The Emperor Norton Trust

From 1864 or 1865 until his death in 1880, Emperor Norton is documented to have been a resident of the Eureka Lodgings, at 624 Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny, in San Francisco.

The two book-length biographies of Emperor Norton fleshed out those bones with the names of the landlords…

In 1939, Allen Stanley Lane noted that the Emperor's landlord at the Eureka was David Hutchinson.

In 1986, William Drury added the detail that Hutchinson was preceded at the Eureka by Aaron Babcock, who probably was the landlord who took on the Emperor at the Eureka. (Drury mistranscribed Babcock's first name as "Alfred.")

Our latest discovery — a part of the Emperor’s story that we believe is documented here for the first time — reveals that David Hutchinson and Aaron Babcock had much more in common than a famous tenant whose residency at the Eureka Lodgings stretched across both of their proprietorships.

The connection is to do with a marriage that probably was a significant — perhaps the most significant — reason why Emperor Norton's living arrangements at the Eureka were so amenable and so secure for so many years.

Read on to learn who was the groom and who was the bride.

Documentation included — as always.

Between September 1870 and May 1875, the Black-owned, San Francisco-based Pacific Appeal newspaper published some 250 Proclamations from Emperor Norton — by far, more than any other publication.

In an unsigned Proclamation published in the Appeal on 8 May 1875, the Emperor warned unsuspecting immigrants against purchasing lots in what he saw as a fraudulent real estate scheme by Charles R. Peters to build a new town called “Newark” on swampy land along the eastern edge of the narrow southern tip of San Francisco Bay.

After the exceptionally thin-skinned and litigious Charles Peters responded by suing the Appeal’s editor, the editor — Peter Anderson — published a retraction of the Proclamation in which he forbade Emperor Norton from bringing the Appeal any more Proclamations.

A Proclamation of Emperor Norton never again appeared in the Pacific Appeal during the Emperor’s lifetime.

The received wisdom has been that the unsigned Proclamation that ran in the Appeal on 8 May 1875 was the Emperor’s opening salvo against Charles Peters.

In fact, as we recently discovered — and as we believe is documented here for the first time — a shorter signed Proclamation on the same subject had appeared five days earlier — on 3 May 1875 — in the Oakland Tribune.

The differences in how the Tribune and the Appeal dealt with Charles Peters and Emperor Norton — and in how Peters dealt with the respective papers — is its own fascinating and very telling story.

Cartoonists George Frederick Keller (of the San Francisco Wasp) and Edward Jump are well-known as artists who — during Emperor Norton's lifetime — often featured the Emperor in their works.   

Much less well-known — indeed, not known at all by most — California pioneer artist and lithographer George Holbrook Baker (1827–1906) is credited with four depictions of Emperor Norton: (a) two in multiple-figure engravings published in 1864 and 1865 and (b) two unpublished sketches of the Emperor dated to c.1860.

The subject matter, dates, and attributions of the published works are not in question. 

But, in this new analysis, we raise serious questions about the unpublished works, including: the characterization of the Emperor in these works, the dates, the artistic attributions, and — in one case — the subject matter itself.  

If you've never heard of a white male anti-Catholic anti-immigrant secret society, the Patriotic Order Sons of America, that was established in Philadelphia in 1847 and briefly active in California in the 1870s and '80s, count this as one more reason to pull up a chair.

Includes images of very rarely seen works.

By February 1856, Joshua Norton was moving away from the Democratic Party, disgusted by corruption in the local party apparatus.

In August 1858, Joshua announced his intention to run as an “independent candidate” for U.S. Congress.

In one of his earliest Proclamations as Emperor, he lamented in October 1859 “that open violation of the laws are constantly occurring, caused by mobs, parties, factions and undue influence of political sects.”

Later, in 1869 and 1876, Emperor Norton issued Proclamations dissolving and abolishing the Democratic and Republican parties.

And in July 1875, he gave an impromptu speech at a “No Party” forum held at the Mercantile Library.

Comes a new discovery: In April 1862, Emperor Norton signed a petition calling on the “anti-party” People’s Party to begin the process of nominating candidates for the local San Francisco offices in the upcoming election.

This may be the earliest documented record of Emperor Norton — as Emperor — formally aligning himself with a specific independent approach to politics.

