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1500 questions
8
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1 answer
Detective story where a loophole in the US extradition law is used to avoid trial
I read a detective story when I was a kid but can't find I now.
The protagonist confessed to a murder he didn't commit to protect a client of his detective agency (who did). However, he carefully planned his arrest and confession ahead and used a…
Quassnoi
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8
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2 answers
Why does Macbeth say ‘throw physic to the dogs’?
In Act V, Scene III of Macbeth:
Macbeth:
Canst not thou not minister to a mind diseased
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that…
Mozibur Ullah
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8
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What does "entailment" mean in "To Kill a Mockingbird"?
From chapter 2 of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee:
Jem’s nose wrinkled. ‘Are we as poor as the Cunninghams?’
‘Not exactly. The Cunninghams are country folks, farmers, and the crash hit them hardest.’
Atticus said the professional people were…
Scarlett Evans
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8
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Looking for a short story about painters who fake a death
I'm trying to find a short story about two painters. They realize that nobody ever becomes famous or earns any money from their work until after they die. So they decide to fake one of them being terminally ill, while really he is busy painting a…
David
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8
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Is there really a single "Old Babylonian version" of the Epic of Gilgamesh?
From the Wikipedia article about the Epic of Gilgamesh:
From the diverse sources found, two main versions of the epic have been partially reconstructed: the standard Akkadian version, or He who saw the deep, and the Old Babylonian version, or…
Rand al'Thor
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Canadian NRI aunty shares her living experience with her niece and nephews
I remember reading this story in my Indian primary school curriculum and it had some impact on my thinking. It's about an NRI aunt coming to India to visit her niece and nephews while they are curiously waiting for her.
Plot: The kids start…
Ankit Sharma
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Did Peddana create Pravarakhya and Varudhini?
When I was studying in my high school, there was a lesson in my Telugu textbook about the travels of Pravarakhya and the places he saw in the Himalayas. It was a part of Manu Charitra, written by Allasani Peddana, a great writer who lived around the…
Nog Shine
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Why does Uri get a special answer when his balloon pops?
In Miriam Roth's classic Hebrew children's book A Tale of Five Balloons (Hebrew: מעשה בחמישה בלונים), five children each get a balloon:
In sequence, each child sees their balloon pop. And each is told not to cry, with the refrain, "That's the end…
Standback
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1 answer
Source of the quote "The only bad question is an unasked one"?
There are many variations on this phrase, but is there an original source which inspired the others, or is it just a piece of popular wisdom that's emerged naturally from humanity?
Wikipedia has a page "No such thing as a stupid question", Goodreads…
Rand al'Thor
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8
votes
1 answer
Poem about bedtime story for witch's child
I read this poem in the 5th or 6th grade or so, so that'd be 2012-2014 (somewhere in there). It was out of some packet copied out of a book for this language arts extension thing (I remember the book being very keen on something called "Jacob's…
auden
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Who is the author of this contradictory poem starting "The night was dark and stormy"?
Does anyone know the name of or the author of the poem below? My grandfather used to say it all of the time and I would like to read it at his funeral. It's very silly and goes something like this:
The night was dark and stormy,
The sun was…
Lindsay Day
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What is "the sin which ruined our first parents" in The Count of Monte Cristo?
The opening of Chapter 12 of The Count of Monte Cristo describes a meeting between Villefort and his father Noirtier, on which a servant apparently attempted to eavesdrop. The passage (translation from Chapman & Hall 1846 with my emphasis) reads as…
Alex
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Where can I find details on the original manuscripts for the Miyamoto Musashi texts?
I'm doing a "reliability of the text" study and want to review the reliability of the texts that have been used to substantiate the Miyamoto Musashi texts The Book of the Five Rings and The Path of Aloneness. I've already been through all of the…
Benjamin
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8
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How does the editor know that seven lines are missing from Wordsworth's Home at Grasmere?
The Wordsworth edition The Major Works, edited by Stephen Gill and published by Oxford University Press in 1984 (and revised later) was the first
selection of Wordsworth's work (...) in which the poems are ordered according to the date of their…
Tsundoku
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8
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What was Sydney Carton doing in France?
I reread A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens recently and was struck at how coincidental it was that Sydney Carton just happened to be in France during the time Charles Darnay was accused the second time. Darnay had been imprisoned for a year…
poeticvampire
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