National Gorilla Suit Day

For our second annual National Gorilla Suit Day story, we have chosen "Mr. Columbus Coriander's Gorilla' written by Noah Brooks and published in 1869 in "The Overland Monthly." It was reprinted in an 1891 book without an author credit, and the story that followed was properly credited to Max Adeler. After that, the story appeared in a number of anthologies wrongly attributed to Adeler.

In any event, this story really does tickle my funny bone. I can imagine that post-Civil War readers (who certainly needed a good laugh) really enjoyed this tale, and over the following decades, it was a popular contribution to many humor anthologies.

Noah Brooks was not well known as a humorist. He was a newspaper columnist and journalist, and a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, who often wrote insider stories about the President during the Civil War.

"National Gorilla Suit Day" was created by Mad Magazine cartoonist Don Martin back in 1963, and has become an American tradition. We are, of course, looking for more old Gorilla Suit stories for the upcoming years...