It may also signal a pivot towards a greater engagement with local and state issues after an initial period, 1859–62, in which the Emperor seemed more interested in national and international affairs.

In 1936, the San Francisco News ran a profile of 75-year-old "pioneer bartender" Jimmy Giusto in which Giusto claimed that Emperor Norton preferred a bag of candy to a drink.

This prompted a letter from a George Murphy calling out Giusto for exaggerating his pioneer bona fides. Murphy claimed to be "a gentleman who drank with 'Emperor' Norton" and went on to assert that the Emperor could not have frequented candy stores, as that would have made the Emperor a "sissy." 

We disagree with Murphy on the last point, as there is a practical reason why Emperor Norton could have had a fondness for candy.

But, the whole episode illustrates how slippery memory can be. 

In 1937, French and English contributors to two scholarly journals — published in Paris and London, respectively — tuned in to Emperor Norton, most of them for the first time apparently.

It’s hard to know what to think of the “evidence” they included — and how they treated it.

Between July 1865 and November 1867, Western Union ventured a project to lay telegraph cable under the Bering Strait that would connect Russian America (R.A.) — which became the U.S. territory of Alaska in October 1867 — with North East Siberia (N.E.S.).

A cultural by-product of this effort was The Esquimaux — a monthly journal/newspaper published in Port Clarence, R.A. (10 issues), and Plover Bay, N.E.S. (2 issues), between October 1866 and September 1867. The Esquimaux generally is credited as being the first newspaper published in Alaska.

The Western Union staffer who was The Esquimaux’s editor and proprietor had spent the previous five years (1860–65) working in various capacities at the San Francisco Daily Morning Call — which in early 1863 located to the 600 block of Commercial Street, where Emperor Norton took up residence sometime between summer 1864 and summer 1865.

Perhaps this made it inevitable that the Emperor would find his way into the pages of this little “tabloid of the tundra.”

Still. It’s a fascinating story.

Surely no single artistic depiction of Emperor Norton has been reproduced more times, over a longer period, than the cameo “cut” of the Emperor that featured on the fronts of his various scrip between January 1871 and January 1880.

Although inked copies of the depiction appeared on some 3,000 of the Emperor's promissory notes over the course of 9 years, precious little can be said for certain about the original engraving — including who carved it. 

In this exploration, we dig into various particulars of the two note printers of record — Cuddy & Hughes and Charles A. Murdock & Co. — and connect some dots that point to likely scenarios for (a) why and when the engraving was created; (b) what the model for the engraving was; and (c) how it was "stewarded" for 9 years.

Included here: A rarely seen — and very large — image of the earliest-extant Norton note from November 1870, including the Emperor's mostly-intact red wax seal.  

In Victorian-era Britain and the United States, the mourning of a loved one or public figure was guided by an elaborate set of rituals and customs.

Among these: A man in mourning wore a black armband on his upper left arm. This could be a properly sewn and hemmed item — whether “homemade” or professionally manufactured — or, more simply, a hand-tied strip of black crape.

Often on this date — the anniversary of Emperor Norton’s death on 8 January 1880 — we at The Emperor Norton Trust have highlighted a particular late-1870s photograph of the Emperor, in profile, as the photo carries a certain funereal aspect.

Innumerable times over the last 12½ years, we have looked at this and another photograph of Emperor Norton from the same sitting without noticing that the Emperor is wearing a black mourning band in both photos.

As we don’t find this photographic detail documented anywhere, it stands to reason that no one else has noticed it either.

A little digging reveals who, most likely, the Emperor was mourning.

Probably the most notorious contemporaneous fabricator of fake proclamations and fake tales of Emperor Norton was Albert S. Evans — editor of the Daily Alta California newspaper from 1863 until his death in 1872. 

We've unearthed a previously unreported little cache of Evans's Norton tales which never appeared in the Alta — but which did appear in Evans's late 1870 Mexico travel memoir Our Sister Republic. 

By way of hedging bets on the reliability of the book's content, the Alta's own review of the book noted that "[t]he author has a lively sense of the grotesque and humorous, which finds ample opportunity for gratification wherever he goes."

One question that hovers over our discovery... 

Did Emperor Norton see Evans's misrepresentation of him in this book — and, if so, did this play a role in the Emperor's decision, a couple of months later, to designate a different paper, the Pacific Appeal, as the official platform for his public communications?

