Quotes from Erik Larson

From the start, Churchill and Fisher resolved to keep the operation so secret that only they and a few other Admiralty officials would ever know it existed.

There is nothing like the diversion of travel for one who is mentally fagged.

paper, at least, it reported to Adm. Henry Francis Oliver, the Admiralty's chief of staff, a man so tight-lipped and reticent he could seem almost mute, and this—given the British navy's predilection for nicknames—ensured that he would be known forever after as "Dummy" Oliver.

It was this big talk, not the persistent southwesterly breeze, that had prompted New York editor Charles Anderson Dana to nickname Chicago the Windy City.

An airplane carrying Hitler, Göring and Goebbels crashes. All three are killed. Who is saved?" Answer: "The German People.

Some critics argued men should not try to predict the weather, because it was God's province; others that men could not predict the weather, because men were incompetent.

According to Home Intelligence, "People living near guns are suffering from serious lack of sleep: a number of interviews made round one gun in West London showed that people were getting much less sleep than others a few hundred yards away." But no one wanted the guns to stop. "There is little complaint about lack of sleep, mainly because of the new exhilaration created by the barrage. Nevertheless this serious loss of sleep needs watching.

the station.

Captain Hall had no direct control over Room 40—as of early 1915 his intelligence division and Room 40 were separate entities—but his name more than any other would come to be associated with its achievements.

Mackworth turned to Conner and said, "I always thought a shipwreck was a well-organized affair." "So did I," Conner replied, "but I've learnt a devil of a lot in the last five minutes.

love dies slowly with me, if at all

The official burdens on your shoulders are indeed heavy. I write to tell you how deeply I sympathize with you in having to bear this new burden of personal loss and sorrow.

sounds that sleeping houses make

Churchill slept well, not even waking when the all clear sounded at three forty-five A.M. He always slept well. His ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, was his particular gift.

She reminded him that in the past he had been fond of quoting a French maxim, "On ne règne sur les âmes que par le calme," meaning, essentially, "One leads by calm.

In the first six months of 1892 the city experienced nearly eight hundred violent deaths. Four a day.

Minneapolis was small, somnolent, and full of Swedish and Norwegian farmers as charming as cornstalks.

THE SUBMARINE as a weapon had come a long way by this time, certainly to the point where it killed its own crews only rarely.

Where Room 40 promised to give Britain the clearest advantage was in the battle for control of the seas, and there Britain's strategy had undergone a change.

I think Rome at its worst had nothing on Chicago during those lurid days.

Lost children filled every chair at the headquarters of the Columbian Guard; nineteen spent the night and were claimed by their parents the next day.

So every night," he said, "I slept with a torpedo and a puppy.

In honor of the fair Kodak called the folding version of its popular model No. 4 box camera the Columbus. The photographs these new cameras created were fast becoming known as "snap-shots," a term originally used by English hunters to describe a quick shot with a gun.

Speed Bonnie Boat.