Luke Howard's theories quickly gained an audience outside England, his most distinguished fan being Goethe, who wrote a poem based on the four cloud types in Howard's taxonomy.
The Clarets' most distinguished fan, Jimmy Anderson, tops the list of England's Test wicket-takers, but, for the first time since November, his club prop up the Premier League.
This novella (it is barely 150 pages in my battered Penguin edition) falls into the category of "guilty pleasure", but I think it earns its place on this list, if only for the roll call of its distinguished contemporary fans, its lasting influence, and intensely quotable lines.
Last year, they bought the Liverpool soccer team, which, like the Red Sox, has a large and devoted fan base, a distinguished history and a famous, and aging, stadium.
Their energetic take on old-time music has created a mass of devoted fans from some distinguished quarters: their new CD was produced by John Paul Jones, of Led Zeppelin.
The first essay prompted a fan letter from the distinguished Southern gardener Elizabeth Lawrence, who wrote a weekly column for the Charlotte Observer.
Unlike Albert Mathiez, Georges Lefebvre and other distinguished French historians, Andress is no fan of Robespierre: he remarks that the Incorruptible's "idea of diplomacy was to denounce the machinations of foreign plotters, and of strategy to guillotine failing generals".
This took place not in some cheesy Hollywood fan palace but at the distinguished Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia.
In 2008, he won the Hilda Award, which is awarded annually by The Baseball Reliquary "to recognize distinguished service to the game by a baseball fan" and is named in memory of Hilda Chester, a dedicated fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Similarly, Robert Shelton, writing in The New York Times in November 1968, commented that "The latest Byrds album adheres to most of the 'rules of the game' about country sound, and yet, sad to say, to this old fan of The Byrds, the album is a distinguished bore".
Those fans are largely white-collar professionals, said Wayne Flynt, distinguished professor emeritus of history at Auburn.
