BBB Etymology - Miss the Bus

This expression is said to originate in an Oxford story of the 1840s about John Henry Newman, fellow of Oriel College, vicar of the University Church and one of the foremost theologians of his time. Newman's decision to join the Roman Catholic Church - in which he later became a Cardinal - was an event of great importance in its day. One of his Oxford adherents, Mark Pattison, set off to talk to him at the time this fateful decision was being made, but missed the bus and therefore also missed a conversation that may have taken him to Rome. Unkind commentators suggested that Pattison's mishap was in fact a serious failure of nerve, and this gossip gave jocular notoriety to his excuse that he had merely missed the bus.