nationally televised “Crisis of Confidence” speech on July 15, 1979. Although it became widely known as the “malaise speech,” he never used the word “malaise.” Instead, he warned of “a crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.”

It has been rumored that Carter once sent a jacket to the dry cleaner with the authentication card used in the nuclear-launch process still in a pocket, but the story has never been firmly established.

The Carter family had a Siamese cat named Misty Malarky Ying Yang during his presidency. The cat belonged to his daughter Amy.

Carter watched more than 400 films at the White House and Camp David during his four-year presidency.

Official portrait of President Jimmy Carter by Robert Templeton, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Wikimedia 

Carter practised speed-reading and claimed that he could read 2,000 words a minute with 95 percent comprehension.

Only three US presidents have graduated from federal service academies: Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower graduated from West Point, while Carter graduated from Annapolis.

From a young age, Carter showed a deep commitment to Christianity. A longtime Sunday-school teacher and deacon, he taught at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains. He read the Bible daily while in office, prayed several times a day and described Jesus Christ as the driving force in his life.

In 2000, Carter severed his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, objecting particularly to its increasingly restrictive doctrines concerning women. He nevertheless remained a Baptist and continued serving as a deacon and Sunday-school teacher at his local church.

After his presidency, Carter continued to live in the ranch house that he and Rosalynn had built in Plains in 1961. A widely circulated 2018 profile valued it at $167,000 and noted his frugal habits, including shopping at a local Dollar General.

Carter had the longest post-presidency of any US president. He surpassed Herbert Hoover's previous record in September 2012 and ultimately lived for 43 years and 344 days after leaving office.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded the Carter Center in 1982 in partnership with Emory University. The nonprofit organisation works to prevent and resolve conflicts, strengthen democracy and human rights, and combat disease.

Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

On December 29, 2024, Jimmy Carter died peacefully at his home in Plains, Georgia, after spending nearly two years in hospice care.

Carter was 100 years and 89 days old, making him the longest-lived president in US history and the first to reach the age of 100.

Sources: The Carter Center; US Naval History and Heritage Command; National Archives; American Presidency Project; NobelPrize.org; Georgia Humanities; UPI; The New York Times; Los Angeles Times; Federation of American Scientists; Songfacts; Hutchinson Encyclopedia © RM 2014. Helicon Publishing is a division of RM.

Carrot

Carrots with yellow flesh and a purple exterior were first cultivated in Afghanistan, its native land 4,000 years ago . They were also cultivated in the Mediterranean area, but weren't considered to be an important food there. Instead they were grown for their leaves which have a pleasant fragrance.

To make butter more attractive in color, carrot juice was used by people in the Middle Ages.

The word ‘carrot’ first appeared in English around 1538 in a book of herbs. Before that a carrot was called a ‘tank’ (from 1400) or ‘clapwype (1425).

Carrots were originally purple, white, red or yellow. The Dutch bred orange carrots in the 16th century in honor of their Royal House of Orange. Orange carrots were considered a symbol of prestige.

Orange carrots first became popular in England during Queen Elizabeth I's reign.

Britain created the myth that carrots improve eyesight to distract the Nazis from a new technology, Radar, they had developed for night raids. When the newspapers asked how pilots were shooting down Nazi planes in the dark, the RAF simply responded that all the carrots the pilots had been eating improved their vision.

Baby carrots (aka baby cut carrots) are actually just the cores of carrots not fit for store shelves, and were only invented in 1986 by a California farmer named Mike Yurosek.

Before the invention of the baby carrot, each American ate 6 lbs of carrot a year, now they eat 11 lbs.

On November 7, 1990, the European Union's Court of Justice ruled that carrots are a fruit for the purposes of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The case was brought by a French farmer who was challenging a decision by the French government to deny him a subsidy for his carrot crop. The farmer argued that carrots should be classified as a fruit because they can be made into jam.

The court agreed with the farmer, ruling that the CAP's definition of "fruit" should be interpreted broadly to include any plant product that is edible and can be made into food products such as jam. The court's decision was controversial, but it remains in effect today.

