From there, the Romans could make up any number they wanted—except, interestingly enough, zero, because they didn’t have a symbol for it. They made the other numbers by adding (putting letters at the end) or subtracting (putting them at the beginning).

For example:

I = 1

II = 2

III = 3 but IV (for example, 1 before 5) = 4

VIII = 8 but IX (1 before 10) = 9

The same principle applies with the big numbers, so you end up with something like XLIV (44, because it is 10 before 50 and 1 before 5) and CDXCIX (499, made up of 100 before 500, 10 before 100, and 1 before 10). You would have thought 499 might be ID (1 before 500), but it isn’t.

The Seven Wonders of the World

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, described in an old encyclopedia as “remarkable for their splendor or magnitude,” were:

• The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

• The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

• The Lighthouse of Alexandria

• The Colossus of Rhodes

• The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus

• The Statue of Zeus at Olympia

• The Great Pyramid of Giza

Of the seven, only the Great Pyramid is still in existence.

A Bit of Classical Mythology

There are lots of Greek and Roman gods, as well as enough mythological characters and demigods to fill a book on their own, but these are some you might remember:

Famous Artists

This was meant to be a Top 20, but the list kept growing. There are so many artists that have contributed to the wonderful world of art we know today that I found I couldn’t leave any of these names out.

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510, Italian): best known for The Birth of Venus (Venus with flowing hair, standing in a shell).

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519, Italian): painter, sculptor, inventor, and all-around polymath—one of the great figures of the Renaissance. Among many of his celebrated works are Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.

Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564, Italian): painter—most famous for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican—and sculptor of the statue of David in Florence.

Raphael (1483-1520, Italian): painter of many versions of the Madonna and Child; and of frescoes, notably The School of Athens for the Sistine Chapel.

Titian (c. 1490-1576, Italian): greatest painter of the Venetian school. His religious and mythological subjects include Assumption of the Virgin and Bacchus and Ariadne.

Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1497-1543, German, latterly in England): court painter to Henry VIII, responsible for the flattering portrait of Anne of Cleves, which encouraged the king to marry her.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1525-69, Flemish): famous for scenes of peasant life and landscapes.

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos, 1541-1614, Greek living in Spain): used distinctive elongated figures in his paintings of saints and in The Burial of Count Orgaz.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640, Flemish): greatest of the Baroque artists, based mainly in Antwerp. Painted the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, London, but is best remembered for depictions of abundantly fleshy women.

Frans Hals (c. 1581-1666, Dutch): best known for portraiture. Painter of The Laughing Cavalier.

Diego de Velázquez (1599-1660, Spanish): court painter to Philip IV, producing many portraits of his patron and his family, notably Las Meninas. Also The Rokeby Venus, painted where the goddess is lying naked on a bed, facing away from the viewer, and looking at herself in a mirror.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69, Dutch): prolific portraitist and self-portraitist; creator of The Night Watch, the most famous painting in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Jan Vermeer (1632-75, Dutch): based in Delft and noted for his skillful use of light; painted everyday scenes of women reading or writing letters or playing musical instruments. Best known for his oil on canvas, Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Canaletto (Giovanni Canal, 1697-1768, Italian): famous for his views of Venice, but also spent time in London and painted scenes of the Thames.

William Hogarth (1697-1764, British): engraver; hard-hitting social satires such as The Rake’s Progress and Gin Lane.

Francisco de Goya (1746-1828, Spanish): painter, notably of the portraits Maja Clothed and Maja Nude, and the dramatic Shootings of May 3rd 1808, inspired by Spanish resistance to French occupation.

J(ohn) M(allord) W (illiam) Turner (1775-1851, British): prolific painter of landscapes and maritime scenes, most famously The Fighting Téméraire. His use of color and light and his portrayal of weather inspired the French Impressionists Monet and Renoir.

John Constable (1776-1837, British): painter of landscapes, notably The Haywain.

