Agatha Christie was kind of a grouch.

Shocking news that a woman who largely only wrote about murder and death was not a lighthearted soul, but letters on display reveal Agatha Christie was generally irked by life.

The letters, which will be on exhibition at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival held in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, show Christie was annoyed by most anything, like over the covers of her books.

According to The Guardian, for her 1947 book The Labours of Hercules, a Pekingese was featured on the cover. Harmless, you might say. Her family found laughs in it, but Christie was furious and wrote her publisher:

"The wrapper design for Hercules has occasioned the most ribald and obscene remarks and suggestions from my family – All I can say is – Try again!!" (sic).

Another time, she complained the cover of another book made the main character look like he was "going to a funeral and dressed accordingly."

In 1967, she apparently found out her latest book was already released without her receiving an advanced copy. She was in a "fury" when she found out the book was already on sale in Helsinki, of all places.

"It’s usually [available] in November and then it comes in very handy for sending to friends at Xmas time – but one can hardly send it as that now? I do think it’s treating your authors disgracefully."

More than anything, Christie was annoyed by aging. As a 59-year old, she wrote to a friend, Bertie Meyer, who was staging a play based on one of her books. "I've had letters now from different fans expressing surprise that I am 'such an old lady'," she wrote, adding about pictures of herself:

"Nobody likes [the photos], possibly, perhaps, because they don’t seem to have been touched up at all? All lines and wrinkles – and dash it all, I'm not 70 – not yet 60."

If you want to read more of Christie's moaning and complaining (so, you know, you feel like a cheery lad by comparison), the festival will be held July 20-23.

Joseph Stalin loved his son as much as he loved the Russian people--which is to say, not so much.

Joseph Stalin was a tyrant, a dictator, and a despot that led the USSR for thirty years, and his actions and behaviors caused millions of Russians to die in purges and in prison camps.

In other words, he was a sweetheart.

You can see that sweetheart behavior in the way Stalin wrote a letter to his then 17-year old son's school teacher in 1938. Vasily Stalin was thought to be a spoiled, bratty child, and apparently word traveled back to dad about his son's misdeeds at school. The teacher complained to the Soviet leader, and Joseph Stalin wrote back apologizing, all while showing as little affection as possible for his son:


"To teacher comrade Martyshin. I have received your letter about escapades of Vasily Stalin. Thank you for the letter. Replying with a great delay because of being overloaded with work. My apologies. Vasily is a spoiled young man of average abilities, little wildman, not always honest, likes to blackmail weak "teachers," not rarely an insolent fellow, with weak - or more accurately - unorganized willpower.


He was spoiled by various "god fathers" and "god mommies," who continually emphasize that he is "Stalin's son." I am glad that in your person there is at least one self-respecting teacher who treats Vasily as everyone else and demands that the insolent boy follows the school's policy. Vasily is spoiled by principals like the one you mentioned, washcloth-people, who have no place at school; and if insolent Vasily hasn't destroyed himself yet it is because our country still has teachers who don't give slack to the little young swell.


My advice: demand stricter from Vasily and don't be afraid of fake blackmail threats of "suicide" from the capricious child. You will have my support.
Unfortunately I don't have the opportunity to fuss with Vasily myself. But promise to grab him by the collar from time to time.


Cheers!"


Average abilities, weak, not honest, spoiled, and insolent?

Aww, dad really did love his son after all!

Rare Thomas Jefferson letter is historic, mildly sassy.

You've heard similar stories before. Someone's rummaging around in an attic, finds some old, forgotten boxes, and discovers a piece of history worth $325,000. This inspires you to immediately run to your attic or basement where hopes of wonderful riches are quickly dismissed upon learning you only have old musty sweaters, 8-track cassettes, and dashed dreams. Que sera, sera.

And so the story goes again. A family is Mississippi recently discovered a letter in their attic that was written by Thomas Jefferson shortly after the War of 1812. Jefferson wrote the letter to then-U.S. Ambassador to France William Crawford, a relative of the modern Mississippi family.

