Jingo

In our world, an early attempt at an internal combustion engine used pellets of gunpowder, stuck to a strip of paper (rather like the roll of caps for a cap pistol). I understand that the attempt was just as successful as Leonard's.

34

Burnt umber is a dark, cool-toned brown colour. Umber is an earth pigment containing manganese and iron oxides, used in paints, pastels and pencils. The name comes from Umbria, the region where it was originally mined and adopted as a pigment for art.

35

The live film of JFK's assassination, allegedly, shows similar inconsistencies with the official account.

36

The official account of JFK's assassination describes how a bullet moved in some very strange ways through his body. Conspiracy theorists disparage this as the “magic bullet theory”.

37

In our world there is a magazine Guns And Ammo; this appears to be the Discworld equivalent.

38

When the First World War broke out, Britons were much comforted by the fact that the supposedly unstoppable “steamroller” of the Russian army was on their side. Rumours spread that Russian troops were landing in Scotland to reinforce the British army, and these troops could be recognised by the snow on their boots. Ever since, the story has been a standard joke about the gullibility of people in wartime.

39

Legend tells of Sweeney Todd, a barber in Fleet Street, London, who would rob and kill (not necessarily in that order) solitary customers, disposing of their bodies via a meat-pie shop next door. The story is celebrated in a popular Victorian melodrama, in a 1936 film, in a musical by Stephen Sondheim (1979), and in rhyming slang (“Sweeney Todd” = “Flying Squad”, an elite unit of the Metropolitan Police).

The story was the most successful of a spate of such shockers dating from the early 19th century. Sawney Bean, the Man-Eater of Midlothian was supposedly based on a real 13th-century Scottish legal case; also published about this time were two French versions, both set in Paris. All of these were claimed to be based on true stories — but then, this pretence was standard practice for novelists at the time. The “original” version of Sweeney Todd was written by Edward Lloyd under the title of The String of Pearls, published around 1840.

40

Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy from the Texas Schools Book Depository, on the fifth floor.

41

Mr Potato Head is a child's toy based on putting facial features on a potato. Nowadays, Mr Potato Head, produced by Hasbro Inc, has a plastic body and has achieved great fame by starring in the Toy Story films.

42

In later editions of the book, this sentence was altered to ‘Snowy can barely read and write’ — presumably for consistency with the Clue about the notebook.

43

The Riot Act was an old British law that allowed the authorities to use deadly force to break up crowds who were gathered for subversive purposes, such as trade unionists or Chartists. It was an unusual law in that it had to be read out to the crowd before it came into force — hence the significance of Detritus' attempt to read it — and the crowd was then supposed to be given a reasonable time to disperse. However, it was wide open to abuse, and was associated with some very nasty incidents, such as the Peterloo Massacre in 1818. It was not finally abolished in the UK until the mid-20th century, when the government decided that it would not be an acceptable way to deal with the regular riots then taking place in Northern Ireland.

44

Named after the most famous archer of English mythology: Robin of Locksley, AKA Robin Hood.

In our world, there really do exist ‘reflex bows’: they are a type of bow that will curve away from the archer when unstrung.