“I had to walk fifteen miles to school barefoot in the snow! Uphill both ways!”*…
5-Hour Journey Into The Mountains On A 1ft Wide Path To Probably The Most Remote School In The World, Gulu, China
In fact, some schoolchildren do have to work really hard for their educations…
Kids Traverse 800m Steel Cable 400m Above The Rio Negro River, Colombia
More perilous paths at “25 Of The Most Dangerous And Unusual Journeys To School In The World.”
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Lest we wonder if it’s worth it, we might spare a memorial moment for Michel Eyquem de Montaigne; he died on this date in 1592. Best known during his lifetime as a statesman, Montaigne is remembered for popularizing the essay as a literary form. His effortless merger of serious intellectual exercises with casual anecdotes and autobiography– and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as “Attempts” or “Trials”)– contain what are, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a powerful influence on writers ever after, from Descartes, Pascal, and Rousseau, through Hazlitt, Emerson, and Nietzsche, to Zweig, Hoffer, and Asimov. Indeed, he’s believed to have been an influence on the later works of Shakespeare.
