The Know-It-All

by A. J. Jacobs

  To take another example from World War II there’s the July Plot to assassinate Hitler. This took place in 1944, and was orchestrated by a group of German conspirators led by an officer named Ernst Stauffenberg. As the Britannica says:

  “Stauffenberg slipped from the room, witnessed the explosion at 12:42 pm, and, convinced Hitler was killed, flew to Berlin … [but] an attending officer had nudged the briefcase with a bomb to the far side of a massive oak support of the conference table, which thus shielded Hitler from the full force of the explosion.”

  Hitler survived because an attending officer was tidy and wanted the briefcase out of the way. History was changed by the size of an oak table.

  Wells, H. G.

  Here’s another one who married his cousin. Along with contracting gout, marrying your cousin seems to be a favorite pastime of historical figures. Over the last few months, I’ve been keeping a list of cousin lovers, and here’s just a sampling: Charles Darwin, Henry VIII, Edgar Allan Poe (with his thirteen-year-old cousin, if you recall), Sergey Rachmaninoff, and now, the newest member of the club, H. G. Wells.

  I went back to check on Rachmaninoff because I wasn’t positive about him. I was happy to see that, yes, the composer did indeed marry his cousin. But strangely, I noticed something else about him: Rachmaninoff wrote a symphony based on a poem by fellow club member Edgar Allan Poe. Weird.

  Back when I was smart the first time—back in high school—I read a short story by Italo Calvino. It was a fable about a city where people’s apartments were connected by threads. The threads were strung from one apartment and across the street or down the block to another apartment. Each thread represented a different kind of relationship. If the people in the two apartments were blood relatives, the threads would be black. If they were in business together, the threads would be white. If one was the boss of the other, the threads would be gray. Eventually, the threads grew so numerous and thick and multishaded that you couldn’t walk through the city.

  That’s what history seems like to me now. There are hundreds of threads connecting everybody in all sorts of ways, both expected and unexpected. It’s like a spiderweb (which, by the way, spiders sometimes eat when they’re done with them).

  wergild

  In ancient Germanic law, this was the payment that someone made to an injured party. Most cultures had a similar concept—in the Middle East, it was called diyah. A life was worth one hundred female camels. Loss of one eye or foot was fifty she-camels. A blow to the head or abdomen was thirty-three, and loss of a tooth was five.

  Still no sign of my $31,000 wergild from Eric for the Millionaire fiasco. But that’s okay. He has given me something else. Julie talked to Alexandra, Eric’s wife, who told her that Eric felt bad about the Millionaire debacle. And not just bad about looking ignorant on national TV. He actually felt guilty about blowing my chances at thirty-two grand. I knew Eric had feelings—he’s a loving father and a good son—but I never imagined those feelings would be directed toward me. This was almost more surprising than when he didn’t know an abstruse biological term. It made me feel all warm and forgiving. I sent him an e-mail.

  Thanks for being my lifeline. We didn’t win, but we went down fighting.

  Your brother (by marriage, not by erythrocyte),

  AJ

  I thought that struck the proper note—familial, sympathetic, but still with a gentle dig at the end.

  He wrote back:

  Glad to be of help. Or rather, no help. At least you don’t have to pay a lot of taxes on your winnings.

  Eric

  I almost wanted to write back and tell him that if my kid turns out to be as sweet and smart and fun as his kids are, I’ll be a happy man. But there’s a limit, you know?

  White House

  The White House was originally called the President’s Palace, but the name was changed to Executive Mansion because “palace” was considered too royal. The building didn’t officially become known as the White House until 1902, under Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt, by the way, renovated the second floor to make room for his “children’s exotic pets, which included raccoons, snakes, a badger, and a bear.”

  All pretty good facts. But here’s the peculiar part. I was at the office, and I was telling my coworker about the Roosevelt menagerie, and he asked if the bear in question was the Teddy bear. I went on Britannica.com to check, and reread the White House entry. It didn’t say. But I noticed the online version had a whole other anecdote that was cut from the print version for space. The anecdote was this:

  Apparently, security at the White House used to be shockingly lax. In 1842, Charles Dickens was invited to the White House by John Tyler. Dickens arrived at the mansion, knocked on the door. No one answered. So—and this is what it says—he let himself in. Just walked right through the front door and started poking around the rooms unchaperoned. The esteemed British author finally stumbled onto a couple of dozen presidential hangers-on in one of the rooms. He was most appalled that they were spitting on the White House floor, and wrote that he hoped the spittle-cleaning servants were paid well.