The type of carrot Bugs Bunny usually eats is a species called Danvers.

Bugs Bunny ate carrots because his creator Friz Freleng loved the film It Happened One Night, where Clark Gable eats carrots while talking quickly. Also Gable gets called "Doc" throughout the film.

Mel Blanc, who voiced Bugs Bunny was allergic to carrots. He had a spittoon installed in his studio so he could spit out carrots when he had to bite on them.

Carrots aren't actually that good for rabbits, since they are high in sugar, and they don't form a natural part of their diet.

11% of all pet rabbits have tooth decay due to their owners feeding them too many carrots.

British shoppers have found a way to scam supermarkets by passing expensive vegetables off as cheap carrots at self-service tills. Carrots are one of the cheapest vegetables in supermarkets, leading to some customers to purposely select the "carrots" option when weighing expensive vegetables on the electronic tills, thereby reducing the cost of their shopping.

If you laid all the carrots grown in Great Britain in one year end to end, they would reach to the moon and back two and a half times.

China is the world's biggest producer of carrots, accounting for more than two-fifths of global production. In 2024, it produced about 19 million tonnes of carrots and turnips, according to FAOSTAT.

The world's longest carrot measured 20 feet 5.86 inches (6.245 metres) and was grown by Joe Atherton of the UK in 2016.

Weighing in at a whopping 10.17 kg (22.44 lb) the world's heaviest carrot was grown by giant veg gardener Christopher Qualley of Otsego, Minnesota, USA. It was officially verified on September 9, 2017

The part of the carrot that we eat is called the taproot.

Carrot on a plate. By Bi-frie Wikipedia Commons

A raw carrot is still alive when you eat it.

Carrot juice is ten times more radioactive than beer.

Source Food For Thought by Ed Pearce, Daily Express 

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll was born on January 27, 1832 in the little parsonage of Daresbury in Cheshire. His authoritarian clergyman father Dr Charles Dodgson and his uneducated mother, Frances whom Charles adored were first cousins and unusually religious.

He was the oldest boy but already the third child of their four-and-a-half year old marriage. Eight more were to follow and, all of them - seven girls and four boys - survived into adulthood.

Carroll's real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. His pseudonym was a play on his name, Lewis being the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll being an anglicised version of Carolus, the Latin for Charles.

Young Charles grew out of infancy into a bright, articulate boy. In the early years he was educated at home. His "reading lists" preserved in the family testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of seven the child was reading The Pilgrim's Progress.

When Charles was 11 his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in north Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious Rectory. This remained their home for the next 25 years.

As a youngster, Charles wrote plays and a comic opera to amuse his siblings. He made a troupe of marionettes and a stage with the aid of his family and a village carpenter and manipulated the strings. He also did conjuring in a brown wig and long white robe.

He made pets of snails and toads. He found it easier to make friends with animals than other boys and girls.

Young Charles tried to promote modern warfare among earthworms by giving them small pieces of clay pipe for weapons.

In school holidays between 1845-50, Charles edited a number of magazines for his own amusement including The Rectory Umbrella, which he illustrated as well as wrote.

As a teenager he was fascinated by trains and loved travelling on them during holidays.

At the age of 12 Charles went to Mr Tate's school at Richmond. Dr Tate wrote to Dr Dodgson that Charles has "a very uncommon share of genius". He also gained reputation as "a boy who knew how to use his fists in a righteous cause".

Two years later he entered Rugby where he was bullied mercilessly because of his stammer. Dodgson wrote some years after leaving the place: “I cannot say ... that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again ... I can honestly say that if I could have been ... secure from annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life would have been comparative trifles to bear.”

Charles gained good marks in classical languages and maths. "I have not had a more promising boy his age since I came to Rugby" observed R.B. Mayor the Maths master.

Charles left Rugby at the end of 1850 and, after an interval which remains unexplained, went on in January 1851 to Oxford: to his father's old college, Christ Church.

Charles had only been at Oxford two days when he received a summons home. His mother had died of "inflammation of the brain" —perhaps meningitis or a stroke—at the age of forty-seven..

