Reading outside the box…
The folks at AbeBooks— a large UK used book dealer– handle lots of volumes. Lest the staff become jaded, they’ve created a virtual “Weird Book Room,” a repository of the odd and the curiously purposive.
One can find there, for example,
.. and so very much more! (TotH to Daniel Finkelstein)
As we re-order those stacks on our bedside tables, we might recall that it was on this date in 1521 that there began what was surely the most delightfully-named event an elementary school history student was ever made to memorize: The Diet of Worms.
A general assembly of the Imperial Estates of the Holy Roman Empire, it is most famous for the occasion it presented Martin Luther to affirm his views in the face of Imperial resistance, and for the resulting Edict of Worms– via which Emperor Charles V, declared: “For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther. On the contrary, we want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic, as he deserves, to be brought personally before us, or to be securely guarded until those who have captured him inform us, whereupon we will order the appropriate manner of proceeding against the said Luther. Those who will help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work.”
Luther addressing the Diet of Worms