Major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment

for the Humanities, and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

From Virginia Humanities, this is backstory.

Welcome to backstory, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines.

I'm Joanne Freeman.

I'm Brian Ballow, and I'm Nathan Connolly.

Each week, Joanne, Brian, our colleague Ed Ayers and I, all historians, take a topic

from the news and try to see how we got here.

Well, guys, I hope you're hungry because we're going to start today's show with dinner.

And this is no ordinary meal because we're in New York City and it's 1881.

We have fancy or derves.

We have fine wines.

And the main course, the P.S. de résistance, is a rich lobster salad.

And get this, it's molded into the shape of a coffin.

And there are exactly 13 crawfish around each coffin lobster salad.

Sounds like a dinner to die for.

Sarah Jimow is a writer for Atlas Obscura.

She says the 13 crawfish on each plate had special significance.

A significant as the 13 men who tucked into their coffin lobster salad and crawfish that

night.

And then there are 13 candles and there's a big banner and in red letters it reads,

no smore to Tury Te salute Thomas, which is Latin for it we who are about to die salute

...