The following year Charles received a first in Honour Moderations, and shortly after he was nominated to a Studentship (the Christ Church equivalent of a fellowship), by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey.

The young adult Charles Dodgson was about six foot tall, slender and handsome in a soft-focused dreamy sort of way, with curling brown hair and blue eyes.

Charles Dodgson in 1856

In 1855, Dodgson's clear brilliance as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship at Oxford University, which he continued to hold for the next 26 years. The income was good, but the work bored him and his stammer hampered him. A dull tutor, students often requested transfers to other lecturers.

Dodgson was never married. Shy and suffering  what he referred to as his "hesitation" - his stammer, he found children easier to talk to than adults. He was priggish as well and habitually turned away from ladies when helping them over stiles so as not to catch sight of their ankles.

In the interim between his early published writing and the success of Alice in Wonderland, Dodgson began to move in the Pre-Raphaelite social circle. He first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. Dodgson developed a close relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family, and also knew William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais among other artists.

Dodgson also knew the fairy-tale author George MacDonald well - it was the enthusiastic reception of Alice in Wonderland by the young MacDonald daughters that convinced him to submit the work for publication.

Dodgson was a good friend of Lord Tennyson; he stayed several times at his Isle of Wight home.

He did a great deal of entertaining and kept a track of menus in his diary so that his guests would not have the same dishes too frequently.

Carroll was known to have had a fondness for sweet foods. He was particularly fond of cakes and pastries, and was known to enjoy eating them with a cup of tea. He was also a fan of fruits, particularly apples and plums. In addition to sweet foods, he also enjoyed dishes such as roast beef and roast pork.

In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography. He soon excelled at the art, and as his fame with the camera grew mothers flocked to have their daughters immortalized. Once he had a studio of his own, Dodgson made portraits of notable sitters such as including the actress Ellen Terry and the poets Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Dodgson abruptly ceased to photograph in 1880. Over 24 years he had completely mastered the medium, set up his own studio at the top of Tom Quad, and created around 3,000 images. Less than 1000 have survived time and deliberate destruction. He spent several hours each day creating a diary detailing the circumstances surrounding the making of each photograph, but this register was later destroyed.

Lewis Carroll (1863). Photograph by Oscar G. Rejlander.

Dodgson wrote books on mathematics such as The Formulae of Plane Trigonometry, printed with symbols instead of words to express the goniometrical ratios, in 1861 as a pamphlet for his Oxford students. He also published An Elementary Treatise on Determinants, with Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraical Geometry in 1867 through Macmillan.

His perfectionism drove his publishers potty with his wish for every typed line to be exactly in line.

In 1856, a new Dean, Henry Liddell, arrived at Christ Church, bringing with him a young wife and children, all of whom would figure largely in Dodgson's life over the following years. He became close friends with the mother and the children, particularly the three sisters Ina, Alice and Edith. It seems there became something of a tradition of his taking the girls out on the river for picnics at Godstow or Nuneham.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland grew out of story told by Dodgson on July 4, 1862 to amuse the three Liddell sisters. Afterwards he wrote down the story for the nine year old Alice. Originally written as Alice's Adventures Underground in 1864, a year later he added Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatters Tea Party and others and changed its name to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Alice in Wonderland sold only 48 copies when first published on November 26, 1865. By 1900 nearly 200,000 copies had been sold. The original manuscript can now be found in Philadelphia Free Library. Only 21 copies survive of the original manuscript, which was withdrawn because of printing errors.

Original cover of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Mad Hatter was probably inspired by Theophilius Carter, an Oxford furniture dealer who was somewhat potty and was well known for the top hat he wore. He was known as the "mad hatter."

There is no such thing as a Cheshire Cat. The county of Cheshire used to make cheese that came moulded in the shape of a Cheshire cat.

In 1872 Lewis Carroll published Through the Looking Glass, his follow up to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The Alice Band, a wide hair band of coloured ribbon is named after the band worn by Alice in Tenniel's illustrations of Through the Looking Glass.

Dodgson was regarded as a witty dandy in Victorian circles. He scattered many in jokes in his Alice books and his nonsense poetry was incredibly zany for the Victorian age.

