I've always enjoyed the newspaper's This Day in History feature. Imagine my delight when I discovered Robert Chambers's The Book of Days.
The Book of Days: A Miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, including anecdote, biography & history, curiosities of literature, and oddities of human life and character (now there's a TITLE!) is This Day in History plus, a la 1864 England.
Organized by the days of the calendar, each entry provides multiple tidbits of interesting and sometimes abstruse information involving the English history of this day. First comes a list of those who were born and others who died on this day, followed by feast days. Then there are multiple articles on events that occurred on or near this day, or just for fun. For today, February 10, there are essays on Ash Wednesday, Dutch scholar Isaac Vossius, the riot at Oxford on February 10, 1354, the history of the umbrella, and an anecdote by Sir John Dugdale.
The two volumes of the book are available in Google books Volume 1 here and Volume 2 here, but an easier-to-read, online searchable version is here.
Although the book was written in 1864, much of the information is relevant to earlier eras and makes a good source for information on customs and legends.
So, enjoy. You can learn something new every day
Thank you all,
Linda
4 comments:
It looks interesting. I love finding old books.
Hi Ella, if You like old books, you should have a good time with this one.
I love this book. In fact, I loved lots and lots of the old books at Google books.
I tend to waste a lot of time there.
Hi Suzi. I understand the feeling. I like wandering around those old books, too.
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