Hesiod names Heaven and Earth’s twelve children without calling them anything at all. The name arrives later, and as an insult. The children had turned on their father, and those sons, Hesiod says, ‘great... Read More →
Hesiod gives Strife fourteen children and no husband. In the Theogony (in Hugh G. Evelyn-White’s translation), “abhorred Strife bore painful Toil and Forgetfulness and Famine and tearful Sorrows”, and then, sharing a single line... Read More →
On March 23, 1875, the survey ship HMS Challenger paused over an unremarkable stretch of the western Pacific and lowered a weighted rope. It paid out 4,475 fathoms – 8,184 meters – before touching... Read More →
There are stepped pyramids at Guimar, on Tenerife, and for a long time they drew the sort of visitor who suspects the ancient Egyptians got around more than the textbooks admit. Thor Heyerdahl took... Read More →
On March 10, 1956, a B-47 Stratojet left MacDill Air Force Base in Florida and headed east across the Atlantic, bound nonstop for an overseas base. Somewhere over the Mediterranean it simply failed to... Read More →
On June 2, 2010, in Detroit, Armando Galarraga retired the first 26 Cleveland Indians he faced. The 27th, Jason Donald, grounded to the right side, Miguel Cabrera fielded the ball and threw to Galarraga... Read More →
Real Quiet was four lengths clear at the eighth pole of the 1998 Belmont Stakes, one furlong from the Triple Crown, and lost it by a nose to Victory Gallop. He had a great... Read More →
Severus Snape opened Harry Potter’s first Potions lesson by telling a room of first-years that there would be little foolish wand-waving, that many of them would hardly believe this was magic, and that he... Read More →
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame describes Moses Malone as “The first modern player to go straight from high school to professional basketball,” and the hardest-working word in that sentence is “modern.” Malone... Read More →
In June 1997 Bloomsbury printed 500 hardback copies of a first novel by an unknown author, and sent 300 of them straight to libraries. The name on the cover was not quite the author’s... Read More →
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