Odds and Ends from Recent Genealogy Research

I've found some odd/interesting things as well as some notable "ends" in my recent family history research.

In the past few weeks, I've been surprised to learn these oddities and discoveries, sometimes from documents and sometimes from old newspapers:

• Alabama was once the quickie divorce capital of America! Based in New York City, Violet Schwartz Winton, the sister-in-law of my 1c2r, was divorced in 1958 in Alabama, of all places. Why? Only a 24-hour residency was needed for a "quickie divorce" in Alabama. Lots of famous people divorced in Alabama (millionaires, movie and TV stars, etc.). Much faster than going to Reno, Nevada.
• The 1880 US Census asks about a very broad range of illnesses and disabilities. Usually I see notations like blind or mute, but in the case of Elizabeth McCann Caldwell, wife of hubby's 1c3r, the enumerator wrote "paralyzed on right side." Elizabeth was pregnant then, and gave birth to her last child a few months later. This enumerator was very detail-oriented: she noted illnesses such as sick headache, tumor on neck, white swelling, dropsy, rheumatism, and "old age" [for anyone over 70 years old].
• Hubby's 3c1r was involved with public radio. Josephine Helen Hanford and her future husband, Raymond J. Stanley, fell in love while working at public radio station WHA in Madison during the 1930s, after both graduated from nearby University of Wisconsin. When the couple married in 1941, station co-workers attended the wedding. In 1956, Helen received a Pioneer award for writing for the station's classroom radio broadcasts.

Also a few discoveries about endings:

• Grim Reaper was the headline on the column listing deaths in 1915 in the Star Press of Muncie, Indiana. 
• A number of Midwestern and Southeastern US ancestors in my tree and hubby's tree died of typhoid fever, unfortunately. Outbreaks were apparently not uncommon, often due to contaminated water. My hubby's 1c3r in Missouri died of typhoid in 1911. "Typhoid may claim family" read a headline about a neighboring family stricken with typhoid weeks after this cousin died.
• "Falls Dead Sawing Wood" was the 1908 headline of a brief death notice for a farmer who died suddenly of heart disease and was found hours later still with a saw in his hand. Not a relative but a sad end.