Alexander Pope Wrote a 35-Page Takedown of a Historian
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters point to it as a masterpiece of humorous archival detective work and a great watch about books and libraries.
What it is
CGP Grey tells the story of Alexander Pope's long takedown of a historian, Thomas Hearne, framed around the quirks of library books and archival research. It is a funny, digressive video essay about literary feuds and tracking down original sources.
Recommended by 5 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2021 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec fossuser · 2021-12 · on “Overdue library book returned more than 110 years later”
For a really great video mostly about checking out books from a library watch this: [this video] I found it pretty funny that hundreds of years later he unearthed an old written feud that ended up directly affecting him in a way which caused him to empathize with one of the sides.
Strong rec rozab · 2022-09 · on “Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?”
To see this gloriously realised, check out CGP Grey's description of Pope's feud with Thomas Hearne. Linking the full video because it's a masterpiece [this video]
Recommends lolinder · 2022-10 · on “Update on the fake story about the river laborers paying people to whip them”
> This one’s notable in that it puts an entire passage in quotes, but it turns out the passage was not in Cheung (1983) at all—not on page 8 or anywhere else in that article—it actually came from a collection from 1998 of old Harvard Business School exam questions. One of my pet peeves is the chain of citations that will inevitably spawn from this. No author can be bothered to go find the original source and just cite that, so this inaccurate (and since retracted) quote will end up propagating itself for decades if not centuries, with each author citing the work that they got the story from. Eventually, hundreds of years from now, someone will be crazy enough to try to work their way down th
Recommends Macha · 2023-09 · on “The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge”
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy two videos from CGP Grey: - The Race to Win Staten Island ( [LINK] ) - Someone dead ruined my life... again ( [this video] )
Recommends ChrisbyMe · 2025-12 · on “Kids who ran away to 1960s San Francisco”
Very cool. If you're interested in things like this you might wanna checkout CGP Grey's videos on tracking down various stories from books through archives. [this video]
Cites jodrellblank · 2022-05 · on “Considered "18+"”
Wait till you find out about "Tiffany" [LINK] (CGP Grey) (spoiler: he couldn't find out where it came from, and did this video on his research to explain more: [this video] )
Cites dllthomas · 2022-10 · on “Update on the fake story about the river laborers paying people to whip them”
> For an excellent and humorous example, see CGP Grey's search for the original Tiffany: [this video] WHAT'S THE JOKE?
Cites Orthanc · 2023-02 · on “Ask HN: Share Your YouTube Channel”
It not an easy answer -- if I can cheat a bit and post a second channel that hosts a podcast where I talk about work a lot: [LINK] Some projects end up taking many months unexpectedly, like this one: [this video] Some years are a lot of bad luck, like they one that just passed: [LINK]