I finished Volume One of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
It took me about six weeks of on-again, off-again effort. At this rate, I calculate I will finish the entire set in 3.3 years. (But in that time, I will have collected three year books! :eek: )
Anyway, here are some interesting things that I have learned.
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Aardvark isn’t the first thing in the encyclopedia. In fact, there’s a whole three pages of stuff that comes before Aardvark. And that’s not even including a helpful part called “How to use the Micropedia” that appears before the official start of All Human Knowledge.
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Encyclopedia Britannica spells “Encyclopedia” with an extra A in it somewhere, for reasons I cannot yet discern.
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There is an average of one black and white picture every 1.3 pages, one color picture every 3.7 pages, and one diagram every 5.1 pages.
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In addition to aardvarks, which means “earth pig” in Afrikaans, there is also something called an aardwolf, which means “cargo pants.”
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The Battle of Antietem was won not by soldiers with muskets and bayonets, but by small colored lines advancing on one another accross a map.
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The Acadian Orogeny was not, in fact, a pornographic film featuring naked Newfoundlanders.
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Accordians are funny.
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Herbert Baxter Adams had a handlebar mustache the size of a cucumber.
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Affirmative action actually stretches back to long before the 20th century, when African Americans were chosen above white people for competitive slave-labor jobs.
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An Afghan can be a carpet, a dog, a blanket, or a person.
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The Alamo was defended by many brave soldiers, but it turns out that John Wayne was not actually among them.
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In Amsterdam, you can totally, like, smoke a joint, like, in a public place and totally NOT get busted.
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You can’t spell “analysis” without “anal.”
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Animated cartoons are actually made up of many thousands of still pictures shown in rapid succession, and not acted by living people who look like drawings, as such cartoons would have us believe.
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Antimatter does not have any relation to fecal matter. In fact, no fecal matter has ever been observed that was made up of antimatter.
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There’s actually a place called Aragon. Just like in The Lord of the Rings! Except that Aragon was a person. But whatever, it’s still cool.
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The Ashanti Empire is not actually ruled by the sexy singer Ashanti, as is widely believed.
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Astoria, some podunk town in Clatsop County, Oregon, is worthy of an entry in the encyclopedia, but Astoria, Queens, which is where the coolest people in the whole world live, is not.
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Atomic weight is actually not used to calculate the mass of Gwynith Paltrow.
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Australia is really really big, but Australian terriers are really really small.
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Avadavats are birds, not legal papers.
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There are lots of people with the last name Bacon, and I really like bacon.
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There is a town in Austria called Badgastein. It is frequented by tourists who eat large quantities of beans and cabbage.
Well, I must say this has certainly been a learning experience for me. I look forward to volume 2.