Butterfly evolved from breaststroke in the 1930s

Butterfly, strangely enough, evolved from breaststroke in the 1930s, when practitioners discovered that an out-of-the-water arm pull was faster than an in-the-water arm pull.

B. Tsui, Why we swim (2020), 196

The second is a house for one of her relatives whose job it is to look after her wigs

[Dolly Parton's] house itself is less revealing than the two buildings alongside it, out of range of my camera. If we are to trust our guide (and that is a big if), the first of these is a chapel where Dolly renewed her wedding vows. The second is a house for one of her relatives whose job it is to look after her wigs. 

H. Morales, Pilgrimage to Dollywood (2014), 71

The Coal Miner's Daughter Museum is one of the oddest museums I have ever visited

The Coal Miner's Daughter Museum is one of the oddest museums I have ever visited. Perhaps the oddest thing about it is that half the labels used to identify and describe the objects are typical professional display labels, but the other half are handwritten in felt-tipped pen on little white boxes and signed "Loretta Lynn" or "LL." ... It is as if a mad curator broke into the building during the night and defiantly stuck up her own thoughts about the exhibits. Imagine the improvements to the New York Met and the British Museum if this were to happen there. Out with solemn labels detailing sources and provenances; in with personal memories and anecdotes. By a cream Cadillac parked against a Grand Ole Opry backdrop was the notice: "this is my favorite car. It's a 1977 Cadillac. I wrote most of my songs in it while driving to and from town. I'm still gonna get it out and drive it. Loretta Lynn." In front of a display of her children's paraphernalia, including as cast from a broken arm and wedding dresses, is a note saying. Jenny is my graddaughter. Patsy is going to bring me hers to." I wondered how long this notice had been here, and what level of frustration lies behind the public reminder to her daughter Patsy.

H. Morales, Pilgrimage to Dollywood (2014), 58-9

It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed

'The three reasons for it [marriage] given in the Prayer-book have always seemed to me quite inadequate,' agreed Mr Prendergast. 'I have never had the smallest difficulty about the avoidance of fornication, and the other two advantages seem to me nothing short of disastrous.'

...

'It has always been a mystery to me why people marry,' said Mr Prendergast. 'I can't see the smallest reason for it. Quite happy, normal people. Now I can understand it in Grimes' case. He has everything to gain by the arrangement, but what does Flossie expect to gain? And yet she seems more enthusiastic about it than Grimes. It has been the tragedy of my life that whenever I start thinking about any quite simple subject I invariably feel myself confronted by some flat contradiction of this sort. Have you ever thought about marriage—in the abstract, I mean, of course?'

'Not very much, I'm afraid.'

'I don't believe,' said Mr Prendergast, 'that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed. Don't you agree?'

E. Waugh (1928), 101-3

I can think of no entertainment that fills me with greater detestation than a display of competitive athletics

'Frankly,' said the Doctor, 'I am at a loss to understand my own emotions. I can think of no entertainment that fills me with greater detestation than a display of competitive athletics, none—except possibly folk dancing.

E. Waugh, Decline and fall (1928), 60

Epileptic royalty from their villas of exile

This was the first meeting since then, and from all over Europe old members had rallied for the occasion. For two days they had been pouring into Oxford: epileptic royalty from their villas of exile; uncouth peers from crumbling country seats; smooth young men of uncertain tastes from embassies and legations; illiterate lairds from wet granite hovels in the Highlands; ambitious young barristers and Conservative candidates torn from the London season and the indelicate advances of debutantes; all that was most sonorous of name and title was there for the beano.'

E. Waugh, Decline and fall (1928), 9

Small nondescript German States of which five-sixths of the subjects are Palace officials, and the rest charcoal burners or innkeepers

The millionaire thought he had once heard of Posen, but he wasn't sure; he rather fancied it was one of those small nondescript German States of which five-sixths of the subjects are Palace officials, and the rest charcoal burners or innkeepers.

A. Bennett, The Grand Babylon Hotel (1902), 19 

The mucous discharge of some old cow's guts, allowed to putrefy

Cheese, of course, was almost inconceivable. ... Although in the late twentieth century Chinese parents started feeding milk to their children, cheese is still widely regarded as disgusting: it was memorably described by one informant of the American anthropologist E.N. Anderson as 'the mucous discharge of some old cow's guts, allowed to putrefy'. Some Chinese friends of mine claim, with a grimace, to be able to smell milk in the sweat of Westerners.

F. Dunlop, Shark's fin soup and Sichuan pepper (2008), 65

In Chinese, the word for animal is dong wu, meaning 'moving thing'

It was the sheer nonchalance of it, the way people scaled fish as though they were simply peeling potatoes, skinned live rabbits while smoking a cigarette, joking with a friend as the blood drained from the throat of a bewildered duck. They didn't kill animals before they cooked and ate them. They simply went about the process of preparing a creature for the pot and table, and at some random point it died. But there, perhaps, is the crux of the matter, embedded almost invisibly in those two sentences. In English, as in most European languages, the words for the living things we eat are mostly derived from the Latin anima, which means air, breath, life. 'Creature', from the Latin for 'created', seems to connect animals with us human beings in some divinely fashioned universe. We too are creatures, animated. In Chinese, the word for animal is dong wu, meaning 'moving thing'. Is it cruel to hurt something that (unless you are a fervent Buddhist) you see as simply a 'moving thing', scarcely even alive.

F. Dunlop, Shark's fin soup and Sichuan pepper (2008), 49

There is no conceptual divide between 'meat' and 'inedible rubbery bits' when butchering an animal carcass

 The Chinese don't generally divide the animal world into the separate realms of pets and edible creatures: unless you are a strict Buddhist (and bearing in mind certain regional preferences), you might as well eat them all. Likewise, there is no conceptual divide between 'meat' and 'inedible rubbery bits' when butchering an animal carcass: in China they traditionally favour the kind of nose-to-tail eating of which restaurateur Fergus Henderson, the notorious English purveyor of offal, could only dream. 

F. Dunlop, Shark's fin soup and Sichuan pepper (2008), 12