I like reading the year-end edition of the NY Times Magazine. It's filled with obituaries of people who have died during the year. Many of the names I know, but there are always a number of people I'd never heard of who have led interesting lives.
Consider, for example, Miriam Rothschild. Sure, we've all heard of the Rothschilds and she was a member of the correct Rothschild family. But, the Times wrote about her not because of her fortune but because she liked fleas. She didn't like fleas in any weird sense, she was considered the world's expert on fleas. She produced a "Who's Who" of the flea world, replete with illustrations of various members of the flea family. She gained her knowledge of fleas without benefit of a formal education and she obtained specimens in conventional and unconventional ways, such as smuggling them out of Australia on flea-ridden mice. By her bedside she kept 60,000 microscope slides of fleas.
She inherited some of her eccentricity from her uncle, the second Lord Rothschild. He also collected animals, among them giant tortoises, which he rode, and zebras, which he used to pull his carriage to Piccadilly.
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