Having a pleasant Wednesday afternoon? Prepare to get sad! Wikipedia has an excellent article on lost work, explained thusly: “a document or literary work produced some time in the past of which no surviving copies are known to exist. Works may be lost to history either through the destruction of the original manuscript, or through the non-survival of any copies of the work.” It’s a staggering list, but for your reading convenience I’ve gone ahead and collected some of the most depressing items here:

Lost plays of Aeschylus. He is believed to have written some 90 plays of which 6 plays survive. A seventh play is attributed to him. Fragments of his play Achilles were discovered in the wrappings of a mummy in the 1990s. [Higgins: Aeschylus is pictured at right.]

Ur-Hamlet - an earlier version of the play Hamlet predating William Shakespeare’s version, author believed to be Thomas Kyd.

Love’s Labour’s Won, lost play by William Shakespeare.

Maya codices ceremonially destroyed by Diego de Landa (1524-1579), bishop of Yucatán, on 12 July 1562. At least 27 codices and approximately 5,000 Mayan “idols” were burnt.

Memoirs of Lord Byron - destroyed by his literary executors led by John Murray on 17 May 1824. The decision was made to destroy Byron’s manuscript journals in order to protect his reputation. Opposed only by Thomas Moore, the two volumes of memoirs were dismembered and burnt in the fireplace at Murray’s office.

At least four complete volumes and around seven pages of text are missing from Lewis Carroll’s 13 diaries, destroyed by his family for reasons frequently debated.

James Joyce’s play “A Brilliant Career” (which he burned) and the first half of his novel “Stephen Hero” (which may yet turn up)

In 1922, a suitcase with almost all of Ernest Hemingway’s work to date was stolen in Paris from his wife. It included a partial WWI novel.

The manuscript for Sylvia Plath’s unfinished second novel, provisionally titled Double Exposure, or Double Take, written 1962-63, disappeared some time before 1970.

If that’s not enough, there’s plenty more at Wikipedia. (Particularly impressive: lost Biblical texts.)

(Via Anarchaia.)

Our Amazing Fact Generator is a veritable trivia juggernaut. You can sit there for hours on end, and the facts just keep coming! If you haven’t basked in its glory yet, click here and prepare to be amazed. Don’t forget that your friendly neighborhood Fact Solicitor General is in search of more facts to feed the machine, and is rewarding you for your hard work. Check out yesterday’s post for all the details on how you can achieve internet immortality in the Generator and win a shiny new book.

We’ve focused in on smaller pieces of ten of our nation’s 50 state flags. Can you match them to the states over which they fly? Good luck!

Ah, coffee. Consumed either hot or cold by about one-third of the world’s population, it is occasionally worshiped by the tired, possibly hungover masses for its “invigorating” effect, produced, of course, by caffeine. Since there are overwhelming amounts of coffee-related facts out there, let’s focus on some coffee firsts.

• According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “One of many legends about the discovery of coffee is that of Kaldi, an Arab goat herder, who was puzzled by the strange antics of his flock. About AD 850, Kaldi supposedly sampled the berries of the evergreen bush on which the goats were feeding and, on experiencing a sense of exhilaration, proclaimed his discovery to the world.”

• The World Encyclopedia of Coffee tells us that the first coffee house came about in 1686, when an enterprising Italian waiter, Francisco Procopio dei Coltelli, opened Procope’s (still in operation). Though a “lemonade shop” in name, “Procope’s sumptuous décor and air of sophistication attracted a clientèle keen to distance itself from the more loutish elements of the day.” Soon coffee began outselling the other beverages, and Procope’s went on to become a literary salon boasting such visitors as Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire and later … Napoleon! [Insert your own growth-stunting coffee joke here.]
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Though he was initially reluctant to do so, Kelsey Grammer allowed his Cheers character, Dr. Frasier Crane, to be spun off into a separate series in 1993. Millions of Frasier fans are glad that he did. Since I certainly count myself among those fans, I thought I’d share more about how the series came to be.

1. Why the first idea didn’t work

Early in 1993, Kelsey Grammer approached David Lee, David Angell, and Peter Casey (the brains behind the sitcom Wings) and asked if they’d be interested in creating a show for him. Grammer knew that Cheers’ days were numbered, and thought it was time to strike out on his own. Both he and the creative team thought that any use of the Frasier Crane character would encourage unfair comparisons to Cheers, so their initial ideas involved Kelsey playing a paralyzed media mogul cared for by a street-smart nurse in a Manhattan penthouse. Paramount hated the idea and convinced all concerned that they’d be nuts not to capitalize on the built-in Cheers audience.

