Books and Literature

The great Egyptian architect Imhotep, who lived almost 5,000 years ago, is the earliest scientist who is known by name today. We also know the names of other Egyptian architects, scientists, and mathematicians, such as the scribe Ahmes. On the other hand, China, Sumeria, and Babylon did not record the names of their early scientists. [ Ancient Civilisations | Ancient Egypt ] (source)

Euclid is the most successful textbook writer of all time. His Elements, written around 300 B.C., has gone through more than 1,000 editions since the invention of printing. [ Ancient Greek Science and Philosophy | Mathematics and Mathematicians | Literature ] (source)

Several of Aristotle's writings have survived only by a fortunate chance. Around 80 B.C., the men of a Roman army invading Asia Minor found a number of manuscripts of Aristotle's works in a pit and brought them to their general, Sulla. It turned out that no other copies of many of them existed, and Sulla had them taken to Rome and recopied. (source)

Generally accepted as the greatest of the Roman poets, Vergil left the instruction that when he died his manuscript of the Aeneid should be burned because he had not been able to polish it. Roman emperor Augustus—who may have requested Vergil to undertake the Aeneid—stepped in and countermanded Vergil's request. He had others apply what little polish was needed, and ordered the work published. [ Literature | Roman Empire ]

The first volume of recipes was published in 62 A.D. by the Roman Apicius. Titled De Re Coquinaria, it described the feasts enjoyed by the Emperor Claudius. [ Food | Books and Literature | The Roman Empire ]

Since most early literate civilisations were located around the warm Mediterranean region, the first mention of an iceberg in world literature did not come until the ninth century A.D., when an account of the travels of the Irish monk St. Brendan in the North Atlantic, three centuries before, appeared. It mentioned that he saw a "floating crystal castle." What else could that have been? [ Exploration | Literature ] (source)

Paper was invented in China around 105 A.D., by the eunuch Ts'ai Lun. According to the official history of the Han dynasty (3^rd century A.D.), Ts'ai Lun was given an aristocratic title after he presented Emperor Ho Ti with samples of paper. In 751 A.D., Chinese papermakers were captured by the Arabs at Samarkand, and by 794 A.D. several state-owned paper mills operated in Baghdad. The Arabs were manufacturing paper in Spain around 1150. It was not until 1590 that the first English paper mill was founded, at Dartford. [ China | Books and Literature ] (source)

The first novel ever written is believed to be The Tale of Genji, written in the first decade of the 11^th century by Murasaki Shibuku, a Japanese noblewoman. It contains 54 chapters. [ Firsts | Books and Literature ]

An instrumental factor in keeping Persian the language of modern Iran (instead of being replaced by Arabic) was the Shah-nama or Book of Shahs, which was written in Persian. Finished in 1010 by Abul Qasim Mansuar, who wrote under the pen name Firdausi, it was a poem of 60,000 verses (seven times the length of Homer's Iliad), detailing the history of the Persian kings from legendary beginnings down to Khosru II in the seventh century. It has remained the great national poem of the nation and its preeminent literary work. [ Languages of the World | Books and Literature ] (source)

In the early 11^th century, Persian Sultan Mahmud promised the poet Firdausi one gold dinar (about $4.70) for each couplet of his poem Shah-nama or Book of Shahs (a poem containing the history of the Kings of Persia) upon completion. When Firdausi delivered the poem in 1010, it was 60,000 lines long. Mahmud's advisors claimed the requisite fee would be exorbitant, and paid Firdausi in silver instead. Firdausi, outraged, left the court. In 1020, Mahmud was struck by the beauty of a couplet that he learned was written by Firdausi. He repented his miserliness and sent a camel caravan with 60,000 gold dinars' worth of indigo to Firdausi with a letter of apology. Unfortunately, it arrived in the village of Tus as Firdausi's funeral procession was passing through the streets. (source)

The sole surviving written record of Mayan history is three codices written in heiroglyphs on bark paper. All three are now held in European cities. [ Literature | Incas, Aztecs, and Maya ]

If Marco Polo had not been captured by the Genoese and imprisoned for a year, the tales of his historic twenty-two-year adventure in the Far and Middle East (at the end of the thirteenth century) might never have been collected and written down. When he returned to Venice after his odyssey, he became a "gentleman commander" of a war vessel striving to hold of Genoese traders. In a battle of Curzold Island, his galley was captured and Marco was hauled off to Genoa and gaoled. There he met a writer named Rustichello, who, after hearing Marco's yarns, insisted that they be written down. [ Books and Literature | Exploration | The Middle Ages ] (source)

Copernicus' revolutionary book arguing that heavenly bodies move around the sun ignited a scientific revolution, but it was a financial flop. Published, finally, in 1543, it was overpriced and allowed to go out of print. A second edition was not printed until 1566, the third, not until 1617.

