A twelve-year-old steals his parents’ credit card and gets on a plane to Bali.
Watson and the Shark, by John Singleton Copley, 1778. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
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Miscellany
On June 15, 1904, a fire broke out on the General Slocum, a steamboat crossing the East River with over thirteen hundred passengers on board, and it sank. Few of the passengers could swim, most were wearing thick layers of clothes, and the life vests were faulty. An estimated 1,021 people died—the deadliest day in New York City’s history until September 11, 2001.
I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.
—John Paul Jones, 1778Lapham’s
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Roundtable
Encyclopedia Hounds
A few of Encyclopædia Britannica’s famous readers, on the occasion of its 250th anniversary. More
The World in Time
Steve Fraser
Lewis H. Lapham talks with Steve Fraser, author of Class Matters: The Strange Career of an American Delusion. More