I Used to Know That_ Stuff You Forgot From School - Caroline Taggart [0]
Epigraph
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright Page
Introduction
ENGLISH
LITERATURE
MATH
SCIENCE
HISTORY
GEOGRAPHY
GENERAL STUDIES
Roman Numerals
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“I’ve a grand memory for forgetting.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson
For Jon and Nic, who are old enough to start forgetting this sort of stuff; and for Mishak and Camille, who are just beginning to learn it.
A READER’S DIGEST BOOK
Copyright © 2009 Michael O’Mara Books Limited
All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction, in any manner, is prohibited.
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First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Michael O’Mara Books Limited, 9 Lion Yard,
Tremadoc Road, London SW4 7NQ
READER’S DIGEST TRADE PUBLISHING
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Taggart, Caroline.
I used to know that : stuff you forgot from school / Caroline Taggart. p. cm.
“A Reader’s digest book”--T.p. verso.
“First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Michael O’Mara Books”--T.p. verso.
eISBN : 978-1-606-52267-7
1. Handbooks, vade-mecums, etc. I. Title.
AG105.T14 2009
031.02--dc22
2008033112
The author would like to thank Ana, who wanted me to write this book; Silvia, for making it happen and for sharing my loathing of Wuthering Heights, and the other Ana, for neck-breaking design. Thanks, also, to everyone who has entered into the spirit of it and made enthusiastic suggestions, even if I haven’t had room to include them all. Special thanks to Bob for vetting the math and science chapters and pointing out that pi isn’t a recurring decimal. I used to know that.
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Introduction
When I started to write this book, I realized that I did remember lots of different things, but I didn’t always remember those facts completely, or necessarily accurately. I knew, for example, that “The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold” was a perfect example of—what—a dactyl or an anapest? I had to look it up. I remembered a bit about sines and cosines but had no idea why they were important. I used to know most of the principal bones in the body. How did that song go? “The head bone’s connected to the neck bone, the neck bone’s connected to the…” Hmmm. And after years of study, I could not seem to name the dates of important wars or, for that matter, why they were fought (I’m still having some trouble with that).
Geography was especially challenging—just when I thought I knew the capital of Burma, they change everything. Myanmar is tragically all over the news, and I’m left scratching my head in bewilderment as to where it is exactly. There’s also a wealth of general information that I thought I knew, like Roman numerals and the Roman equivalent to the Greek gods.
Sometimes I hear a symphony and all I can remember is that it was composed by a man whose last name starts with V…or was it B?
In the course of talking to other people about what I should include in this book, I discovered two things: one, that everybody I spoke to had been to school, and two, that that was pretty much all they had in common. They had all forgotten completely different things. So