If They Call You a Paper-Pusher, Don't Be Upset

If they call you a paper-pusher (literally, an "office rat"), don't be upset. After all, there was once a rat with a fondness for paperwork who became a co-founder of the National Archives of the United Kingdom.

When the public figure, inventor and all-round intellectual Henry Cole was serving on the Record Commission, charged with the preservation and public accessibility of state archives, he discovered in one of the repositories the body of a long-dead rat lying among the documents. Closer examination revealed that the belly of the deceased rodent was stuffed with scraps of valuable historical manuscripts and important papers.

The young researcher decided to show his find to the high command, who were so struck by this evidence of the lamentable state of the country's archival records that they soon came round to the argument for creating a system of state archives.

And the body of the founding rat, known as Henry Cole's rat, remains to this day one of the important items in the holdings of the National Archives.