Edouard Manet (1832-83, French): established before the Impressionists, he adopted some of their techniques but was never quite one of that school. Famous works include Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (the one where the men are fully dressed and the women are not) and A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903, American, working in England): painter, notably of The Artist’s Mother; also known as a wit. When Oscar Wilde remarked, “How I wish I’d said that,” Whistler responded, “You will, Oscar, you will.”

Edgar Degas (1834-1917, French): Impressionist who painted all those ballet dancers.

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906, French): post-Impressionist and precursor of cubism, based in Provence. In addition to landscapes, famous works include The Card Players and various groups of women bathing.

Claude Monet (1840-1926, French): most important painter of the Impressionist movement, famous for the “series” paintings that studied the effect of light at different times of day and year on the same subject: Rouen cathedral, haystacks and poplars. Lived latterly at Giverny, outside Paris, now a much visited garden, and painted a series of the waterlilies (nymphéas) there.

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917, French): sculptor, most famously of The Kiss, The Thinker, and The Burghers of Calais.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919, French): Impressionist, best known for Les Parapluies and Le Moulin de la Galette (a bar in Montmartre).

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903, French): the one who went to Tahiti and painted the people there.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-90, Dutch, working mainly in France): cut off part of his ear and subsequently committed suicide. Self-portraits, The Potato Eaters, Sunflowers, The Starry Night.

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925, American): portrait painter of the stars, including Ellen Terry, John D. Rockefeller, and various young ladies of fashion.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901, French): the little one. Lived in Montmartre and painted music halls, cafés, and their habitués. Works include At the Moulin Rouge and La Toilette.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973, Spanish, working mostly in France): arguably the greatest and certainly the most versatile painter of the 20th century. After the famous “rose” and “blue” periods of his early years, he was fundamental to the development of cubism, expanded the technique of collage, became involved with the surrealists, designed ballet costumes, and did a bit of pottery. His greatest painting is probably Guernica, a nightmarish portrayal of the horrors of the Spanish Civil War.

Salvador Dalí (1914-89, Spanish): surrealist and notable egomaniac. Studied abnormal psychology and dream symbolism and reproduced its imagery in his paintings. Also worked with the surrealist film director Luis Buñuel (Le Chien Andalou) and designed the dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound. His painting of the Last Supper is the one that shows the arms and torso of Christ floating above the disciples at the table.

Jackson Pollock (1912-56, American): abstract expressionist painter who believed that the act of painting was more important than the finished product. His paintings are therefore highly colorful and chaotic to the point of frenzy. And often huge.

Famous Composers

I was much more disciplined with this list—my Top 20 actually has 20 people in it.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741, Italian): composed operas and church music galore but is now mostly remembered for The Four Seasons, a suite of violin concertos.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750, German): highly esteemed and vastly influential composer—without him there might have been no Haydn, no Mozart, and no Beethoven. Wrote mostly organ music, church music, and orchestral music, such as the Brandenburg Concertos, the St. Matthew Passion, The Well-Tempered Clavier, and Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring. Came from a famous musical family and had many children, including the composers Carl Philip Emmanuel and Johann Christian; the latter moved to London and became known as the English Bach.

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759, German, working in England): successful in Germany before moving to England when George I became king; wrote the Water Music for him. Also wrote a number of operas and developed the English oratorio, of which Messiah (which contains the Hallelujah Chorus) is the best known; composed the anthem Zadok the Priest for the coronation of George II.

Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809, Austrian): “Papa Haydn,” another vastly prolific composer, credited with the development of the classical symphony (he wrote 104 of them, including the London and the Clock) and the four-movement string quartet.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91, Austrian): infant prodigy and all-around genius. Composer of 41 symphonies, including the Jupiter; operas, including Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute; innumerable concertos, sonatas, solo piano pieces, and chamber music. Not bad for someone who died at 35.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827, German): wrote nine symphonies, but the ones we all know are the Fifth (da-dada-DAH) and the Ninth (the Choral Symphony, whose last movement includes the glorious Song of Joy—amazing to think that he was already deaf by this time and never heard it performed). Also wrote Für Elise, a piano piece studied laboriously by generations of budding pianists. And lots of other stuff, including one opera, called Fidelio.

Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868, Italian): known mostly for operas, including La Cenerentola, The Barber of Seville, and William Tell, which boasts the world’s most famous overture.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828, Austrian): wrote about 600 songs (lieder) and The Trout piano quintet. This ambitious career seems odd, then, that he would ever leave anything unfinished. But when we talk about the Unfinished Symphony, we tend to mean Schubert’s Eighth.

Frédéric Chopin (1810-49, Polish): wrote some beautiful tear-jerking stuff for the piano, much of it influenced by Polish folk music: mazurkas, polonaises, waltzes, and short romantic pieces called nocturnes, a term he popularized.

Franz Liszt (1811-86, Hungarian): virtuoso pianist, possibly the best there has ever been, as well as a prolific composer. His best-known works are probably the Hungarian Rhapsodies. His daughter Cosima became Mrs. Richard Wagner.

Richard Wagner (1813-83, German): was once said that he had wonderful moments but bad quarters of an hour. Fans of his work use words like “a masterpiece” and “greatest achievement in the history of opera,” but given that the four “musical dramas” that comprise the Ring cycle run for a total of nearly 16 hours, I am never going to find out firsthand.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901, Italian): wrote rather shorter operas, notably Rigoletto, La Traviata, Don Carlos, and Aida.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-93, Russian): best known as a composer of ballet music (The Nutcracker Suite, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty) but also wrote the wonderfully loud and patriotic 1812 Overture after Napoleon had been forced to retreat from Moscow.

Edward Elgar (1857-1934, English): responsible for the Enigma Variations, including Pomp and Circumstance (“Land of Hope and Glory”).

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924, Italian): another one for the opera buffs—La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Turandot. My reference book says he “lacks the nobility of Verdi” but makes up for it in dramatic flair and skill. And he certainly wrote tunes.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951, Austrian): wrote only a few tunes but invented a form of music called atonality and, later, serialism, which are bywords for “unlistenable” to many people.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911, Austrian): became widely known after Tom Lehrer wrote a song about his wife, Alma, but he was also a great conductor and wrote some good music, too. This included nine finished symphonies and an unfinished one, all on a grand scale, and a song-symphony called Das Lied von der Erde (“The Song of the Earth”).

Gustav Holst (1874-1934, English): best known for the Planets suite, which has seven parts—Earth was not deemed worthy of inclusion and Pluto was not discovered yet. Which is convenient in light of recent events.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971, Russian): composed the Firebird Suite specifically for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and followed this with Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. His style was always experimental, and he turned to neoclassicism and later to serialism, but he was never in the same league as Schoenberg for making people reach for the “off” button.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953, Russian): included because of Peter and the Wolf, a symphonic fairy tale that I listened to at school and that crops up on TV every so often. The Oxford Dictionary of Music says that it is “delightful in itself and a wonderful way of instructing children (and others) how to identify orchestral instruments.” Oh, and he wrote other things, too, starting when he was about three: symphonies, ballets (Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella), operas, film music (Alexander Nevsky), and more.

The Planets

When I was at school, learning the planets was pretty straightforward. There were nine planets in our solar system. Starting at the Sun and working outward, we learned of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. And there were sundry mnemonics to help you remember, along the lines of My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.

Then they began making new discoveries. Most important, in 2003, they discovered an icy body that was larger than Pluto, which brought the whole definition of a planet into question. After much controversy a conference of the International Astronomical Union in 2006 deemed that Pluto no longer qualified. The icy body became known as Eris—after the Greek goddess of discord, which was very appropo, given all the trouble she had caused.

So there are now officially eight major planets—the first eight on the original list—with Pluto and Eris demoted to the status of minor planets or ice dwarfs.