2. The Secret Behind the Show’s Setting

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If you’re just joining us, every day this week, I’m presenting a specific challenge. Your job: come up with the answers and hold onto them! Why? Because on Friday, you’ll need them to solve a short puzzle. The first person to email in the correct answers and successfully show how you arrived at them (thus the title: How Did You Know?) wins a choice of any t-shirt or book from our store.

As with our previous challenges, I definitely encourage you to work in teams. Email your friends, send around each daily challenge, conspire, work together, whatever it takes to make sure you’re armed with the right answers going into Friday’s puzzle.

In case you missed Day 1 of this feature, check out Monday’s challenge here. Day 2 is right over here.

Today, we’re playing “One of These Things is Not Like the Others,” if you remember the Sesame Street game. Each of the three following videos and two article headlines have one not-so-obvious thing in common. However, all but one have TWO not-so-obvious things in common. Your job is to figure out which is not like the others and why.

Let’s start with some Sesame Street then. Click through to each subsequent page for the others… though not necessarily “the others.”

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9 Medical Conditions You Couldn’t—and Shouldn’t—Do A Thing About. Of course, you will get plenty of differing advice from people who aren’t doctors.
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How to Create and Manage Your “Bucket List” Before You Kick. Start soon- you don’t have to be near death to redefine your life.
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The People’s Mario stars Mario as a Soviet-style worker/hero who fights the evil mushrooms. The look is reminiscent of classic propaganda posters.
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When Mr. Spock said something was (or wasn’t) logical, he gave us the wrong idea. “Logical” is not the same as “reasonable.”
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41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiments. That is what happens when you try to do something new and different with no equipment, budget, or clue.
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The Smartest TV Shows of All Time, as compiled by the chairman of Mensa. Your opinions may vary.
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Why Easter is so early this year. It won’t happen again for a long time, which is good, because it’s not pleasant hiding eggs in the snow.
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There’s nothing wrong with a nap. In fact, a catnap in the middle of the day may help you ward off heart disease!

On this gloomy, cloudy day, I present to you “A View of Tantallon Castle” by Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840), who is regarded as the founder of Scottish landscape painting. Nasmyth’s view of the Tantallon Castle is representative of the style for which he is most well-known: Scottish landscapes in the Italian tradition.

1. Alexander Nasmyth provided several illustrations for collected editions of Sir Walter Scott’s poems. The inspiration for “A View of Tantallon Castle” is thought to have come from Scott’s epic poem, Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, in which Scott describes the 14th-century castle and a “gathering ocean-storm.”

His giant-form, like ruin’d tower,
Though fall’n its muscles’ brawny vaunt,
Huge-boned, and tall, and grim, and gaunt,
Seem’d o’er the gaudy scene to lower:
His locks and beard in silver grew;
His eyebrows kept their sable hue.
Near Douglas when the Monarch stood,
His bitter speech he thus pursued :
‘Lord Marmion, since these letters say
That in the North you needs must stay,
While slightest hopes of peace remain,
Uncourteous speech it were, and stern,
To say-Return to Lindisfarne,
Until my herald come again.-
Then rest you in Tantallon Hold;
Your host shall be the Douglas bold,-
A chief unlike his sires of old.

(Canto V, lines 415-431)

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Howard Rheingold gave a TED talk in 2005 discussing the nature of cooperation, and how it contrasts with classical views of competition as the driver of progress. Discussed: The Prisoner’s Dilemma (and how he suggests eBay solves it), Tragedy of the Commons (and how humans create social structures to overcome it), The Ultimatum Game, Wikipedia, Bittorrent, and finally Rheingold’s proposal for a Cooperation Project to embrace a cooperative form of economic progress.

This video is worth a look for anyone interested in economics, game theory, or the history (and possible future) of human society.

Read more: Prisoner’s Dilemma, Tragedy of the Commons, Ultimatum Game, more on Howard Rheingold (at the bottom of the page is a link to a QuickTime movie describing Rheingold’s Cooperation Project).

The Amazing Fact Generator, much like me, is hungry. I can go to the kitchen and grab some leftover pizza, but The Amazing Fact Generator requires cold hard facts to sustain it.

While we’re waiting for our fact-checker to verify our favorite fact from last week (I’ll announce the winner tomorrow), let’s get this week’s contest rolling. Our topic today is outer space, so leave your (amazing) fact in the comments with your name and location. If it’s both amazing and true, we’ll feed it to the Generator in a ritual sacrifice and credit it to you. The supplier of the most amazing fact will receive a copy of The Space Tourist’s Handbook: Where to Go, What to See, and How to Prepare for the Ride of Your Life.

Important note: Please don’t just go to a competing trivia site and copy/paste a fact, then claim it as your own. That’s cheating, and since The Amazing Fact Generator is the smartest construct ever created, it will know and it will come after you. Also, let’s limit everybody to five submissions each.

To get a feel for the kinds of facts the Generator likes, take a look at what’s in there already.