This is ridiculously funny. This guy bought a complete 20 volume set of children’s encyclopedias from the 1920s, the humbly titled Book of Knowledge (which he picked up from a garage sale). He’s photographing the hilariously outdated and fascinating entries and uploading them to his site. As he says:

“They are an absolute joy to peruse and the fact that they are written for children makes the condescending tone in which the “facts” are presented so much more fantastic. Unlike traditional A-Z encyclopedias, The Book of Knowledge is organized to be read end to end as a set of school books. Presumably as a nod to the short attention span of youth, the volumes are set up as a repeating set of “books”: The Book of Nature, The Book of Familiar Things, The Book of The Earth, The Book of Wonder, and so on. They are also written in a format heavy on question/answer. They are neolithic FAQs.”

Read the ones on primates. That’s incredibly funny – “You will probably never see in America a gorilla, chimpanzee, or orangutan, for they are too big and strong and terrible to be caught”.

So is the one on the sun – “The sun shines brightly because it is shrinking”, expounds the incredible Book of Knowledge.

Well gee whillikers! All this while I thought it shines brightly because, well, I thought it was a great big ball of fire.

My mistake. I always was bad at science :D

[take me there]