Chronoversity

I sometimes go to the Wikipedia page for whatever date of the year it happens to be. Starting from the top, I learn about all the historical events that happened on that day of the year, followed by notable births, followed by notable deaths.

I don’t do this all that often, but when I do, I read the page all the way through, and I always learn something. Today, for example, I learned that October 28 was the publication date of Gulliver’s Travels. Also that today is Bill Gates’ birthday, in case you want to send him a congratulatory email.

So many fascinating historical events happen to fall on any given day of the year. It occurs to me it might be really fun to build a course around that fact.

Imagine a University course structured entirely around the exigencies of chronological happenstance. On any given day, students would learn about the most notable events that happened on that particular day of the year throughout history.

The purpose of the course would not be to do a deep dive into any particular topic, but rather to provide a structure for providing a broad base of knowledge on many topics.

I could imagine, given just the events listed today, learning about music, politics, religion, mathematics, sports, literature, medicine, technology and many other topics. It might be interesting for individual students to track one or two themes, and see how those particular themes evolve and tie together as the year progresses, day after day.

I couldn’t really tell you what kind of structure would emerge by imposing such a willful layer of apparent randomness. But I can assure you it would be interesting!

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