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The Daily Triptych264 / 365

21 SEP 2026

Day 264

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Albert Camus · The Myth of Sisyphus
A small horizontal oil painting on wood, a nineteenth-century American genre scene of chess players, modest in height and width.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Chess Players

United States · 1876 · Oil on wood

In 1876 Thomas Eakins painted a chess game in oil on wood. The panel is under thirty centimetres high and belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Enter lesson 5 MIN
A pale, mottled sphere with light and dark regions, showing a surface of varied terrain including smooth plains and rougher areas, photographed against the black of space.

II · THE DISCOVERY · HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Pluto

18 February 1930 · Clyde Tombaugh · Outer Solar System

Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto by photographing the same patch of sky six nights apart and searching for the one point of light that had moved between the frames.

Enter lesson 6 MIN
A monumental gilded bronze chair set high within a church interior, its surface catching light against the darker architecture around it.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

Chair of Saint Peter

Gian Lorenzo Bernini · 1647–1658 · Bronze and gold leaf

A ceremonial chair cast in bronze and finished with gold leaf, set inside St Peter’s Basilica as sculpture, reredos and seat of claimed authority.

Enter lesson 6 MIN
Head-and-shoulders portrait of a man in a white baseball uniform with red piping and a red cap with the letters STL, looking directly at the camera with a serious expression.

IV · THE GAME · MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

Bob Gibson

Pitcher · 15 April 1959 · St. Louis Cardinals

In 1968 he pitched to an earned run average of 1.12 across three hundred and four innings. The next-lowest mark in his seventeen-season career was more than twice that.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

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