The crass jokes, they write themselves

Benedict Anderson takes time out of his discussion of the Cuban Revolution in _Under Three Flags_ to tell us that:

bq. With the help of two Asturian anarchists, a young Cuban nationalist called Armando Andre hid a bomb in the roof of the ground-floor toilet of the Captain-General’s palace. The device was supposed to explode when Weyler sat down on the pot, bringing the whole second floor down on his head. The plotters were unaware, however, that Weyler suffered so severely from haemorrhoids that he almost never used the facility, preferring an earthenware field-potty when he had to relieve himself. The bomb went off, but no one was hurt, and Weyler decided to inform Madrid that the explosion had been caused by stoppages which prevented the latrine’s gases from escaping normally.

I am sure that Anderson’s discussion on the same page of how the Captain-General was “partly relieved” at this outcome, and of the “diehard colons” of the Revolution, have _absolutely nothing to do_ with the subject matter of this footnote.