Human interest stories from newspapers going back 285 years have been put together in a new book.
Journalist and author Rona Levin trawled through the British Library Newspaper Archive to find the items across two centuries, from 1729-1930.
The book shows that readers of yesteryear had as much interest in the grisly and macabre as today - more so, because many of the details would be considered too graphic for today's newspapers.
Reports included material such as "his body was found stretched on the bed, and his brains lying in different parts of the room" or "when the balloon reached the earth his leg was found to be completely severed, being attached by the tendons only".
One which included what would be regarded today as "too much information" was in the Hereford Journal of January 4, 1781 (datelined Vienna, December 9) which said that when surgeons cut open the body of the late Austrian Empress Maria Theresa they were astonished to find "a great quantity of fat and viscous matter, which is attributed to Her Majesty having accustomed herself, from her youth, never to spit".
The Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette of January 14, 1830 offered this snippet of news: "Last week, as a young man, undeterred by the inclemency of the weather, was bathing off the pier of Leith (Scotland), he was mistaken for a seal, and shot at. He escaped, however, without injury."
The Burnley Express, in October 1892, carried news of the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
It had a colourful quote from the physician Sir Andrew Clarke, who was at the poet's bedside, and said: "Lord Tennyson has had a gloriously beautiful death. In all my experience I have never witnessed anything more glorious. There was no artificial light (in) the chamber, and all was darkness but for the silvery light of the moon at its full. The soft beams of light fell upon the bed and played upon the features of the dying poet like a halo of Rembrandt's."
The book also carries a letter from someone who may be the person to blame - or applaud - for the custom of adding tips to bills. The correspondent, whose letter was published only with the letters RW, wrote to The London Magazine, or Gentlemen's Monthly Intelligencer, in January 1768 that people who stayed at inns were constantly abused by staff begging for tips, and urging that 'sufficient wages' should be paid while allowing for a voluntary lump sum to be added to the bill, to the benefit of both staff and customers.
Ms Levin said: "I was fascinated when I came across this letter because it shows that the issue of tipping or paying a fair wage was debated as much then, all those years ago, as it is today. The traveller who wrote the letter was clearly fed up and spent some time thinking how to improve working conditions for staff at inns while providing a better experience for guests. Yet most of us will never have stopped to consider how or when the custom of tipping started, let alone whose idea it first was to add tips to bills."
* Comic, Curious & Quirky: News Stories From Centuries Past, published by the British Library, priced £10.