In early 1850, Joshua Norton was brought before San Francisco Alcalde John W. Geary on charge of assault — and was found guilty and fined.

That’s how a “Pioneer” eyewitness remembered it in 1887, in the pages of The Overland Monthly.

Corroborating — preferably contemporaneous — evidence would be needed in order to give this story full credence. But, IF the story is true, it could be seen as providing an early anchor and baseline for later documented reports that Emperor Norton could be prone to having a short fuse, if he felt he was being disrespected.

It long has appeared that Emperor Norton’s reputation for supporting women’s right to vote rests entirely on his having signed an October 1878 petition advocating for the right.

Comes our new discovery that the Emperor attended a women's suffrage convention in San Francisco seven years earlier — in May 1871.

Emperor Norton's apparent early interest and engagement on suffrage raises the question: Why has there yet to surface a Proclamation in which the Emperor offers his take on women’s right to vote? 

Included here — in addition to the discovery from 1871 — are new details about the 1878 petition and what we believe is the first publication of (a) images of this petition, including Emperor Norton's signature, and (b) a link to the petition that identifies the Emperor's connection to it.     

Among close observers of the Emperor Norton story, Eadweard Muybridge's early 1869 photograph of the Emperor astride a velocipede is a fond and well-known piece of the visual record.

New evidence reveals who was acting as the “sole agent” — i.e., seller and publicist — for Muybridge’s work at the time he took this photograph — and points to a slightly earlier date for the photo than The Emperor Norton Trust previously has believed and used in its published research.

Researchers of early San Francisco are well served by historical newspaper clearinghouses like Newspapers.com, Genealogy Bank, and the California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC).

Between these three databases, historians can find nearly-complete collections of the earliest mid-to-late-19th-century decades of the Daily Alta California, Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and others — in the case of the Alta, dating back to 1849.

A notable outlier has been the Morning Call.

Founded as the Daily Morning Call in December 1856 and simplifying a bit to The Morning Call in December 1878, the Call has been available online at Newspapers.com and CDNC — starting with the edition of 1 April 1890.

But the only way to access earlier editions of the Call has been via microfiche or the original deadwood.

The culmination of a digitization project that was jump-started by The Emperor Norton Trust a year ago — in September 2024 — the following 26 years’ worth of the early Call arrived on Newspapers.com last month:

Daily Morning Call — 8 December 1863 – 20 December 1878
The Morning Call — 21 December 1878 – 31 December 1889

This

• closes a significant longstanding documentary gap in the online historical newspaper record;

• opens up a new avenue of research into the life of Emperor Norton — and early San Francisco history more broadly; and — a notable bonus…

• creates new access to the editions of the Daily Morning Call that carried Mark Twain’s writing between June and October 1864.

In general. the question of how Emperor Norton raised money to help support himself is answered with reference to two imaginary-yet-real projects of world making:

• collecting from specific friends and former business associates “taxes” due the Imperial Government of Norton I

• “selling” to the general public promissory notes backed by said Government

Rarely if ever mentioned is the possibility that the Emperor also, at times, was reduced to garden-variety street panhandling.

But there is at least some anecdotal evidence to suggest that he was.

On 21 August 1854, Joshua Norton was inducted as a member of Occidental Lodge No. 22 of Free and Accepted Masons.

A little less than four years later, on 15 June 1858, Joshua was "suspended for non-payment of dues" from Occidental 22. 

In 1975, Occidental 22 merged in with the San Francisco-based California Lodge No. 1 of F. & A.M. — the oldest Masonic lodge in California — after which Occidental 22 ceased to exist as a separate lodge.

In June 2024, The Emperor Norton Trust suggested to California 1 that it explore the possibility of posthumously reinstating Joshua Norton and forgiving his unpaid dues. 

A year later, on 3 June 2025, California 1 did just that. 

Of course, there were a few more twists and turns.

This is the story of a homecoming.

For nearly a century, the collection of the Society of California Pioneers has included a photograph whose subject has been identified — including by the authors of the two published biographies of Emperor Norton and by The Emperor Norton Trust — as Joshua Abraham Norton.

There are many good reasons for believing that the gentleman in the photo is not, in fact, Joshua Norton — and no good reasons, it seems, for continuing to believe that it is.

Herewith, a reassessment.

