Fever

Mallon was an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid and through her work as a cook spread the disease throughout New York during the 1900s.

Irish American novelist, Mary Beth Keane, originally from upstate New York, has been inspired by Mallon's story to write her second novel, Fever, about the life of Typhoid Mary.

"The reason that I wrote the book was because the phrase is out there and people know it well, yet no one really knows the whole story behind 'Typhoid' Mary," winner of an American National Book Foundation Award Keane explains.

"She does have a story, she is a fully-fledged human being. Yet, for me as a writer, there was enough of a gap that I was able to invent around her, that was important when deciding to do the book, it gave me room to create a novel."

Fever casts a evocative light over the life of a figure once described as 'the most dangerous woman in America'.

Anne Boleyn

There are few famous people about whom we have imagined so much, yet know so little. She wasn't royalty, so her childhood wasn't chronicled. Her teenage years with "the French" inspired salacious rumounext to nothing about what she said and did at Francis I's court. It is amply chronicled how Henry VIII pursued her for seven years, splitting his kingdom into bloody halves while he penned ardent love letters and tried to convince an obstinate Catholic hierarchy that his first marriage was a sin against God. But we don't know what she felt and thought about her royal courtier, for we don't have her side of the correspondence.

r among her political enemies and have fed the imaginations of novelists, but the reality is that we know

From the moment she entered Henry's life until well after the French executioner's sword ended her own, Anne Boleyn's behavior, personality and character were chewed over by the tongues and pens of political enemies, who saw her as a usurper of Katherine's throne and destroyer of the True Faith. Their later influence on historians has been nothing short of astounding--and greatly aided by the fact that Henry, eager to forget his second wife and begin anew with his third, tried to erase Anne into historical oblivion: destroyed her portraits, her letters, removed her emblems from the ceilings and entrances of royal residences.

Sukeban

The common signifiers of sukeban, described by the Japanese police in 1980s pamphlets as omens of downfall include brightly dyed or permed hair, and modifications of the school uniform such as wearing coloured socks, rolling up the sleeves and lengthening the skirt. Sukeban may engage in activities such as slug torture, stimulant use, shoplifting, theft, and violence, but if arrested, they can be charged with the lesser offence of pre-delinquency". The word sukeban was originally used by delinquents, but has been used by the general population since 1972.

Salome

In 1908, wearing little more than a jewelled breastplate and a transparent skirt, the Canadian dancer Maud Allan stormed the fortress of British proprieties with her solo work, The Vision of Salomé. Allan danced an audacious choreography of desire, her body "swaying like a witch, twisting like a snake, and panting with [a hypnotic] passion", according to one dazed viewer. But while several theatres outside London barred Allan's performance as indecent, to her legions of women admirers, she was an inspiration. Margot Asquith, wife of the Liberal PM, was among those who saw Allan's dancing as a liberating expression of female sexuality.

State Representative Stella Tremblay forwarded one of the hate emails she's received this week to every member of the New Hampshire Legislature. The subject line on the email, written in response to her claim that the Boston Marathon bombings were a Blacl Ops terrorist attack by the U.S. government, read "you are a (expletive) idiot." 

To Tremblay, the email was "pure Saul Alinsky Tactics in action." But it might as well have come from her fellow Republicans, who have expressed embarrassment and called for an apology. Tremblay says none will be coming.

The frustration Republicans are feeling now has been felt on both sides of the aisle in New Hampshire in recent years. And it prompts the question: how does one who even remotely peddles in conspiracy theory get elected to the New Hampshire House of Representative?

"It happens with a surprising degree of regularity," said Dean Spiliotes, civic scholar at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, N.H. "A lot of these people just fly under the radar."

Political observers like Spiliotes attribute it to New Hampshire's citizen Legislature, in which members receive $200 a biennium and are elected, or re-elected, every two years. By one estimate, a third of the 400-member House is new every biennium.