William Shakespeare's average annual income as a playwright was under £20, which works out to about £8 per play. However, he made about twice as much from writing plays as Ben Jonson, the only contemporary playwright who was better known at the time than Shakespeare.

Shakespeare used around 29,000 different words in his plays. About 10,000 of those words had never previously been used in any surviving English literature. Around 6,000 words only appear once. (source)

Edgar Allan Poe wrote a short story in 1838, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", in which three shipwreck survivors in an open boat kill and eat the fourth, a man named Richard Parker. In 1884, in the real world, three shipwreck survivors in an open boat killed and ate the fourth, whose name was Richard Parker. [ Books and Literature | Strange But True ] (source)

A well-intentioned philanthropist, Eugene Scheifflin, instituted a project in the 1890's to bring to America each type of bird mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. As Hotspur talks about the starling in Henry IV, Part I, starlings were let loose in New York's Central Park. There are now millions of starlings throughout all of North America. [ Books and Literature | Animals ] (source)

Thomas Watson was one of the most popular and important playwrights in the Elizabethan age, but none of his dramas exists today. (source)

Over 2,500,000,000 copies of the Bible have been made. [ Books and Literature | Philosophy and Religion ]

The quark, a building block of the proton, got its name from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, from the line "Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he hasn't got much of a bark". [ English Words | Books and Literature | Physics ] (source)

The moons of all other planets in the solar system are named after Greek gods, except for those of Uranus, which are named after Shakespearean characters. [ Solar System | Books and Literature ]

Agatha Christie is the top-selling English-language author of all time. She wrote 78 mystery novels that have sold an estimated 2,000,000,000 copies. (source)

The Guinness Book of World Records, first published in 1955, got into itself nineteen years later, in 1974, by setting a record as the fastest-selling book in the world.

Winnie-the-Pooh is based on a real bear. On August 24th, 1914, a Canadian soldier and veterinarian named Harry Colebourn, en route to a training camp in Valcartier, Quebec, purchased an orphaned black bear cub for $20 in White River, Ontario, which he named Winnipeg, or Winnie for short. When his unit was sent over to France during World War I, Colebourn loaned her to the London Zoo, intending to take her back to Canada after the war. However, Winnie's gentle disposition made her the zoo's top attraction, and on December 1, 1919, he donated her to the zoo. In the mid 1920's, writer A. A. Milne often took his young son, Christopher Robin, to the zoo, and Christopher named his teddy bear "Winnie-the-Pooh" after Winnie. A. A. Milne went on to write several best-selling children's books about Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh. [ Animals | Books and Literature ]

On August 8, 1969, novelist Jerzy Kosinski was flying to Los Angeles from Paris, with a short stopover in New York. All his luggage was accidentally unloaded in New York, and he had to get off the plane to go through customs. That night, because of the luggage mix-up, he missed his visit with the actress Sharon Tate and other friends, and thus was absent when Charles Manson and his disciples paid their murderous visit to the Tate house. Kosinski later wrote about this close call in the novel Blind Date. (source)

In 1977, as an experiment, Chuck Ross typed up a fresh manuscript copy of Jerzy Kosinski's novel Steps, which had won the National Book Award in 1969 for best work of fiction, changed the title, and submitted the work under his by-line to 14 publishers. All of them rejected the novel, including Random House, the book's original publisher. [ Strange But True | Misconceptions ] (source)

Shakespeare's most talkative character is Hamlet, who has 1,422 lines in Hamlet. None of his other characters have as many lines in a single play. (Falstaff, who appears in several plays, has more lines total). (source)

The largest book in the world, a copy of the Tripitaka, the sacred Buddhist text that includes Buddha's teachings, is inscribed on 729 marble slabs, each 3.5' × 5' × 5", and occupies a thirteen-acre site on the grounds of the Kuthodaw pagoda in Mandalay, Burma.

By the fifteenth century, manuscript copyists had set up mass-production workshops capable of turning out sizable quantities of books. An order in the year 1437 (found at Leyde, the Netherlands) called for 200 copies of the Psalms of Penitence, 200 of Cato's Distichs in Flemish, and 400 of a small prayer book. (source)

Emily Dickinson wrote over 1,800 poems. Only seven were published in her lifetime, all without her consent. (source)

Shakespeare makes Lear, an early Anglo-Saxon King, speak of not wanting spectacles. In relating Macbeth's death, in 1054, and King John's reign in 1200, he mentions cannons. In Julius Caesar, he makes the clock strike three. However, these three inventions were not invented until the fourteenth century. (source)