9 November—You’ve got to love The Old Farmer’s Almanac’s website. Especially its Daily Calendar, which informs readers of births and deaths of several usually noteworthy people as well as sometimes memorable events and evidently extraordinary weather. That delightful web page is invariably more replete with typographical and factual errors and repetition than even the minimally—if at all—edited and proofread Hearst RepublicanAmerican.

And in addition to all the usual intentional or inadvertent fun, as the case may be (and we can’t say for sure which it is), today’s death listing reflects Yankee Publishing’s sense of humor—or use of artificial intelligence:

“Dylan Thomas (poet) – 1953
Charlie de Gaulle (politician) – 1970
John N. Mitchell (former U.S. attorney general) – 1988
Art Carney (actor) – 2003
Ed Bradley (broadcast journalist) – 2006”

Whatever people may have thought of or called Charles de Gaulle, nobody but nobody ever dared to call him Charlie or would have dreamed of it. (Many people would call him a statesman rather than a politician, but we won’t get into that.)

In all events, that brings to mind a satirical news show on BBC TV in the late sixties. French President Charles de Gaulle, as he was at the time, was visiting Blighty for something or other and deigned (because de Gaulle was famously disdainful) to speak to the British public.

Having spent most of World War II—four years—in England, during which exile he couldn’t avoid sucking up to English and American generals and politicians, de Gaulle had to have at least some practical speaking knowledge of the English language. But being a typical Frenchman—and especially Le Grand Charles, as he doubtless loved to be regarded—he insisted on speaking his usual patrician French and having an interpreter reduce it to English.

So de Gaulle began his speech to the English people: “Excrément anglais . . .”

And the diplomatically astute interpreter made it: “My dear English friends . . .”

Remember, though, it was satirical . . .