In his 1986 book Norton I: Emperor of the United States (Dodd, Mead) — long regarded as the “standard biography” of Emperor Norton — William Drury indulges in some evidentiary sleight-of-hand to create the false impression that the cortege that followed the Emperor from his funeral site to his grave site was “two miles long.”

In the decades since the publication of Drury’s book, this “cortege claim” has become one of the most commonly deployed flourishes in the popular telling of the Emperor Norton story.

In fact, the most reliable and detailed eyewitness report published the day after the Emperor’s funeral indicates that, while the cortege route was about two miles long, the length of the cortege itself was maybe a half-block.

Also included here: The origins of the claim that “30,000” people viewed the Emperor lying in state — or even constituted the cortege — rather than the already-exceptional “10,000” reported the next day.