Tag Archives: 16th Century

1629: The Most Trivial Disagreements

Such personal correspondence and diaries as survive suggest that social relations from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries tended to be cool, even unfriendly. The extraordinary amount of casual interpersonal physical and verbal violence, as recorded in legal and other … Continue reading

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1592: More Books on Books

All I can say is that you can feel from experience that so many interpretations dissipate the truth and break it up. Aristotle wrote to be understood: if he could not manage it, still less will a less able man … Continue reading

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1509: The Most Curious Book in the World

The following entry appears in Charles Carroll Bombaugh’s Gleanings from the Harvest Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta, Curious, Humorous, and Instructive (1867): THE MOST CURIOUS BOOK IN THE WORLD The most singular bibliographic curiosity is that which belonged … Continue reading

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1559: Not Man, Not Woman, Not Androgyne

This mysterious Latin inscription appears to be an epitaph composed in the 16th century by someone named or calling himself Lucio Agatho Priscius; the deceased was named Aelia Laelia Crispis. DM Aelia Laelia Crispis Nec vir nec mulier nec androgyna … Continue reading

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1525: Dream

In the year 1525 between Wednesday and Thursday (7-8 June) after Whitsunday during the night I saw this appearance in my sleep, how many great waters fell from heaven. The first struck the earth about four miles away from me … Continue reading

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1943: Workers and Paintings

Honoré Sharrer: Workers and Paintings (1943) I can’t identify all the paintings in this painting. Leave a comment if you can fill in the blanks:                   Hugo Gellert : Free Man’s Duties (No 4) (1943) Jean-François … Continue reading

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1529: Fortifications

In 1527, a republican government was established in the city-state of Florence after residents ousted the ruling Medici family. The pope at the time, Clement VII, was himself a Medici—and he took affront at the rebellion and resolved to capture … Continue reading

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1562: Namesakes

The city of Richmond, California is named after the city of Richmond, Virginia, which is named after the English town of Richmond near London, which was named for Richmond Palace, which Henry VII named after his ancestral home in Richmond, … Continue reading

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1974: Iconography

Annibale Carracci: Christ Crowned with Thorns (16th Century) Phil Roman, director: It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown (1974)  

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1939: The History of Spitting

The pioneering sociologist Norbert Elias published The Civilizing Process in 1939 with the aim of tracing how Europeans came to imagine what it meant to be “civilized.” In the book, he argues that increasing interdependence in society—in which difference social … Continue reading

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