More than a decade ago, in February 2015, The Emperor Norton Trust issued its first research on Emperor Norton's birth date. In a talk that we published online the same month, I argued for a birth date of 4 February 1818.

In that talk, I outlined the role of the Emperor Norton Memorial Association in securing a new burial plot and headstone for the Emperor in 1934 — after his remains were exhumed from San Francisco’s Masonic Cemetery as part of the city’s great “cemetery eviction” of that period — and I laid at the feet of Robert Ernest Cowan (1862–1942) much of the blame for the incorrect "1819" birth date that the Association inscribed on the headstone that they placed at the Emperor’s new grave in Woodlawn Memorial Park, Colma, Calif.  

In 1923, Cowan had published an essay on Emperor Norton in the new California Historical Society (CHS) Quarterly — of which he was the inaugural editor. In the essay, Cowan faked an 1819 birth date for the Emperor by falsifying an 1865 item in the Daily Alta newspaper.

Apparently no one caught this at the time — and probably wouldn’t have said anything if they had. Indeed, in 1934 Cowan remained deeply influential and respected in California history circles. His account of Emperor Norton still was regarded as a reference standard. And there had been no challenge to Cowan’s 1923 claim of an 1819 birth date for the Emperor. So, the Association just went with their friend Cowan — regarding the question of the Emperor’s birth date as having been settled years earlier.

We thought it was no more complicated than that.

Comes new evidence — which we publish here on the 91st anniversary of the dedication of Emperor Norton's 1934 headstone:

Cowan revived and even ramped up his decade-old birth date fakery in early 1934, and did so while he was president of the board of the California Historical Society — a board that included 2 of the 4 officers of the new Emperor Norton Memorial Association — one of whom was the Association’s president.

It seems that — more than we knew: In 1934, the fix was in for a falsified 1819 birth date on the Emperor's headstone.

In 1968, Crowley Maritime built a new 500-passenger sightseeing vessel for its Red & White fleet based at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Having decided to name its new vessel the Harbor Emperor, Crowley commissioned Elwin Millerick, a folk sculptor in Santa Rosa, Calif., to hand-carve a 5-foot-tall wooden figurehead of Emperor Norton for the bow.

The Emperor Norton figurehead has been photographed thousands of times over the decades and has become a fond feature of the modern Norton pop culture of San Francisco.

Pull up a chair for my theory that — at a minimum — the head and the hat of today’s Harbor Emperor figurehead are not original to 1968 and that — whether because of an accident, vandalism, or rot — they were substantially modified or switched out entirely sometime in the 1970s.

This follow-up to my August 2015 article, “The Houseworth Photographs,” updates the record of photographs of Emperor Norton by the studio of Thomas Houseworth & Co. with (a) a much better — if still flawed — copy of a c.1874 photograph and (b) a sharper date for a later Houseworth photo of the Emp.

In summer 2016, The Emperor Norton Trust launched its digital ARchive of Emperor Norton in the Arts (ARENA) with 40-some images — including an intriguing illustration featuring Emperor Norton that appeared to be an early engraving created during the Emperor's lifetime.

The illustration appears in the 1964 book The Forgotten Characters of San Francisco. But, apart from a credit to Robert Grannis Cowan — the son of Robert Ernest Cowan (1862–1942), whose title essay anchors the book, and also apparently (the younger Cowan) the private owner of the illustration who gave permission for it to be reproduced — the book provides no details about the artist, original source, or provenance of the illustration.

For the last nine years, this has been the extent of our knowledge about this work. 

A few weeks ago, seeking intelligence about an elusive cabinet card of Emperor Norton, I requested from the Society of California Pioneers some catalog information about the Emperor-related items in the organization’s collection.

Included in the information the Society sent to me was an unbidden clue about the enigmatic illustration — a clue that has enabled me to solve the mystery and, in the process, crack a window into the the elusive history of one of San Francisco’s most influential early engravers and one of the city’s earliest satirical magazines.

In 1879, an 18-year-old Charles Andrew Gunnison (1861–1897) took a trek across the United States from his home in San Francisco, visiting several cities on the Eastern seaboard and venturing up to Montreal and Quebec City before returning to San Francisco via Panama and Central America.

Gunnison brought with him an autograph book that he converted into a sketchbook to help him record what he saw.