  Now, that’s a good anecdote. I love the print version, but now I wonder what a world I’ve been missing by ignoring the online Britannica.

  Winchell, Walter

  The famous fast-talking, hat-wearing, pun-loving gossip columnist was born Walter Winchel—just one l in the last name. But someone accidentally added an extra l to “Winchel” on a theater marquee. Winchel liked it so much he kept it. Likewise, Ulysses Grant had a superfluous S inserted into the middle of his name on his West Point papers. He kept it. And a man named Israel Baline changed his name to Irving Berlin after a printer’s error rendered it Berlin (not a small error—let’s hope that printer switched careers soon after). Here again, luck changing history, though in a much less gloomy and devastating way.

  Wise Men

  The three Wise Men have been popping up in our lives recently. Or one of the three Wise Men, anyway. Julie and I are considering naming our son Jasper—no particular reason, we just like the name, and Julie nixed Mshweshwe and Ub. Jasper, we learned from one of our many baby name books, is a version of Gaspar, the name of one of the three Magi.

  So our son will be named for a Wise Man. Maybe, we figure, it’ll make him a Wise Baby. And maybe—here’s a shocker—I can even impart a little wisdom of my own to the fellow. I actually think I have some.

  The thing is, if I’m really being truthful with myself, Operation Britannica began as a bit of a lark. I figured I’d get some fun facts, have something to say at cocktail parties, increase my quirkiness factor, maybe learn a little about the nature of information. But wisdom? I didn’t really expect it.

  And yet, surprisingly, wisdom was in there—lurking in those 44 million words. It occasionally hit me over the head (see Ecclesiastes). But mostly I got my wisdom from absorbing the Britannica as a whole. And the wisdom I absorbed is this:

  I finally have faith that Homo sapiens—that bipedal mammal of the Chordata phylum with 1350 cubic centimeters of cranial capacity, a secondary palate, and a hundred thousand hairs per scalp—is a pretty good species. Yes, we have the capability to do horrible things. We have created poverty and war and Daylight Saving Time. But in the big sweep—over the past ten thousand years and thirty-three thousand pages—we’ve redeemed ourselves with our accomplishments. We’re the ones who came up with the Trevi fountain and Scrabble in braille and Dr. DeBakey’s artificial heart and the touch-tone phone.

  We have made our lives better. A thousand times better. Never again will I mythologize the past as some sort of golden age. Remember: In the 19th century, the mortality rate was 75 percent for a cesarean section, so my friend Jenny might no longer be around. The workday was fourteen hours, which is too long even for a workaholic like me. The life expectancy in ancient Rome was twenty-nine years. Widows had to marry their late husband’s brother. Originally forks had one tine, and umbrellas were available only in black, and you ate four-day-old fetid meat f
or dinner.

  For all its terrifying problems, now is the best time to be alive. I’m excited for my son, Jasper, to be born. I can’t wait—and not just because he’ll be a cool accessory to have on my hip, like a new two-way pager, but because I think he’ll like the world, and the world will like him.

  The facts in my brain will fade—I know that. But this wisdom, this perspective, I hope will stay with me.

  Wood, Grant

  The painter of the famous American Gothic portrait. I learn that the man and woman aren’t a farmer and his wife. The woman is Wood’s sister, Nan. And the farmer with the pitchfork? Wood’s dentist. It’s true, now that I look at him: put a white coat on him, and he screams D.D.S. Plus, he looks at home with that sharp implement, so that’s a cue.

  Woodhull, Victoria

  I figured by this point, after a year of nonstop reading, I’d be pretty well sick of the activity. I figured I wouldn’t want to read another book post-Britannica. I figured I wouldn’t want to read a stop sign or salad dressing label. And yet, when I learn about someone like Victoria Woodhull, I feel like I’d like to dive into an entire biography on her. Odd.

