by Phineus T. Knoist
Since [his Revolutionary victory], genealogists have been pondering the possibilities had President Washington been a bit more power-hungry. As early as 1908, newspapers published accounts of history buffs who worked their way through the Washington family tree using rules of succession to determine the rightful heir to the theoretical American throne.[...]
[Ancestry.com's Megan Smolenyak] concluded that leadership would have passed not to men named Abraham or Teddy but to those named Lee, Felix or Frank. "We would have had a King named Spot, how cool is that?" Smolenyak muses of the son who would've fallen between King Bushrod, the first, and Bushrod II.
—Newsweek.com, The Man Who Would Be King, 08 Oct 2008
About the Author:
History knows Phineus Treacher Knoist as the last Knoist Brother. Founded 1831, the Knoist Brothers Circus gained world-renown for an act involving two trained doves and a wolf. The doves and wolf killed each other, however, disappointing everyone. The Brothers quickly recovered with an act employing a snail and two furious lions. The circus folded in the closing days of the American Civil War, when the other two Knoists, the strongman, and a plumber were killed by the snail. Survivors did not ask for their money back.
In 1899, Phineus T. Knoist was found clutching an inactive boiler in an abandoned Chicago Liberty Paint factory, penniless and dead. Many scientific and cultural movements that lived and died in the 20th Century were named with words and phrases coined in the fevered scribblings he left behind, like pasteurization, communism, and Howard Cosell.
It's a snappy, witty fairy-tale kind of thing...
—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
