Balderdash

Tonight I've been mostly playing a board game called Balderdash, which is a bit like Call My Bluff with different categories - as well as words, there's people, initials, films and dates (nobody ever does dates).Anyway, I learnt a few interesting facts during the game (which I lost due to my unfortunate inability to either bluff or spot bluffs) but a little internet perusal has informed me that they are in fact, well, balderdash. For example, it claimed that Scottish writer Tobias Smollett invented the post box, but my only friend Wikipedia, reckons different:

The idea of using a static pillar box to collect post was first suggested by Anthony Trollope.

That's right, the novelist who penned such works as (give me a minute) The Chronicles of Barsetshire came up with the idea when asked to come up with a postal system for the isolated communities on the Channel Islands. Smollett isn't mentioned anywhere - perhaps he wrote to Trollope suggested that there be some kind of hole through which to put the letters. The history of the post box isn't big on thrills and spills, but there are a couple of points of interest: firstly, the post boxes we use today were designed by J.W. Penfold, who lends his name to the postbox-dwelling character in Danger Mouse. Secondly, when post boxes in Scotland began having Elizabeth II's emblem on them, nationalists blew them up in protest. Not at the symbol of ongoing English oppression, but because Elizabeth II was Elizabeth I in Scotland, as the first Elizabeth (you know, the one in Blackadder) was never Queen of Scotland. This makes it surely the most pedantic act of terrorism in the history of the universe.