Encyclopedia et ae

It's the birthday of Denis Diderot.

Born in Langres, France (1713), who served as the chief editor of his great Encyclopedia from 1745 to 1772. His was the first encyclopedia to subject all the entries to rational analysis, debunking a lot of ancient wisdom along the way, including an entry on Noah's Ark that tried to estimate how many man-hours Noah and his sons must have spent shoveling manure off their boat. Previous encyclopedias restricted themselves to serious topics like theology and philosophy and science, but Diderot tried to cover everything he could think of: emotions, coal mines, fleas, duels, bladder surgery, stockings, the metaphysics of the human soul, and how to make soup.