I was just listening to a radio performance of The Case of the Noble Bachelor, a Sherlock Holmes mystery, while working and heard quite a surprising statement from someone in Victorian England.

After a major character storms out, Sherlock Holmes turns to an American man and says:

"Then I trust that you at least will honour me with your company," said Sherlock Holmes. "It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes."

What a world it would be if something like that had actually come to pass....