It’s hardly an exaggeration: The Black Death — the bubonic plague that killed from 25 to 40 million people in the 14th century — had a big hand in triggering the cultural revolution that would come to be known as the Renaissance.
I came across this curious information in A History of Knowledge, a well-written book by Charles Van Doren.
The name should ring a bell if you’ve seen Quiz Show, a movie directed by Robert Redford about the rigging of the 1950s quiz show Twenty One.
Van Doren, played by Ralph Fiennes, was the contestant who unseated the show’s reigning champ Herbie Stempel, played by John Turturro. Stempel blew the whistle on the show’s producers, saying that they had asked him to throw the game in favor of Van Doren.
If you’re more of an egghead, you’d also know that Charles Van Doren’s father was the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Van Doren, played in the movie by Paul Scofield.
But enough of that other curiosity.