One of the last sketches in the book — done as Gunnison arrived back home at the end of his trip — is of Emperor Norton.

Apparently drawn in December 1879, a month before the Emperor’s death in January 1880, this is one of the last (and possibly the last) extant artistic rendering of Emperor Norton — painting, sketch, or otherwise — done during the Emperor’s lifetime.

A separate sketch on the same page and another sketch on the previous page provide clues that reflect the anti-Chinese mood of San Francisco —and possibly also of the artist — in 1879. Given the Emperor's own long-standing defense of the Chinese, the juxtaposed sketches make for a telling — if unintended — commentary.

Charles Gunnison died only 18 years later. One hopes that, if — in 1879 — a late-teen Gunnison did share in the prevailing anti–Chinese attitudes of 1879 San Francisco, he was able to wrest free of those attitudes before the city did.

Obituaries for Emperor Norton noted that his room at the Eureka Lodgings, 624 Commercial Street, was about 5 or 6 feet wide and 9 or 10 feet long. 

It can be difficult to get a sense of how small, in practical terms, such a tiny space would be — and, for some, still is — to live within. In a room of this size, adding even the sparest amount of furniture potentially increases the claustrophobic impact, (a) by making the space register visually as even smaller than it already is and (b) by exponentially reducing the square footage available for moving one’s body around.

A 2022 photograph taken inside a rentable room of the SRO that replaced the Eureka building in 1910 gets us closer to an understanding of what this must have felt like for the imaginary Emperor and for the very human Joshua Norton.   

In fall 1932 — in connection with San Francisco's mandated "eviction" of cemeteries within the city limits — the remains of Emperor Norton were exhumed from their original resting place in the city’s Masonic Cemetery.

In 1934, the Emperor was reburied, with a new headstone, at his current resting place: Woodlawn Memorial Park, in Colma, Calif.

A public ceremony dedicating the new gravesite was held at Woodlawn on 30 June 1934. This is the date that received headlines around the country — and it is the date that those who follow the Emperor's story associate with his reburial.

But the reburial itself took place nearly 3 months earlier, on 2 April 1934 — 91 years ago today.

Click below to learn more — and for our suggestion about how to provide for more thoughtful and intentional preservation and care of Emperor Norton's headstone and gravesite.

As we've noted many times, Emperor Norton lived in the Eureka Lodgings ― located in a building at 624 Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny Streets — from 1864–65 until his death in January 1880.

Recently, a correspondent alerted us to something we'd never seen: a bird's-eye photograph showing the 600 block of Commercial in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and fires of April 1906.

We knew that the Eureka building had been lost in the event — but we'd never seen photo-documentation of the loss and believe this is the first time this already-rarely-seen photo is being shared in this context.

This photograph sharpens the focus on the identities and locations of the buildings along this stretch of the 600 block of Commercial — and exactly what each building suffered in 1906.

This includes three buildings that the photos shows as being leveled by the event:

• 624–628 Commercial
  Housed the Eureka Lodgings at 624 from 1864 to 1880. Currently the site of a 4-story mixed-use apartment building at 650–654 Commercial.

• 620–622 Commercial
  William Meakin's model-making workshop. Currently the site of Empire Park.

• 612 Commercial
  Offices of Jewish newspaper The Hebrew. Previously, 1863–71, offices of The Morning Call — the period when Samuel Clemens, the future Mark Twain, was living in San Francisco and working at the Call in the summer of 1864. Also: Bret Harte had a desk here in the 1860s, while he was working as secretary to the administrator of the original branch Mint, next door. Rebuilt by 1912; demolished by 1984.

Read on for our deep-dive — including our highly researched new infographic, based on the post-quake photograph, that can be used as a tool for understanding the history of this location.

The beloved Emperor Norton mural at the Palace Hotel, in San Francisco, had its public debut at the Palace 90 years ago today — on 4 March 1935. 

The mural is one of two that were painted at the time by Antonio Sotomayor. The other features Lotta Crabtree and George Washington II.

Today, both murals are in the "lounge" room of the Pied Piper Bar & Lounge. 

But, this is not where they started out. In fact, the murals have been in their current location for only the last 34 years of their 90-year history. 

Did you know that Maxfield Parrish's famous 1909 painting "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" originally was in a different room — and that the room the painting now presides over originally was a barber shop? 

