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My father just sent me this absolutely brilliant book, Schott’s Original Miscellany. (It’s not yet available in the US, but you can get it in the UK.) In this slim volume you will find everything from the Irish Code Duello, adopted in Clonmell in 1777 —

10. Any insult to a lady under a Gentleman’s care or protection to be considered as, by one degree, a greater offense than if given to the gentleman personally, and to be regulated accordingly.

16. The challenged has the right to choose his own weapon, unless the chalenger gives his honour he is no swordsman; after which, however, he cannot decline any second species of weapon proposed by the challenger.

— to a handly list of forty-odd phobias —

Clowns: coulrophobia
Being ridiculed: catagelophobia
Fall of satellites: keraunothnetophobia

— to my favorite, a series of illustrative sentences collecting English words borrowed from foreign languages —

Russian — The commisar orders a mammoth samovar of vodka to be dispatched to the balalaika player.

Hungarian — Get the sabre from the coach! The hussar has overdone the paprika and ruined my goulash.

Czech — Fetch the howitzer! Some fool’s armed the robot with a pistol.

— among many other useful and instructive items. The title of the book comes from the OED’s third, and presumably least common, definition of the word:

3: A volume of publication containing miscellaneous information of general interest on a variety of subjects.

Nor has any miscellany, I dare say, better fulfilled that description than Schott’s.