The 37-volume Pure Historical pastwritten by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, is the world’s earliest surviving encyclopedia. Within the first century C.E., Pliny got down to accumulate the breadth of human data, and millennia later, it’s nonetheless a fantastic doc for studying a little bit bit about every thing. It has chapters on sugar, Germany, the rainbow, Cesarean births, the artwork of portray, and hypothetical antipodes.
It additionally makes delightfully obvious the place Pliny’s most passionate pursuits lay: Contemplate the chapters “Elephants (Their Capability),” “When Elephants Have been First Put Into Harness,” “The Docility of the Elephant,” and “Fantastic Issues Which Have Been Carried out by the Elephant.”
I hope you discover a matter you take pleasure in simply as a lot on this week’s trivia.
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Monday, November 3, 2025
- What president who assumed workplace after the 1901 assassination of William McKinley constructed the unique West Wing and East Wing of the White Home?
— From Neil Flanagan’s “White Home Structure Was an Honor System. Trump Seen.” - What poetic meter consisting of 10 syllables per line was probably launched to English drama by Christopher Marlowe after which extensively popularized by William Shakespeare?
— From Isaac Butler’s “The Cussed Fable of the Literary Genius” - In baseball notation, a strikeout is represented by what letter—flipped backwards if the batter goes out with out swinging?
— From Steve Rushin’s “The Finest Postseason in Baseball Historical past?”
And, by the way in which, do you know that the Athletics’ (previously of Oakland) mascot is—this one is for you, Pliny—an elephant? The origin of the mascot is a dig from a rival supervisor, who within the early twentieth century mentioned that the A’s had a “large white elephant on their arms” within the type of a roster of high-priced and ineffective gamers. These gamers and their followers took it in stride.
See you tomorrow!
Solutions:
- Teddy Roosevelt. The low-slung annexes revered the design of the unique White Home architect, James Hoban, and the venture established a norm for safeguarding the historic character of the complicated. However, as Flanagan writes, norms can all the time be ignored. Learn extra.
- Iambic pentameter. Shakespeare will get loads of credit score for inventiveness, however Marlowe was the extra daring cultural vanguard, particularly in the way in which he performed his life—“in all probability homosexual, presumably a spy, usually in hassle with the legislation,” Butler writes. It’s subsequently straightforward for histories of him to veer into fable. Learn extra.
- Okay. The Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Trey Yesavage notched 12 Ks in Sport 4 of this yr’s World Collection—essentially the most ever by a rookie in collection historical past. Rushin writes that Yesavage was hardly the lone star in a postseason that proved baseball can nonetheless shock. Learn extra.
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