Midterms are over, and we're almost to the finish line. And every time I talk to someone who isn't a student, I inevitably get the question: "Learning anything interesting?"
And the answer is, honestly, yes! Yes I am! So here are just some of the fun, somewhat odd, things I've learned so far this semester.
Pythagoras led a secret math cult and was a murderer.
That's right; Pythagoras, of the beloved Pythagorean Theorem, was cuckoo. In Ancient Greece, he and his cult (known as the Pythagoreans) studied math and philosophy to figure out the secrets of the universe. Unfortunately, one dude made some discoveries that just didn't jive with what Pythagoras wanted the universe to be. This dude was called Hippasus, and he discovered that the square root of 2 was irrational, meaning that the decimal could not be turned into a neat fraction. The Pythagoreans were nuts over order and neatness, so when Hippasus found out that irrational numbers existed, they weren't so stoked. This led to him being sentenced to death by Pythagoras, taken out to sea, and drowned. They don't tell you that in high school math.
Pythagoras died because he thought beans were sacred.
Yeah, the crazy didn't stop with murder. Basically the Pythagoreans were vegetarians, and in addition didn't eat beans because they were viewed as sacred and life-giving. When his enemies burned down his house, they chased him to a field of beans, and Pythagoras didn't want to trample the sacred beans so he just let himself be killed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were gay for each other.
Not really. Maybe. Who knows. But they were super close and super into each other and we all just love the idea.
Thoreau just straight up didn't pay his taxes because he was all "government sucks" so Emerson had to bail him out like the good gal pal he was.
True story. I think Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government" is still applicable today and should be required reading for literally everyone. But anyway, so he didn't pay his taxes and they put him in jail, of course. So Emerson came to bail him out and, so the story goes, asked "Henry David, what are you doing in there?" to which Thoreau replied "Ralph Waldo, what are you doing out there?" Super cute and couply of them.
Moby Dick is not about dicks.
Do you need elaboration? They're just not there. Still a 10/10 book.
Mark Twain was a stand up comedian.
I was so shocked when my professor told us this. Like yeah, his writing is kind of funny, but like...a real live stand up comedian? Mark Twain basically invented modern comedic timing apparently. All because he had mega stage fright so he just didn't talk for a minute and the audience died laughing. And he thought, "hey, I might have something here."
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was banned when it was first published, but not for the reason you think.
We all know Huck Finn has been banned (and is still being banned) for its excessive use of the n-word. But when it was first published, it was actually banned for the use of the word "sweat." Yeah. Take that in. Racism was okay but sweating wasn't. Society at the time considered sweat and the act of sweating and talking about sweat to be quite vulgar, and thus didn't want children reading it. Weird.
Symposiums were actually just huge drinking parties.
Instead of the nice, formal conferences we have today, symposiums in Ancient Greece were bangers. I'm like 90% sure the Greeks were just drunk all the time, like Cersei in "Game of Thrones."
Odysseus is a huge cry baby.
Yeah, yeah, he's this great hero, star of The Odyssey, but he spends a lot of time in tears, including the first time he's actually seen in the epic. Literally, the words are "weeping." No one tends to think of him like this, so I feel it's important to bring it up. Heroes are allowed to cry.
Pegasus has a brother.
Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology, has a brother. His name is Chrysaor. He's a human. He's also the black sheep of the family because no one talks about him.
"Bullshit" has its origins dating back to the 1300s.
In Dante's Inferno, flatterers are in the Eighth Circle of Hell for fraud. Their punishment? Wasting away in piles of excrement. All of the punishments in Dante's Inferno are "contrapassos," meaning they're poetic justice, in a sense: a punishment to fit the crime. Since the flatterers essentially "bullshitted" their way through life on earth, they're gonna remain in the shit forever. So sweet (kinda).
Believe it or not, most of these crazy stories are actually relevant to my studies. Not only am I a hit at parties, but my Snapchat is filled with shots of my personal favorite annotations and lines from literary classics that, in my opinion, don't get talked about enough.
So yes, family and friends, the semester is going great, I'm learning a lot, and I'm ready for a good old fashioned Ancient Greek symposium.
