When authors refer to other great works, people, and events, it’s usually not accidental. Put on your super-sleuth hat and figure out why.
Literary and Philosophical References
- Seneca
- Ovid
- Horace
- Rabelais
- Hermann the Lame (11th century monk in Reichenau, Germany), the earliest treatise on the astrolabe, quadrant and chilindrum
- José Zorrilla y Moral, The Goth's Dagger
- Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz. (The main character is referenced as though he were a real person in the world, one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution of 1910.)
- Nostradamus, The Centuries
- Synods of London, The Canons (writings from ecclesiastical councils in twelfth century England)
Historical References
- Maria the Jewess, circa first to third centuries AD, first historical alchemist and inventor of several tools of chemistry, notably the water-bath, a method of gentle heating (1.9)
- Sir Francis Drake's attack on Riohacha, 1599 (2.1)
- Alexander von Humbolt, naturalist and biogeographer, whose 1799 expedition to Spanish America developed the science of meteorology, expanded knowledge of geography and biology, and showed the interrelation between them to determine how and where different species grew.
- General Cortés Vargas, commander of the troops who massacred peaceful, unarmed protesters during the 1928 United Fruit Company strike in Colombia. The death toll has been estimated at 2,000.
- Arnaldo of Villanova, a thirteenth century physician and alchemist in Genoa.