If L.B. was 43 at death, the birth year in the bio above must be wrong.

<His disease was ascites, accompanied by scrotal hernia. He had been tapped 21 times in Paris during the last year and a half.> Does this refer to bloodletting? Googling the meaning of "being tapped" was not helpful to me. I ran into some vulgar slang, actually.

tr. v. tapped, tap·ping, taps
4.(Medicine) To withdraw fluid from (a body cavity).

[The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company]

<tap in Medicine>

n.
The removal of fluid from a body cavity.

v. tapped , tap·ping , taps
1.To withdraw fluid from a body cavity, as with a trocar and cannula, hollow needle, or catheter.

[The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company]

And there you have some suggestions of good online resources:

https://www.ahdictionary.com/

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/

http://dictionary.reference.com/

Here's a short clip on the invention of the safe elevator:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNL...

Elevators were not the only thing that made high rises possible. In the 19th century, buildings were at most four or five stories tall. Tall buildings required enormously thick lower walls, increasing costs. The solution came late in the 19th century and early in the 20th: the load-bearing steel skeleton, based on the same principles used to build balloon-frame houses. Edward Glaeser has a nice account of this and the birth of the skyscraper (and everything else concerning our modern cities, by the way) in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-...

http://books.google.fr/books?hl=pt-...

Suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, it occurred to me! "Bourdonnais" tells you where his family originated!

There could only be one place, I reasoned. Was there a town in France called Bourdonne?

Fevershly I tapped the letters into my computer. the internet groaned and creaked. The printer chattered out its incredible message.

*****INFORMATION REQUEST!*****
TOWN NAMED BOURDONNÉ IN YVELINES DEPARTMENT OF NORTH-WEST FRANCE *****END MESSAGE*****

The mystery had been solved!

<FOR CHESS PLAYERS. - M. De la Bourdonnais, the first chess-player in Europe, is once more amongst us, playing daily in the Strand, a locale selected by the French hero as central, and as presenting a large arena for spectators. We regret to see the dreadful state of health under which De la Bourdonnais continues to suffer: dropsy and fever have changed his frame so much since his last visit to England, seven years back, we could hardly at first recognise him. De la Bourdonnais is to chess what Paganini was to the violin, a phenomenon, a wonder, a miracle of art. He will give, and can give, pawn and move to any other player in Europe; aye, even at the present moment, brought down as he is to the grave's verge by a complication of disease and suffering. He made his debut on Wednesday, playing a couple of games against one of our very finest players, yielding the odds to our countryman of pawn and move, and yet winning both games! Country players should hasten up to have a look at the great master, who is only here for two or three months, and whose health will not allow him to visit any provincial club. We hope arrangements will be made liberally to pay Monsieur for his time by British amateurs; one suggestion strikes us as good, that those who play with him should pay on losing, but should receive nothing on winning; his stake being half a crown. De la Bourdonnais challenges every player in England to come up now to the scratch and take pawn and move.>

23:49

<Telemus: A forgotten game ...>

Mr. Harding was wrong - this knight odds played by Alexander McDonnell vs Wellington Pulling!