  Woodhull was an amazing woman—the first female stockbroker and the first woman to run for president, among other things. Born in Ohio in 1838, she spent her childhood traveling with her family’s fortunetelling business. She married at age fifteen, divorced soon after, and moved to New York. There, she befriended robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was a fan of psychics. Vanderbilt helped her start a stock brokerage firm. (Seems like a good idea—a psychic stock picker.)

  In the following years, Woodhull drifted further into fringe causes. She began publishing a reform magazine that advocated communal living, free love, equal rights, and women’s suffrage. The eccentric Woodhull wasn’t popular with the more staid members of the women’s suffrage movement, but they accepted her, at least temporarily, after she pleaded for the women’s vote before Congress.

  Woodhull’s relationship with a reformer named Theodore Tilton led to national scandal. In what seems her sleaziest moment, Woodhull printed rumors that Tilton’s wife was having extramarital relations with Henry Ward Beecher. This got Woodhull indicted for sending improper material through the mails. (She was later acquitted.) In 1877, she moved to England—apparently with the financial help of Vanderbilt heirs, who feared she’d try to horn in on the will—where she started a journal of eugenics and offered a five-thousand-dollar prize for the first transatlantic flight.

  A curious and fascinating life. I did, in fact, order a Woodhull bio online. There will be at least one book in my post-Britannica existence.

  XYZ

  X-ray style

  THIS IS AN artistic technique in which you depict animals by painting their skeleton or internal organs. Mesolithic hunters in northern Europe loved their X-ray style, as did some early aboriginal Australians (Britannica’s got a funky-looking picture of an X-rayed-lizard painting from Australia). I’m reading this at night, just a few hours after one of the Esquire editors suggested we do an X-ray photo portfolio—an X ray of a guy hitting a golf ball, an X ray of a guy and a woman in bed. Will this be my last eerie Britannica-and-life intersection? Could be. I can see those Zs at the end of the tunnel. I’m that close.

  yacht

  The presidential yacht—a massive boat called the Mayflower, built in 1897—saw active service during World War II. I like that—a battling yacht. It’d be good to send Barry Diller’s yacht to the Persian Gulf.

  Yang, Franklin

  A Chinese-born American physicist who won the Nobel in 1957. Yang was born with the first name Chen Ning, but switched it to Franklin after reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin as a kid. If you’re going to name yourself after someone, Franklin’s a solid choice. The founding father has surfaced dozens of times in the Britannica, almost always in a flattering light—he founded the American Philosophical Society when he was twenty-one, started the first insurance in our country, discredited a quack named Franz Mesmer who allegedly put people in trances (hence the word “mesmerize”). On the other hand, Franklin did satisfy his libido with “low women.”

  Year

  Today, another Hanukkah/New Year’s gift exchange at my parents’. It’s been about a year since I started reading the Britannica, which is hard to believe. It doesn’t feel like a year. It doesn’t even feel like a lunar year (twelve lunar cycles, about 354 days, used in some calendars).

  We get there early—before Beryl and Willy—which means there’s time for Julie and my mom to go to the back room and look at some jewelry designs my mom has been working up.

  Leaving Dad and me alone.

  “Want to see the latest sonogram?” I ask.

  “Absolutely,” says Dad.

  It’s a good sonogram. The spine shows up in bright white, resembling a tiny comb. And you can see his face—Julie and I had an argument over whether he looks more like E.T. or Jason from the Friday the 13th series.

  I take the sonogram out of the bag and hand it to Jasper’s grandfather.

  “Good-looking kid,” he says, studying it.

  “Yeah, he’s got the Jacobs nose,” I say.

  “Any more thoughts about naming him Arnold Jacobs V?” my dad asks.

  “Sorry, no.”

  He nods his head. He knew.

  “I have something else you might want to see,” I say.

  “What is it?”

  I dig a piece of paper out of the bag.

  “It’s a little something I wrote up. Something I’m submitting to the Britannica board for inclusion in next year’s edition.”