Have you ever heard of the Happy Valley cocktail lounge — and do you know what made the Happy Valley distinctive?  

Pull up a chair for a deep-dive into the forgotten story of these Sotomayor murals — including the Norton mural, which has kept the Emperor’s benevolent spirit alive among Palace Hotel drinkers and diners for 90 years.

The magazine of satire variously known as The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, The Illustrated Wasp, or simply The Wasp debuted in August 1876.

For its first seven years, until 1883, the Wasp's chief artist was George Frederick Keller. Emperor Norton featured in a number of Keller's cartoons for the magazine. And it mostly has been in this context that The Emperor Norton Trust has discussed the Wasp — the notable exception being the magazine's obituary of the Emperor, which was accompanied by a lovely front-cover portrait by Keller.

In fact — as one would expect — Emperor Norton was a regular subject for the Wasp's writers and wags. But, this piece of the historical record hasn't made its way into accounts of the Emperor.

To help correct this oversight, we present here a chronological roundup of 15 of the Wasp's best columns, items, quips, and asides mentioning Emperor Norton between 1876 and 1879.  

By and large, the Wasp treated the Emperor as a figure of fun. But, as in the Daily Alta newspaper — another local publication that made a habit of using Emperor Norton as “content” — the Wasp’s apparent ironic detachment from the Emperor often betrays a note of sympathy just under the surface.

Bonus: In the course of our research, we discovered a cartoon we'd never seen — and whose publication here may be the first publication or notice of the cartoon since its original appearance in 1876.

Over the last few decades, it has become something of an historical parlor game among certain San Francisco history buffs to try to determine what happened to the serially taxidermied hides of the legendary San Francisco dogs of the 1860s, Bummer and Lazarus.

The originally taxidermied dogs were donated to the Golden Gate Park Museum — the future de Young Museum — a donation that was recorded in the Museum’s collections catalog on 5 February 1906.

By 1986 — shortly after publishing his well-known 1984 book Bummer & Lazarus: San Francisco’s Famous Dogs — Malcolm Barker had concluded that the dogs were “destroyed.” By 2004, Barker had put a date on this: 1910.

Since 2020, San Francisco walking tour guide Joseph Amster — who has hung out something of a separate shingle telling the Bummer and Lazarus story in settings outside his tour — has concluded his presentations and interviews about the dogs on a note showing that his own research has led him to the same conclusion as Barker: that Bummer and Lazarus were destroyed in 1910. Amster adds the claim that the dogs were destroyed that year when they were sent out to be restuffed and found to be filled with bugs.

But, we have found previously unreported evidence in the form of contemporaneous newspaper reports that Bummer and Lazarus were restuffed and exhibited in November 1910, and that they were hanging out — and hanging on — at the Museum at least as late as June 1917.

Plus: When we contacted the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), the institutional parent of the de Young, last week to ask about all this, the Senior Registrar was unequivocal in confirming that, while FAMSF records do include undated notations that the Bummer and Lazarus taxidermies were “Destroyed,” Museum records do NOT include a DATE when the dogs were destroyed — or a reason why.

Lots of new documentation and detail in this deep-dive. Lots.

The Mythology of Emperor Norton is a kind of catechism. But, it’s a messy catechism that includes a wide range of tenets of High, Mid, Low, and, yes, No historical pedigree.

A relatively recent addition to the catechism — which seems to have made its first appearance only about 25 years ago — rests on the claim that Kamehameha V, King of the Hawaiian Islands from 1863 until his death in 1872, recognized the authority of Emperor Norton over that of the United States government.

We’d never seen any effort to authenticate this apparently undocumented claim — so, we decided to have a look under the hood.

As far as we can tell, there is no evidence whatsoever to back it up.

Our deep-dive does find all sorts of other interesting things on the way to debunking, including

• the obscure roots of one of the earliest instances of the Kamehameha V claim — on the Emperor Norton Records website;

• a rarely seen manuscript of an undated letter from Emperor Norton to Kamehameha V; and

• how, even here in the supposedly enlightened 2020s, academics (who should know better) and a peer-reviewed scholarly journal (ditto) fell prey to a bogusly sourced line in a Wikipedia article — proving that Stephen Colbert's nearly-20-year-old warnings about "truthiness" and "Wikiality" still have punch.