Dodgson immortalised croquet in Alice in Wonderland when he depicted the Red Queen wacking rolled up hedgehogs using a flamingo for a mallet.

Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "Jabberwocky" about the killing of an animal called "the Jabberwock" was included in Through the Looking-Glass. "Jabberwocky" is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English, and has contributed such nonsense words and neologisms as galumphing and chortle to the English lexicon.

Carroll was known for his love of wordplay and puns. One day, he was out taking a walk with a friend when they came across a sign that read "Duck Crossing." Without missing a beat, Carroll turned to his friend and quipped, "Ah, I see they have the same idea as I have - to get to the other side!"

Dodgson had a negative attitude towards interviewers and never consented to being interviewed.

He was good at chess and billiards but apart from that not particularly sporty. Dodgson declared that his one attempted ball in cricket would have been a wide if it had ever reached the batsman.

Dodgson devised rules for a form of billiards played on a circular table.

Dodgson was a genius at inventing mazes, ciphers, riddles, magic tricks etc. Whenever he travelled he carried with him a black bag containing various toys and games for his young female friends.

His works are peppered with number 42. No one knows why.

Dodgson was fascinated by mirrors. He used them for conjuring tricks and used to write on them with invisible ink so that when the sun shone the writing was projected on the wall.

Dodgson wanted to go into church and was ordained as a deacon but his shyness and stammer prevented him pursuing a career. He also feared he would have to give up his visits to theaters and art galleries.

Dodgson had a tremendous reverence for sacred subjects and would leave a theater if a joke on such matters was made in a play.

Alice in Wonderland was one of the first children's books not written for a moral purpose.

Dodgson refused to have his own photo taken on the Sabbath.

He would lie awake at night devising mental puzzles to keep erotic thoughts at bay.

Dodgson wrote 98,721 letters in the last 37 years of his life.

Dodgson showed some interest in the Jack the Ripper case; however, this is hardly unusual, given the profound publicity surrounding the crimes. A passage in his diary dated August 26, 1891, reports that he spoke that day with an acquaintance of his about his "very ingenious theory about 'Jack the Ripper'". No other information about this theory has been found.

At the unusually late age of seventeen, Dodgson suffered a severe attack of whooping cough which left him with poor hearing in his right ear and was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life.

At Oxford Dodgson was diagnosed as an epileptic, then a considerable social stigma to bear.

Dodgson lived most of his adult life at Christ Church College, Oxford. In the mid 1860s he settled in a 12 room turreted apartment on the north west corner of Tom Quad where he remained for the rest of his life.

His book royalties allowed Dodgson to stay at the same house at 7 Lushington Road in Eastbourne, East Sussex every summer for about 20 years. He also visited Whitby in Yorkshire 12 times between 1854-71 usually staying in a house in East Terrace.

The Walrus and the Carpenter and most of Jabberwocky was written on Whitburn Sands, Sunderland.

Lewis Carroll wrote standing up.

In 1867 Dodgson went on a trip to Russia with Dr Henry Liddon - his only major excursion. As the journey progressed Liddon became increasingly irritated with his companion’s taste for the absurd and curious and his indifference to catching trains on time.

Towards the end of his life Dodgson began to have "a very peculiar yet not very uncommon, optical delusion which took the form of "seeing moving fortifications."

A posthumous portrait of Lewis Carroll by Hubert von Herkomer, based on photographs

Dodgson died on January 14, 1898 of pneumonia following influenza.at Chesthunts, Guildford, the residence of his sisters.

The funeral of Lewis Carroll was held at St Mary's Church in Guildford and he is buried in Guildford's Mount Cemetery.

Alice Hargreaves (Liddell) died in 1934 and is buried at St Michael’s Church, Lyndhurst, Hampshire.

Simon & Garfunkel first met in a 6th grade production of Alice in Wonderland.

Apart with The Bible and Shakespeare, Alice In Wonderland is the most quoted book in the Western World.

Here's a list of songs inspired by Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

Sources: Guinness Book of Words, Penguin Book of Interviews, Faber Book of Anecdotes, Wikipedia, Encarta.