  My dad takes the paper. He reads it:

  Jacobs, Arnold (b. February 26, 1941, New York)

  An expert on insider trading and world record holder for most footnotes in a law article. Jacobs grew up in Manhattan, the son of a lawyer and an art teacher. He graduated in the 78th percentile in his high school class—but has the excuse that he only studied during subway rides. Jacobs attended many, many graduate schools that we cannot list for space reasons. With his wife, Ellen Kheel, a fellow collector of buffalo memorabilia, he had two children. He imparted to his son, Arnold Jacobs Jr. (aka Arnold Jacobs IV), a love of learning and scholarship that could be excessive at times—but as far as excesses go, it was a pretty decent one. Jacobs Sr. also impressed his son with his accomplishments, devotion to family, and expertise on Genghis Khan. And perhaps most important, Jacobs Sr. made a great scientific leap when he discovered the speed of light in fathoms per fortnight: 1.98 × 1014. Jacobs Jr. built upon his father’s discovery by calculating the speed of light in knots per nanosecond: .000162.

  I watch my dad read it—for what seems like a very long time. Finally, he smiles.

  “This is great,” he says. “I’m honored.”

  “Well, we’ll see if they accept it,” I say.

  “Knots per nanosecond?”

  “Yeah, I worked it out.”

  “That’s good stuff.”

  “Yeah, useful information,” I say.

  “You even got the alliteration down.”

  “Yeah, I thought it was better than knots per picosecond.”

  “It’s great. It can be the first thing I’ll teach my grandson.”

  I probably won’t be joining my father in the really byzantine practical jokes featuring bison statues or lemon Kool-Aid. But I figure, why not join him in a little one about fathoms and fortnights? Why not take his cue, as Lorenz’s goslings did, and give him a little praise? I knew he’d love it.

  As I approach the Z’s, I’ve finally beaten my dad at something. I finished a mission that he started, and I suppose that’s helped me exorcise a demon—specifically the demon of envy, also known as Leviathan in the Bible. Right now, at least for the next couple of weeks, I probably have more information in my cerebral cortex than he does. Am I smarter? Maybe not. Most likely not. Do I know as much as he does about rule 10b-5? Certainly not. But I do know this more than ever: my dad and I are th
e same. I’ve learned to stop fighting that fact. I’ve learned to like it.

  yodel

  The Swiss do not have a monopoly on this. The pygmies and the Australian Aborigines are also proficient yodelers. On the other hand, their cuckoo clocks are below average.

  Young Men’s Christian Association

  This started with twelve young men in the drapery business in England before blossoming into a Village People song.

  Young, Thomas

  Proposed the wave theory of light—and was widely disparaged because any opposition to Newton’s theory was unthinkable. As George Bernard Shaw said, “All great truths start as blasphemies.” See—I got something out of this.

  Zeus

  I guess it’s no big news that men can’t keep their pants on. That was clear even in the first hundred pages of the Britannica, what with the scores of “dissolute” men and their mistresses. But Zeus is in a league of his own. He deserves a gold medal, or better yet, some saltpetre (well, actually, I learned that saltpetre doesn’t dampen the libido; so maybe a cold shower). Zeus was the Wilt Chamberlain of Greek gods, spreading his seed far and wide. Every one hundred pages in my reading, there Zeus would be, making it with another woman or, occasionally, with a man. Sometimes Zeus would have sex as Zeus himself, but more often he’d go in disguise. He’s taken the shape of a bull, an eagle, a cuckoo, a dark cloud, a shower of gold coins, and an ant. An ant? He seduced Eurymedusa in the form of an ant. I don’t even understand what that means. I have a guess, but I can’t imagine Eurymedusa found that pleasant, and she may have required ointment.

  Zola, Emile

  According to some sources, Zola, as a starving writer, ate sparrows trapped outside his windowsill.

  zoo

  The Aztecs had a magnificent one in Mexico that required a staff of three hundred zookeepers. Also, you should know that Londoners during World War II ate the fish out of their city’s zoo.

  Seventeen pages left. I’ve got a tingle in the back of my neck. I want to skim, but I force myself slow down, savor these final entries.