In 1891, The Times provided minute coverage of Whitman’s final days and diet. Among the liquids and solids mentioned, one in particular caught my eye— milk punch.

  In the summer of 1961, Gabriel García Márquez lived with his family in the Webster Hotel on West Forty-Fifth Street in New York City. They paid two hundred dollars a month for a room. The thirty-three-year-old García Márquez had moved to th…