The Know-It-All - E

Sometimes the the most interesting tid-bits in Jacobs' book are found in the stories he tells while writing about an entry that has nothing to do with the actual encyclopedia entry.

E

eggplant - It was under the eggplant entry that I learned the dates October 4 through October 15, 1582 do not exist. That's when the Western world switched to the Gregorian calendar, and skipped those ten days. There has to be a way to turn that little nugget into a winning bar bet, doesn't there?

embalming - Martin Van Butchell was an 18th century English widower who had his dead wife embalmed (one of the first arterial embalmings ever), fashionably dressed, placed in a glass-lidded case, and set in the sitting room of their house. His reason? Mrs. Van Butchell - a very wealthy lady - had specified in her will that he could only have access to her money as long as she was above ground. Martin found a profitable loophole.

That loophole was as good as the one medieval bishops used to arm themselves with clubs to fight their enemies because they believed men of the cloth were not allowed to take up the sword. Or the monks who were not allowed to eat meat on Friday, so they simply convinced each other that baby rabbits were fish. Religious people are keenly adept at loophole discovery!

encyclopedia - The first edition of the Britannica came off the presses in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1768. It's three fathers, Colin Macfarquhar, William Smellie and Andrew Bell shared an interest in learning and Greek inspired spelling. That explains the use of ae in their title Encycopaedia Britannica. I was wondering about that.