Difference between revisions of "G"

Revision as of 19:55, 24 December 2006

Gage, Lyman Judson (1836-1927)
307; "that old Gold Standard hand and bank president"; Gage was president of the First National Bank of Chicago; in 1892, he was chosen president of the board of directors of the World's Columbian Exposition, the successful financing of which was due more to him than to any other man. As Secretary of the Treasury under President Grover Cleveland, Gage was influential in securing passage of the Gold Standard Act of March 14, 1900, which reestablished a currency backed solely by gold; Wikipedia entry

Galandronome
374; a type of bassoon developed by French instrument maker Galander in the mid-19th century;

Galois, Evariste
601;

Gallows Frame Saloon
302; in Telluride; the Gallows Frame is the structural frame, usually made of steel or timber, at the top of an underground mine shaft. These frames hold the hoisting equipment which raise and lower equipment and miners into the underground mine.

Gamomania
432; "the abnormal desire to be married"

Garçons de '71
19;

Gas Office
607

Gaspereaux, Stilton
436; civilian passenger on Saksaul; in London, 445;

Gatlin, Reverend Moss
49; Anarchist preacher; "we are Stripes and Solids on the pool table of earthly existence" 86; The New York Times, commenting on the Haymarket Square riots in Chicago in 1886, offered the following solution to the anarchist threat, “In the early stages of an acute outbreak of anarchy a Gatling gun, or if the case be severe, two, is the sovereign remedy"; in Denver with his "Anarchist Heaven" car, 465;

Gauss & Weber Statue

498; 588; statue of Gauss and Weber, 594;

gaver du visage
225; French for something like "stuff your face", appropriately enough for a "form of gluttony"

Geheimrat
603; title of the highest officials of a German royal or principal court. It has its roots in 17th century Europe when governmental administration was established. The English language equivalent is Privy Councillor. The title disappeared after the destruction of the German Empire in 1918, when the various royal courts in Germany were replaced by the Weimar Republic.

Gentleman Bomber of Headingly
236; cricket-ball bombs; 241; 605; 690; spotted at Fenner's cricket ground, 691; Possibly a nod to "The Girl Who Was Death," a particularly hallucinogenic episode of the late 60s cult TV series, The Prisoner, which begins with a cricket-playing colonel being blown up by a cricket ball bomb.

Gerasimoff, Dr.
258; Chick Counterfly's "opposite number"

Gerhardt
517; Austrian Chief Stoker aboard Stupendica, Herr Hauptheitzer; in Swiss Alps, drilling, 655;

German Sea, The
489; 504;

Geronimo
195;Wikipedia entry

Gevaert, Edouard
558; sells Q-98 to Woevre; "unworldly go-between" 559;

Afghani dirham

596; Sunni Muslim state in Khorasan in modern day Afghanistan that existed from 962 to 1187. It was created by Alp Tigin, a former Turkic slave general, with the city Ghazna (Ghazni) as capital, replacing the ruling Samanids; Wikipedia entry

Ghloix, Dr. Otto
132; "Expedition alienist"; "psychomedical officer" 143; visiting alienist from Switzerland, 686;

Ghosts
218; 373;

Giant-Wheel
699; The Giant Wheel in the Prater is an important Viennese landmark, providing a view over the city. The wheel was the brain child of Gabor Steiner (1858-1944) and was built in 1896 by the English engineer Walter B. Basset, who produced similar designs in London and Paris. It was erected in the record time of eight months and was operated for the first time on June 21 1897; More on this website

Gibbs, Professor Willard
29; 158; 318-19; 532-3; 793; Gibbsian, 526; 532; Josiah Willard Gibbs was arguably the greatest American scientist of the 19th century, bringing the power of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics to what had been cookbook and rule-of-thumb chemistry. He demonstrated and extended the value of modeling in "phase space," a graph in which each physical state of a system is represented by a point representing pressure, volume, temperature, etc. ("water in all its phases," 368) Wikipedia entry

Gibson Girls
409; The Gibson Girl was the personification of the feminine ideal as portrayed in the satirical pen and ink illustrated stories created by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson during over 15 years spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; 512; Wikipedia entry

Gigg, Jack
99; Kit Traverse's sidekick

Gilmore, Mr.
187; conductor in New Mexico

Ginnungagap
127; "the lightless abyss"; Ginnungagap ("seeming emptiness"), in the cosmology of Norse mythology, is the primordial void separating Niflheim and Muspell, the land of eternal ice and snow and the land of eternal heat and flame; Wikipedia entry

Girtonian
492; 498; Of or pertaining to Girton College.

