Boswell

Johnson--of Boswell and Johnson fame--liked to brag that he could recite chapter 30-something of a particularly obscure history of Iceland, in its entirety.

Just so you can pull off the same trick, here's what the chapter says:

"There are no owls to be found throughout the entire island."

That's it. Like that lovely chapter in Something Wicked This Way Comes that says "Nothing much else happened, all the rest of that night."

Saw no owls in Iceland. One day near Vik, though--a place famous for shipwrecks, for the jagged rocks that were black and huge right off the coast--I watched the fulmars go out when the wind was so strong the only way I could get back to the car was to wait for the moment between gusts, run, and then when the next gust started up, turn and brace myself against it.

The birds flew like kites on acid.