January 15

Sir Hans Sloane was a wealthy English doctor who was in the habit of collecting things, so many things that it would not be incorrect to label him a pack rat. Granted, he was a pack rat with a great deal of money. In 1716, he was created a baronet, the first medical practioner to receive a hereditary title. When he died on the 11th in 1753, he bequeathed most of his stuff, amassed over a long career, the manuscripts, pictures, coins and more than 40,000 books that were gathering dust in the attic, to what would become the British Museum, which opened on the 15th in 1759, on the condition that his estate be paid £20,000, far less than the value of the collections. Sloane’s family didn’t seek more money because they were just glad to get all that junk out of the attic. This is a bit like some poets today (you know who you are) who are pleased when a university asks to be the repository of their papers and the poet is just happy to clean out the attic.