My nearest and dearest sent this one:
A pickup stylus swished in the runout groove of a shellac disc. Old Main sprawled in an armchair, apparently killed by heart failure as he listened to a historic vocal record from his huge collection. It was reputed to include the only existing disc of the great tenor Jean de Reszke, recorded for Fonotipia in Paris on 22 April 1905. Inspector Gaisberg, who had a modest collection of historic vocal records, stopped Main’s turntable and looked at the record label. It was Enrico Caruso singing No più nobile, which he sang in the world premiere of Adriana Lecouvreur at the Teatro Lirico in Milano on 6 November 1902. Six days later the composer, Francesco Cilea, played the piano for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company recording at the Grand Hotel. Collectors know the recording is correctly pitched at 70 rpm. But Gaisberg saw that someone had unknowingly set the turntable to 78 rpm.

Hats off to Marion for a well merited HM and to Bill Greenwell, natch, for getting in the prize money, actually all the winners were very funny and worthy.

Thanks, Jim. It's kind of funny--not the ha-ha kind of funny, more the peculiar sense of funny-- how naturally being inconsequential seems to come to me. It occurs to me that perhaps this is the way I usually talk, which might account for why I don't do well at job interviews, first dates and parties-- though its hard to tell, since the last party I was invited to was a New Year's Eve party in 1999 to celebrate the Millennium, when we were all so uptight about Y2K, that the world as we know it would come to an end, which it obviously didn't. So maybe inconsequentiality is a God-given talent, although whether talent is innate or not, the nature vs. nurture controversy, is anybody's guess. So, as you see, I could go on like this forever, assuming I were granted immortality, and the Universe continued on infinitely, another topic of controversy among the greatest minds of our times, from Einstein to Stephen Hawking... phew (pause for breathe)

See what I mean?

BTW, did anyone get the anagram of the author's name in my entry?

Congrats to our(!) Bill Greenwell(s) for his winning entry/entries!

--Also, Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans on Tuesday 29th May, 1453.

This thread is delightful.

Anyone remember "Bad Tuesday" in Mary Poppins?