THE BRIDEGROOM WORE PLAID is my first venture into Victorian romances, and writing it necessitated spending many, many hours researching the period. I came across all manner of tidbits I couldn’t widgie into the book, but would love to share: 1) Part of the reason the Thames hasn’t frozen solid since 1815 is that when the Victorians put the London sewers to rights, they narrowed the river’s channel, thus making the water flow faster. (And we haven’t had the right sort of cloud ash, either.) 2) Queen Victoria, sometimes referred to as the “Grandmother of European Royalty,” was also the source of hemophilia in several of the royal houses. 3) We have daguerreotypes of the Duke of Wellington as a handsome older gentleman. This surprised me—Waterloo was nearly 200 years ago, and yet, we have photographs of its hero!? 4) Queen Victoria’s reign saw the first official air mail, which in 1890 used homing pigeons to carry messages between the islands of New Zealand. 5) Victorian doctors were the first to introduce women to the use of vibrators to achieve orgasm. Yes, you read that correctly. 6) The Great Stink in 1858 (before those sewers were put to rights) was…