Giuseppina
246; waitress at Osteria in San Polo

Glagolitic
252; The Glagolitic alphabet was invented during the 9th century by the missionaries St Cyril (827-869 AD) and St Methodius (826-885 AD) in order to translate the bible and other religious works into the language of the Great Moravia region. They probably modelled Glagolitic on a cursive form of the Greek alphabet, and based their translations on a Slavic dialect of the Thessalonika area, which formed the basis of the literary standard known as Old Church Slavonic; More from this website

GOD
87; "God's ledger; 131; rocks as "post-godhead" 209; under God's wing, 211; shin, 237; 534;

Gold Standard
89; The "gold standard" is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of gold; Wikipedia entry

Golden Age
561;

Gomez, Eusebio
640; "acting as a subagent" in Mexico; aka Wolfe Tone O'Reilly, 641;

Gordon, Charles George (1833-1885)
240; known as Chinese Gordon, Gordon Pasha, and Gordon of Khartoum, was a British army officer and administrator. He is remembered for his exploits in China and northern Africa. Gordon was killed in Khartoum while defending it against the uprising led by Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed who decapitated Gordon and displayed his head on a spear; Wikipedia entry

Göttingen
226; Werfner at Göttingen; 594; during war with Prussia

Gottlob
588; at Göttingen;

Grace 70; 213; 374;

Grace, Angela
399-400; songstress at Lollypop Lounge who's "ten summers old";

Grace, Dr.
577; appeared to Hunter in a dream, "the mass-grave-to-be of Europe";

Gradenigo, Doge Pietro
247

Grand Cohen
499;A cohen, or Kohen, is a member of the Jewish priestly class.

Grand Hotel de la Nouvelle Digue
526; in Ostend, Belgium; 531;

Granitza
326; small town "above Adriatic Coast in the Velebit range"

grapnel
13; a tool consisting of several hooks for grasping and holding; often thrown with a rope

Grassmann, Hermann (1809-1877)
324; German polymath, renowned in his day as a linguist and now admired as a mathematician. He was also a physicist, neohumanist, all-round scholar, and publisher; Wikipedia entry; Grassmann's 1862 Ausdehnungslehre (literally, "Theory of Extension") is one of the great mathematical works of the nineteenth century. In it the foundations of linear and multilinear algebra are laid and much of the superstructure too is constructed. It is regrettable that such a book on such a subject should, from the moment of publication, have been not much read. Indeed, Grassmann's reputation for impenetrability has persisted to this day; 535; More about Ausdehnungslehre here

Gravity
"a secret imperative, like the force of gravity," 80;

Great Airships of 1896 and '7
454; On November 17, 1896 in Sacramento, California, there appeared, on a rainy night, a bright light. It moved slowly west appearing to be about a thousand feet above the rooftops. Hundreds of people saw the light including George Scott, an assistant to the Secretary of State of California. Scott persuaded some friends to join him on the observation deck above the capitol dome and from there they thought they could see three lights, not one. Above the lights was a dark, oblong shape. In 1897 there were many sightings of great airships from California to Texas. However the airplane would not be invented for another 6 years, and neither had large dirigibles or blimps yet been flown. In Aurora, Texas one such ship crashed into a windmill or tower and exploded. Read more about the 1897 incident and the Mysterious Airship of 1896

Great Wife Bazaar of the World-Island
432;

Gretchen
640; Günther's date at Steve/Ramón's ("the restless Valkyrie")

Grimsford, Wes
211; marshal of Jeshimon

Griswold, Uncle
497; Cyprian's corrupting sodomite uncle

Grossmith, George
494; at Cambridge

growler
226; An old-fashioned siren, the kind that takes awhile to start. By extension, a police car carrying such a siren.

Groznyi
441;

Grundy, Mrs.
400; Mrs Grundy is the personification of the tyranny of conventional propriety (from Thomas Morton's play Speed the Plough, which appeared in 1798), a person who is too much concerned with being proper, modest, or righteous; 427;

Guanajuato
376; Frank Traverse and Ewball in;

guncotton
27; guncotton is Nitrocellulose (Cellulose nitrate) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose (e.g. through exposure to nitric acid or powerful nitrating agent), used in explosives

gutta-percha
603; Gutta-percha (Palaquium) is genus of tropical trees native to southeast Asia and northern Australasia, from Taiwan south to Malaya and east to the Solomon Islands. It is also an inelastic natural latex produced from the sap of these trees, particularly from the species Palaquium gutta. Chemically, gutta-percha is a polyterpene, a polymer of isoprene (trans-1,4-polyisoprene);[1]. It was often used an early insulating material on telegraphs and other electrical equipment. 611;

gynecophobia
501; fear of women