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David Grann

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“Faced with growing dissent, he turned the boat around, heading back the way they had come. One marine began to go mad, laughing hysterically, until he slumped over in silence, dead. Another man died shortly after, and then another. Their bodies were tossed into the sea. It took the surviving party close to two weeks to retrace its path, only to then realize that they had found the strait [of Magellan] all along. Now they had to start east all over again.”

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Book:The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
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“Then, in 1738, Robert Jenkins, a British merchant captain, was summoned to appear in Parliament, where he reportedly claimed that a Spanish officer had stormed his brig in the Caribbean and, accusing him of smuggling sugar from Spain's colonies, cut off his left ear. Jenkins reputedly displayed his severed appendage, pickled in a jar, and pledged "my cause to my country." The incident further ignited the passions of Parliament and pamphleteers, leading people to cry for blood - an ear for an ear - and a good deal of booty as well. The conflict became known as the War of Jenkins' Ear.”

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Book:The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
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“The ship is arranged with the greatest nicety; her decks are as white as snow - her hammocks are stowed with care - her ropes are taught - her yards square - her guns run out - and a guard of marines, under the orders of a lieutenant, prepared to receive every member of the court with the honour due to his rank... The great cabin is prepared, with a long table covered with a green cloth. Pens, ink, paper, prayer-books, and the Articles of War are laid round to every member.”

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Book:The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
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“For years after the American Revolution, the public opposed to the creation of police departments, fearing that they would become forces of repression... Only in the mid 19th century, after the growth of industrial cities and a rash of urban riots - after the dread of the so-called dangerous classes surpassed the dread of the state - did police departments emerge in the United States.”

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Book:Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
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“During the Society's early years, no member personified the organization's eccentricities or audacious mission more than Sir Francis Galton. A cousin of Charles Darwin's, he had been a child prodigy who, by the age of four, could read and recite Latin. He went on to concoct myriad inventions. They included a ventilating top hat; a machine called a Gumption-Reviver, which periodically wet his head to keep him awake during endless study; underwater goggles; and a rotating-vane steam engine. Suffering from periodic nervous breakdowns––"sprained brain," as he called it––he had a compulsion to measure and count virtually everything. He quantified the sensitivity of animal hearing, using a walking stick that could make an inconspicuous whistle; the efficacy of prayer; the average age of death in each profession (lawyers: 66.51; doctors: 67.04); the exact amount of rope needed to break a criminal's neck while avoiding decapitation; and levels of boredom (at meetings of the Royal Geographical Society he would count the rate of fidgets among each member of the audience).”

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Book:The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
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“I do think that in many cases, where crimes have been covered up and perpetrators can escape justice, history can provide some accounting. It can identify the killers, ensure that their names are remembered, and it can give voice to and record the victims, and make sure, even more importantly, that their voices and their stories are remembered and heard. And I don't think there's justice, but I do think history can play an important role in that accounting.”

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Author:David Grann
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