Joseph Nathan Kane dies

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   I had no idea that he was still alive!
   His FAMOUS FIRST FACTS is amazing--a super-human effort for just one 
person in an age before computers.
   His work on names/nicknames should be noted by the American Name Society.  
I own his NICKNAMES AND  SOBRIQUETS OF U.S. CITIES, STATES, AND COUNTIES, and 
used it when I was working on the Big Apple, the Windy City, the Smoky City, 
Beantown, the Empire State, the Show Me State, the Hoosier State, and the 
like.  Maybe I should do an update.
   The TIMES obituary is certainly long and loving, but gosh, is it sappy:
  
  

Joseph Nathan Kane, Master of Minutiae, Dies at 103

By RICHARD SEVERO

oseph Nathan Kane, whose lifelong obsession with facts led him to write 
exhaustive reference works that cataloged such things as the nicknames of 
presidents, when the first Eskimo Pie was created (1922), when the first 
camels were brought to America (1721) and the precise patent number of the 
first safety pin in the United States, died on Sunday in West Palm Beach, 
Fla.
    
He was 103 and until a few years ago lived not far from where he was born as 
the 19th century ended, on the West Side of Manhattan. 

Among Mr. Kane's books were "Famous First Facts: A Record of First 
Happenings, Discoveries and Inventions in the United States," first published 
in 1933...
(...)
He spent the better part of 100 years in the mustiest rooms of the dankest 
libraries, digging up facts. He would take them back to his cluttered West 
Side apartment, commit them to index cards, lovingly organize and catalog 
them and savor their presence until he set them free in his books. 
(...)
(MEMO TO NY TIMES CLICHE DEPARTMENT:  Much of the stuff I use is on 
microfilm.  The LOC, NYPL, and NYU's Bobst are not overly musty or dank--ed.)
  
Mr. Kane specialized in Americana because, he said, he knew that if he tried 
to include the rest of the world, it would be too much for him. (...)

Mr. Kane was not just a trivialist — he was a factualist with a conscience 
who cared passionately about giving credit where credit was due. He felt that 
some historical figures received credit for accomplishments that should have 
gone to people who were virtually unknown, like the New Yorker Walter Hunt, 
who is believed to have devised the first American stitch-lock sewing machine 
in 1832. Hunt failed to patent it, however, and so when the history of sewing 
machines was written, credit went to Elias Howe, A. B. Wilson and Isaac 
Singer, who came later but knew a thing or two about self-promotion. 

"The credit," Mr. Kane declared, "seemed to go to the inventor with the best 
publicity agent." 

It was with considerable pride that Mr. Kane determined that the first 
American commercially built automobiles were not the work of Henry Ford or 
Walter Chrysler or David Buick, but of Charles Edgar Duryea, who opened the 
Duryea Motor Wagon Company in Springfield, Mass., in 1895. 
  
(...)
  
 As a child, Joseph Kane learned to play the mandolin, violin and banjo, but 
his real interest lay in driving his teachers crazy.
(MEMO TO NY TIMES CLICHE DEPARTMENT:  Keep up the good work!--ed.)

"At school, I would ask, `How do you know?' " he told an interviewer from 
Current Biography. "And that was usually at the end of the discussion."

Late in life, he told a reporter for The Associated Press, "I'm stupid enough 
not to believe anything until I see the proof."

(...).

In the late 1920's he decided to write his first book about achievers 
forgotten by history. It was rejected by 11 publishers, but the 12th, H. W. 
Wilson, accepted it, and thus in "Famous First Facts" the world learned that 
the first sheep were imported into the United States in 1609, that the first 
African-American Army major was Martin Robinson Delaney, and that the first 
subway built in America (in 1870) was the Beach Pneumatic Underground Railway 
in New York. In a brief unsigned review of that book in 1933, The Times said 
the author showed "a dogged resolution of almost superhuman force."

(...)

His research on the origins of the names of all the counties in the United 
States was published in 1955 as "The American Counties: A Record of the 
Origin of the Names of 3,067 Counties, Dates of Creation and Organization, 
Area, Population, Historical Data, etc."
(...)