Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for June 22, 2020

I bet that one thousand one hundred sixty-one year old Moroccan library isn’t working right now.

According to this site the library at Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt is the oldest continually operating library.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/05/saint-catherines-monastery-and-worlds.html

From what I’ve read, the idea came to R L Stevenson in a nightmare.

Coincidentally, I only downloaded “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” onto my Kindle, yesterday afternoon, for my book-club… 2€

Why does the R. L. Stevenson picture look like Val Kilmer’s portrayal of Doc Holiday?

My late grandma was afraid to get on an escalator.

I wonder how old are that library’s oldest books?

Stevenson’s Jekyll/Hyde was published in 1886 and said to have originated in a dream of the author. The dream connection is important in terms of classical psychoanalysis.

It was approximately 15 years later that Freud published his Interpretation of Dreams. That book first brought the notion of the unconscious mind to the attention of the general public, even though the idea had been knocking about for centuries. (See much of Shakespeare, for example.)

“His theory was that humans have an unconscious in which sexual and aggressive impulses are in perpetual conflict for supremacy with the defences against them.”

That’s clearly the underpinning of Stevenson’s novel.

What did Freud think of Stevenson’s book? Did he ever say?

Stevenson died about five years before Interpretation appeared.

Stevenson was a great author!

I know some people put elevators in their homes, but I’ve always said that if I could afford it, I’d put in an escalator. An elevator that stops working is a problem, particularly if you’re in it when it stops, but a escalator that stops working is just stairs.

Breaking news just in: Tens of people were stuck for close to an hour when the escalator stopped working. Firemen had to be brought in to help guide people back down to the ground floor. Pictures at eleven!

Stocked by Muhammad Gutenberg.

Take care and gesundheit.

Well then, I’ll blame Jesse W. Reno for the escalator working on June 16, 2015.

Interesting that the drawings of Dr. Jeckyll and Mister Hyde looks like Fredric March, without and with special makeup.

Oh no! I got a book checked out in 860 from that library! Wonder what the late fee is gonna be???

But it wasn’t a public lending library. Those came in the 18 th and 19th century. There were private lending libraries, clubs or societies, or just reference libraries prior.

And the dream came shortly after leaving the opium den…

And the library is most famous for having loaned an 1161-year-old overdue book…

I remember reading when Stevenson’s wife woke him, he said, “Why did you awaken me? I was dreaming up a fine bogey tale.”

But I also read that he was also influenced by Deacon Brodie, who lived a double life: Well respected community leader by day, head of a gang of sneak thieves by night. The principles of duality intrigued him.

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Stevenson was loved by the Samoans, and his tombstone epigraph was translated to a Samoan song of grief.

Poor Library of Alexandria.