In the letter, up for sale by The Raab Collection, Jefferson remarks about the Treaty of Ghent, which effectively ended the war and which was written in his Monticello home. The letter also offers Jefferson's thoughts on Napoleon--who had just lost his own war with Britain occurring the same time in Europe as the War of 1812 was raging in North America. According to Jefferson, Napoleon's "downfall was illy timed for us. It gave to England an opportunity to turn full handed on us, when we were unprepared. No matter. We can beat her on our own soil…"

Oooh, sassy passive aggression! Jefferson doing a little chest puffing and dismissive hand waving at both the British and Napoleon in one sentence.

All of Jefferson's sass can be yours for the sale price of $325,000.

But double-check your basement first. Just in case.

Queen Elizabeth was short and to the point with her letter writing as a child.

To celebrate Queen Elizabeth's 90th birthday, the public relations arm of the British monarchy has taken to social media to get hip with the kiddos and bombarded sites like Instagram with throwbacks to the Queen's glory days. Those being when she was a kid.

Take the following post, showing the very first letter Queen Elizabeth (known to family as Lilibet) wrote to her grandmother, Queen Mary.

This is the first letter ‘Lilibet’ as Princess Elizabeth was known to her family, ever sent to her grandmother, Queen Mary. #Queenat90 #fromthearchives

A photo posted by The British Monarchy (@the_british_monarchy) on Apr 19, 2016 at 4:40am PDT

You're supposed to read this in your head as if one of the daughters from Downton Abbey is speaking.

How extensive a doll house is it that it's taking ages for the kid to unpack? Is it life-sized? It's possible that every time we look at Buckingham Palace we're just seeing at a really grandiose dollhouse. Is Prince Philip really just an elaborate Ken doll? Potentially.

Harper Lee wasn't a fan of Donald Trump's Taj Mahal Casino.

Apparently not a fan of slots or blackjack.

You should have furrowed your brow bright there when thinking about Harper Lee somehow connected to not only a casino, but Donald Trump's Taj Mahal Atlantic City Casino.

In a letter dated from 1990 found in Lee's New York City apartment, and currently up for auction online, Lee wrote a friend regarding having guests stay at the Taj Mahal. "The worst punishment God can devise for this sinner is to make her spirit reside eternally at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City," Lee wrote, shortly after the casino was opened.

On the campaign trail, Trump hasn't commented, but it'll probably be this:

"Who's Harper Lee? I mean, really, who is she? She's washed up. I'm telling you. She hasn't released anything new in, like, fifty years, maybe more. It's kid stuff, that Mockingbird junk. When I owned the Taj Mahal, it was the greatest casino ever developed. It was more popular, more important than the one in India. No one on the planet had seen such a thing. I mean, really, what would you rather do? Play at the greatest casino on the planet or read a dopey book about I, I, I don't even know--what's that book about?--bird killing? Do you want to read about birds being murdered? What's it, a how-to manual? Get her outta here with this stuff."

Lee's letter, by the way, has a current bid of $1,330.




Don't we all want to know the reasoning behind why Harper Lee was hosting guests at a New Jersey casino in the first place, regardless of the Trump angle? This is akin to F. Scott Fitzgerald inviting friends to AA meetings or Ernest Hemingway deciding that knitting circles are the next hot happening trend.

Kentucky Fried Chicken doesn't like your sense of humor and/or Keanu Reeves.

Canadian Bret Litke and his roommate have a sense of humor. They live in Edmonton--so they have to have a sense of humor. You would, too, if you lived in the northernmost part of Canada that has a pulse and where winter resides 11.5 months a year.

According to Imgur user roxXorbot, Litke and his roommate decided to constantly call the Kentucky Fried Chicken hotline for customer concerns, inundate their fax number, and repeatedly mail letters for good measure.

KFC was not pleased.

Colonel Sanders and friends finally replied to Litke with a formal letter asking him to cease with the phone calls, faxes, and casual letters. Four somewhat pleading "please stop"s and one demanding "Don't contact us again" fill the letter, as follows:

I don't think you'd get this sort of disrespect from Popeye's.

Popeye's probably appreciates Keanu Reeves.

Walt Whitman wrote a letter for a dying soldier to his wife.

