Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is a work of comic fiction by Irish author James Joyce, significant for an experimental style and its resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language.[1][2] Written in Paris over a period of 17 years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's death, Finnegans Wake was Joyce's final work. The entire book is written in an idiosyncratic language, consisting of multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which attempts to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams.[3] Due to its expansive linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and its abandonment of conventions of plot and character construction, Finnegans Wake remains largely unread by the general public.

Egg of Columbus

Columbus was dining with many Spanish nobles when one of them said: 'Sir Christopher, even if your lordship had not discovered the Indies, there would have been, here in Spain which is a country abundant with great men knowledgeable in cosmography and literature, one who would have started a similar adventure with the same result.' Columbus did not respond to these words but asked for a whole egg to be brought to him. He placed it on the table and said: 'My lords, I will lay a wager with any of you that you are unable to make this egg stand on its end like I will do without any kind of help or aid.' They all tried without success and when the egg returned to Columbus, he tapped it gently on the table breaking it slightly and, with this, the egg stood on its end. All those present were confounded and understood what he meant: that once the feat has been done, anyone knows how to do it."

Wikipedia

Neither Sanger nor Wales expected very much from the Wikipedia initiative.[22][8] Wales, anticipating "complete rubbish", hoped that if they were lucky, Wikipedia might yield a couple of rough draft entries for Nupedia.[22] To the surprise of Sanger and Wales, within a few days of launching the number of articles on Wikipedia had outgrown that of Nupedia, and a small collective of editors had formed.

Dear world, thank you for the wikipedia.