Reopen all windows from last quarantine

Three days of social distancing, vacuum-packed into the twenty-six facts you just might learn when the outside world can only be accessed one tab or page at a time.

1. In the early twentieth century, one weird trick for assembling a crowd if you were an activist was yelling, “I’ve been robbed, I’ve been robbed,” and waiting until people rushed over before adding the kicker: “by the capitalist system.” People did it in the U.S., they did it in the U.K., it was maybe a meme?

2. From TVTropes.org: “A ‘bottle episode’ is designed to take up as little money as possible. The easiest way to go about this is to use only the regular cast (or even just part of the regular cast) and set it in a single location, especially if you have a main standing set … Bottle episodes often place a higher burden on the writers than a normal episode. Due to limitations in locations and cast, the writers have to lean heavily on inventive situations and dialogue to carry the show. Depending on the writer and how well the premise works out, bottle episodes can range from terrible to some of the best-received. Some plots lend themselves to the nature of a Bottle Episode, such as Sinking Ship Scenario, “Groundhog Day” Loop, Locked in a Room, or Episode on a Plane.”

3. A package of “Just Mango Slices” from Trader Joe’s lasts through two days of social distancing. 

4. A professor at Cornell University once told the New York Times that the brain of a criminal executed in 1871, currently located in a basement in Ithaca, had “a nice peppermint color.” 

5. From Wikipedia: “The word quarantine comes from a seventeenth-century Venetian variant of the Italian quaranta giorni, meaning ‘forty days,’ the period that all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague epidemic.”

6. COVID-19 is the ninth quarantine listed on the Wikipedia quarantine page’s list of “notable quarantines.”

7. Here are three examples of how to use quarantine in a sentence, courtesy of Oxford Dictionaries:
—When the birds finally arrive in England, they will spend 28 days in quarantine, before moving to a large pen with soft sides.
—The tiger was in quarantine while surgeons undertook emergency surgery on its owner.
— Isabel and the two older boys also succumbed to diphtheria and were in quarantine for a month.

8. It would take approximately seventeen hours and twenty-seven minutes to walk to the Appalachian Trail from my apartment.

9. According to ICE.gov, “Law enforcement agencies across the country, to include ICE, are paying close attention to this pandemic. While our law enforcement officers and agents continue daily enforcement operations to make criminal and civil arrests, prioritizing individuals who threaten our national security and public safety, we remain committed to the health and safety of our employees and the general public. ICE policy directs our officers to avoid making arrests at sensitive locations – to include schools, places of worship, and health care facilities, such as hospitals, doctors’ offices, accredited health clinics, and emergent or urgent care facilities—without prior approval for an exemption, or in exigent circumstances. See our FAQ for more.”

10. According to the Los Angeles Times, ICE made arrests on the first day of COVID-19 lockdown in California. 

11. WQXR says hello to Linda in Connecticut, who called the classical music station a “refuge.” Another listener, working from home, said the station was “balm for the soul.”

12. Sean Astin’s three daughters all have the middle name Louise. 

13. Algernon Blackwood was a prolific writer of “Weird Fiction.” According to Wikipedia, he “had a varied career, working as a dairy farmer in Canada, where he also operated a hotel for six months, as a newspaper reporter in New York City, bartender, model, journalist for the New York Times, private secretary, businessman, and violin teacher.” Here are the plots of a few of his stories:

— A man residing in a New York apartment hears conversations from the room next door that turn out to be supernatural in origin.
— A man’s neighbor in an apartment appears to be dabbling in the black arts. 
— A man of nervous temperament, with a history of mental ill-health in his family, may or may not be receiving visits by a previous tenant. A tenant very dead.
— A long, carefully constructed story in which a man’s soul is gradually subsumed into eternity.

14. Algernon Blackwood also wrote many short stories that were not weird fiction. Here are some of their plots:
— Two friends attempt to arrange lunch.
— The story of a gentleman’s odd eating habits. 
— A gentleman in a hotel is most displeased at the apparent lack of quality honey.
— A child’s understanding of the longest day of the year.

15. Jeanette Pickersgill, who died in 1885, was the first person to be legally cremated in the United Kingdom. The process took seventy-five minutes. 

16. There was a cardinal in the tree outside my window this week. Governor Cuomo says COVID-19 cases in New York City could reach their peak in forty-five days; at that point, the tree outside my window might have all of its leaves. 

17. Per the Encyclopedia Britannica: In 1948, along with Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergey Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian was accused by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of bourgeois tendencies in his music. He admitted his guilt and was restored to prominence. 

18. Fiona Apple quit cocaine “‘one excruciating night’ at Quentin Tarantino’s house, listening to him and Anderson brag. ‘Every addict should just get locked in a private movie theatre with Q.T. and P.T.A. on coke, and they’ll never want to do it again.’” 

19. There is a sample of lung tissue from World War I Army Private Roscoe Vaughan, who died of influenza on September 26, 1918, at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, embedded in paraffin. 

20. One unexpected reason for being quarantined, per an 1969 New York Times story: A thirty-seven-year-old woman accidentally stuck herself with a needle that had been exposed to samples from the moon while working with a chicken egg that had been injected with lunar material. 

21. Will Smith says “na na na na na na na” thirty-four times in the song “Gettin’ Jiggy wit It.”

22. Guinness World Records gave the “Longest bout of inactivity spent in home” record to “Eastern Chipmunk” in 2011. 

23. Guinness World Records has a COVID-19 update on its website: “With COVID-19 developing in many countries around the world, Guinness World Records is aware that there will be concerns and restrictions around large gatherings of people. We began communications several weeks ago with clients and partners looking to attempt a mass participation record, advising them to seek local health and safety advice when deciding whether to go ahead with their attempt.”

24. Someone posted the question, “What is the longest period of time you have spent indoors?” on Reddit seven years ago. Kittycuddler answered. “I think I didn't even open my blinds once for something like 7-10 days during college. No real reason, just already had food and never have any friends who live around me haha.”

25. A 2002 New York Times story used the phrase “social distancing”: “Plans are in the works for a Bryant Park chat system, where users could meet online. This location-based service, as with other virtual meet-and-greet applications, represents a striking effort to overcome the social distancing augured by wireless itself: Why talk to the person next to you when you've got the world at your fingertips?”

26. In 1894 Thomas Dewar published A Ramble Round the Globe, his book describing a journey around the world to market his family’s whiskey. Per Wikipedia: “Dewar’s trip was motivated not only by a desire to market his brand, but also by medical imperatives: Dewar had been battling a persistent cold that had been growing worse, and his doctor suggested that a warmer climate could rid him of this threatening cold … The book is at least purportedly Dewar’s journal, written solely for his friends who “wanted to know ‘all about it.’”