https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/books/why-is-tiktok-in-this-book-from-2006.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20260529&instance_id=176355&nl=the-morning&regi_id=99799684&segment_id=220643&user_id=d57aa70c9954253dea83741626028802

"For a decade, codebreakers have tried—and failed—to solve the case of two crumpled papers that were found stuffed in a secret pocket under the bustle and inside the seams of a silk dress from the 1880s. Over the years, the mystery even earned its own moniker: The Silk Dress Cryptogram... Questions lingered over what “Bismark omit leafage buck bank,” “Calgary Cuba unguard confute duck fagan,” and “Spring wilderness lining one reading novice” could have possibly meant." Have a guess what the code might mean before you read the article. The answer is a tidbit of history I learned this week. A Crumpled Note Hidden in a Dress Became One of the World’s Most Elusive Codes. Then a Tiny Clue Solved It. What about you? Learned any historical tidbits lately?

My impression of Queen Victoria was that she was the typical colonial snob with a superiority complex about being white and English, but to an extreme — because, y'know, royalty. But I imagined her to be a loving, grandmotherly type on a personal level. However, at least according to this article, she was a bit of a biotch on a personal level and thought she was always right. Always. Queen Victoria: a dark, if splendid, monster? For example: "Victoria became convinced that Lady Flora Hastings, an unmarried lady-in-waiting and friend of her mother’s whom she disliked, was pregnant with Conroy’s [her mother’s personal secretary] child. Victoria’s former governess Baroness Lehzen obligingly spread the rumour. Hastings was publicly humiliated, forced to protest her innocence and undergo a gynaecological examination. It transpired her swollen stomach was due to advanced liver cancer." We have a resident Queen Vic expert in our midst, @Clarissa Harwood. Clarissa, would you say it's fair to describe her as a bit nasty on a personal level? Anybody else have any historical tidbits to share?

Has anyone in this group read Angel Down by Daniel Kraus? It's a historical fiction novel about an angel being shot down during a real battle in WWI, and it just won the Pulitzer Prize.

So I’m just about finished this book that I picked up at an airport. If I hadn’t read the back of the book, I likely would have skipped it based on the cover. The cover to me suggests some sultry romance. Well it has some of that, the story is about Agatha Christie the author and her disappearance for 11 days in the 1920s. The characters are also dealing with things after the First World War. Interesting historical fiction novel.