Goliad, Sam Houston’s surrender to Montezuma

It's an imaginary event that never took place that is mentioned in a "humorous" piece of writing by O Henry. The humour lies in its implausibility. Read about the history of Texas and you will see why, and also maybe you will see why the other items in that list might have seemed funny at the time, although I can see nothing much to laugh at about Goliad.

I'm really not sure about this one, but keep in mind that "Montezuma's Revenge" is a snyonym for diarrhea. The Aztecs, led by Montezuma II in Mexico were just crushed by invading Spaniards. Diarrhea was more or less endemic at the time, and was the only revenge the native population had against the invaders.

I have no idea if this is related to "Sam Houston’s surrender to Montezuma". The two men lived in widely separated time, and had no chance to meet, let alone surrender to one another.

Goliad? I tend to remember San Jacinto.

Sam Houston seems like quite a decent fellow. He refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy when Texas seceded from the Union, and resigned as governor. To avoid bloodshed, he refused an offer of a Union army to put down the Confederate rebellion. Instead, he retired to Huntsville. Earlier he spent time with the Cherokee Nation into which he later was adopted as a citizen and took a wife. A statue of him is the largest free-standing statue of an American.

I heard he was always someone you could go to, if you had a problem.

I thought that was Whitney. (I'm a long time Viz reader)

Really, this seems like kind of a quixotic project. O. Henry's language and imagery, and "humor", are more than a century out of date, and often, like this, put even native speakers of English up against it to explain because much of it is today so obscure. It's going to give ESL learners a lot of stuff that's not going to be very useful. In the 19th Century,Davy Jones was a sort of mythical guardian spirit of the depths of the oceans, the ocean floor was once referred to as "Davy Jones' locker", for reasons also obscure in the 21st century. Davy CROCKETT died at the Alamo. People probably know that today because Disney did a semi-fictional TV miniseries about him in the 1950s and Texas mytholkogizes all its heroes, but again even that is pfairly obscure.

And whatever this means: it's so out of date that even Setanta is gonna have a hard time figuring it out, and is probably going to have to spend half a dozen hours in his history library to do it. And he's so cantankerous he'd probably only do it out of sheer stubbornness. This is really off-the-wall stuff.

I believe he's being paid as a translator.

well, that makes a little more sense, but the explanations, and an attempt to explain why it might once have been slightly humorous, is likely to run at least as long again as the original story.

At least it's not the Canterbury Tales.

Davy Jones is a wry fling at Davy Crockett, accomplished bullshit artist and unintentional martyr at the Alamo. Goliad was a genuine massacre when Texican forces (they then called themselves Texicans) surendered at discretion and were slaughtered. Houston, of course, was not at Goliad. I have a lower opinion of him than does Contrex--the Cherokee, with whom he spent a lot of time, refered to him as "the Big Drunk." San Jacinto was his one great contribution to history, and it was a bold move from which the Texicans were able to profit by the capture of Santa Anna.

This is, as far as i can see, just another feeble and failed attempt of O'. Henry to write satire in the vein of Samuel Clemens. This one consists of a series of sneers at the Texans, whose arrogance is such that i have no sympathy for them.

I have a complete O Henry collection. I admired his writing more when I only knew his most famous stories. Gave up reading before I reached the end.

I particularly liked the strip where Optimus Prime went cottaging.

I once saw an excellent movie version of "The Ransom of Red Chief" done in the Soviet Union, and set in 19th century Russia. That's the best of his work.

I put it on as short play when I taught high school.
It adapts really well to the stage.