Walt Whitman has been labeled many things, but humble is not one of them.

The same Walt Whitman that gets guff for being cocky about his writing ability is also the same Walt Whitman modest enough to spend many days during the Civil War visiting hospitals filled with wounded and dying soldiers, writing letters for them or simply sitting down to have a chat.

Jackie Budell, a specialist with the National Archives, tells NPR that a letter discovered by researchers in February is only the third known document written by a solider to his family, but done in Whitman's hand.

"He just literally visited people. And he bought stationery and he would bring it with him and he would offer to write letters home for them," she tells NPR's Michel Martin. "Many [soldiers] were illiterate but also many were just too sickly to write so he would offer to do that."

One such sickly soldier was Robert Nelson Jabo, a French Canadian living in New York state who was a Union soldier dying in a hospital too far away to reach family. Whitman sat down with Jabo to write the following:


Washington, Jan. 21, 1865(6)

My Dear Wife,

You must excuse me for not having written to you before. I have not been very well + did not feel much like writing – but I feel considerably better now – my complaint is an affection of the lungs. I am mustered out of service, but am not at present well enough to come home. I hope you will try to write back as soon as you receive this + let me know how you all are, how things are going on – let me know how it is with mother. I write this by means of a friend who is now sitting by my side + I hope it will be God's will that we shall yet meet again. Well I send you all my love + must now close.

Your affectionate husband,
Nelson Jabo

Written by Walt Whitman
a friend.


"I think Walt's time was the most important gift that he was giving these men," Budell tells NPR. "Really they just needed someone to sit by their side."

As did Jabo. He died from tuberculosis shortly after this letter was written.

He never made it home, he never saw his wife.

Nun, 105-years old, writes to prisoners to keep their hopes up.

Sister Mary Mark at her 105th birthday party.

Three parts of that headline would be unique on its own. Nun. 105-years old. Prisoners. Together, it's the likes of a short story you'll rarely come across.

Sister Mary Mark of St. Paul, Minnesota, celebrated her 105th birthday last month. And for over eighty of those years, Sister Mary Mark has written to a variety of men in correctional facilities around the country in hopes that it gives them encouragement.

"I surely do [enjoy] writing the letters and I've been doing it for many years," Sister Mary Mark told ABC News. "They're in prison, but they're working. They hope to make it."

Kathleen Conrad, who oversees the care at Carondelet Village in St. Paul where Sister Mary Mark lives, said motivations behind Sister's gesture are pretty simple.

"She says she just offers [the inmates] love and encouragement and let's them know that they're not alone," Conrad told ABC.

You're not alone. From an old woman in a nursing home to young men behind bars.

What is the carbon footprint of every individual text message you write?

Jesus's footprints are made up of miracles and not carbon, I assume.

Everything we eat, drink, use, drive, and operate leaves a carbon footprint. The question is how much of a footprint? Are we talking Bigfoot footprints? Jesus walking in the sand footprints? Global-panic-because-we're-all-going-to-die footprints? Just how big?

Someone recently asked NPR's All Tech that question, specifically about the footprint of a text message. There's a solid chance that if you're reading this you're going to send dozens, if not hundreds, of text messages today. So what sort of damage are you really doing besides being antisocial?

All Tech turned to Mike Berners-Lee, the author of the 2010 book How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint Of Everything, and all-around impact calculator at Small World Consulting at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. This is his life. And the result of your texting addiction? Fairly minimal.

According to Berners-Lee, assuming we only focus on the actual text message itself and the ability to transmit it (thus, ignoring the manufacture and distribution of the phone to begin with), each text leaves behind 0.014 grams of CO2e. Are you writing 1,000 texts a day? Perform the math accordingly. Berners-Lee notes that in 2010 the estimate for all the world's text messaging carbon footprint was 32,000 tons of CO2e per year. It's probably edged up a bit in the ensuing six years.

That sounds like a lot, but the world produces 50 billion tons of CO2e per year. Writing texts is barely a drop then. So how does this compare to other forms of communication?

