Charles Henry Bennett / Shapeshifting Cat

C.H. Bennett, Poor Puss (1863)

Above One of a series of elaborate comic metamorphoses (aka shapeshifting) created by Victorian-era British illustrator Charles Henry Bennett (1863) in sardonic reference to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, this one titled "Poor Puss." Courtesy The Wellcome Library.

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The Reverend Benjamin Newton (Vicar of Landwit), Diary (September 1, 1816)—

An entertaining German dined here who teaches the girls music and plays delightfully and sings well with no voice having been shot through the lung. A Mr. Causer having been bit in a drunken frolic by a man of the name of Shipley in the leg last week is obliged to suffer amputation. During an armistice in which the Prussian and French officers were drinking together a son of [Prussian Field Marshall] Blücher gave for a toast the King of Prussia, which a French officer would not drink and soon after when it came to his turn gave [Napolean] Bonaparte which young Blücher would not drink, on which the officer went up to him and without saying anything struck him a smash in the face. Blücher said nothing but went out of the room and returned immediately with a pair of pistols, with one of which without uttering a word he shot the officer dead and then held up the other and said he had that ready for any man who would take up the quarrel. This came to his father's knowledge, who put him under arrest for six weeks.