Text message:  0.014 grams of CO2e per text
Email:  4 grams of CO2e per email
Letter:  140 grams of CO2e per letter (assuming the letter weighs 10 grams, is made of recycled paper, and is later recycled again)

Berners-Lee says it would take 10,000 texts to equal the carbon footprint of a letter.

But admit it--you're really concerned about one thing here: Does your addiction to emoji use affect the text message carbon footprint?

The answer is no. It's the same as any other character typed into the text box.

Phew. Or, better said:

60-year old letter to Santa discovered in a chimney during a house remodel.

Found in Caversham, England, when the current home's owner wanted to remove a chimney so they could properly feel frostbite from a delightful British winter, the note is signed only by someone named David, written 60-years ago.

What was on young David's wish list? Let's go to the letter in its entirety:


Dear Father Christmas,

Please can you send me Rupert Annual and a drum, box of chalk, soldiers and Indians, slippers, silk tie, pencil box, any little toys you have to spare.

Love, David


What a greedy hedonist! Slippers! A pencil box! A BOX OF CHALK!! What--did little David forget to mention he wanted a bowlful of dust?

For everyone not from England who's wondering if young David is dealing in human trafficking, he's not looking for Saint Nick to send him a poor, nebbish guy named Rupert. The Rupert Annual was a comic released yearly at Christmas about the adventures of a bear named, surprisingly enough, Rupert.

The construction worker who discovered the letter, Lewis Shaw, found out David (last name kept secret) is still alive, and intends to deliver the now somewhat older child his letter with all the gifts he asked for sometime before Saint Nick makes his rounds this year.




photo: ABC News

1964 Malcolm X letter up for sale for $1.25 million.

Sometimes what you go looking for isn't what you end up leaving with.

Found in a storage locker, a six-page handwritten letter from Malcolm X is up for sale for $1.25 million, according to the New York Post.

Written after his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964, the civil rights leader pondered the situation in America, and believed that the religion of Islam was the answer for a uneasy country.

"I very much doubt that 10 American citizens have ever visited Mecca, and I do believe that I might be the first American-born Negro to make the actual Hajj itself," Malcolm X writes. Considering that in the history of the Hajj hundreds of millions of Muslims have made the pilgrimage, Malcolm X might be underestimating by a slight margin--but his point is made.

And he sees racism plaguing the United States. "If white Americans could accept the religion of Islam...they, too, could then sincerely accept the Oneness of Men, and cease to measure others always in terms of their 'difference in color,' he wrote. "And with racism now plaguing America like an incurable cancer, all thinking Americans should be more respective to Islam as an already proven solution to the race problem."

The letter, being sold by a California memorabilia company called Moments in Time, was nearly thrown out. As the seller, Gary Zimet, told Page Six of the Post, “It was found in a storage locker and almost thrown out. [...] Only because the owner saw some Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez autographs was it saved.”

Priorities, people. Derek Jeter autographs were to be had!!

If alive today, Ernest Hemingway would've been on 'Hoarders'

220lbs, of which 40lbs was all beard.

Ernest Hemingway loved the thrill of killing game, and apparently that excitement continued to the game of potentially being killed by a stack of his own mementos.

A new exhibit at New York's Morgan Library and Museum displays an extensive amount of minutia of Hemingway's own paperwork, partly borrowed by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library--from visa war cards to original first drafts of short stories--to the point where it's apparent he had a fondness for himself.

Two highlights include a soured relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald, where one letter is signed off  "Kiss my ass / EH." Another Hemingway fury moment occurs when he begins to comment about one reviewer's critique of his book, remarking he can take his review and shove it you know where--and supply the grease. Try not to be stunned by the subtly.

You don't see this sort of behavior out of Faulkner. Mainly because usually he was drunk.




photo: JFK Library

Use this pre-written excused absence note, take the day off work, and watch the U.S.-Germany World Cup game.

Jurgen Klinsmann, the U.S. Men's National Team's head coach, Tweeted out an excused absence letter for employers to give their workers a day off to watch the U.S.-Germany World Cup game this afternoon.

Written like a doctor's note, Klinsmann acknowledges that absences will reduce productivity, but also encourages the boss to take a day off, too.

If only.