Have You Ever Wondered Who Was the First Person to Eat an Oyster?
Cody Cassidy is the author of Who Ate the First Oyster? The Extraordinary People Behind the Greatest Firsts in History. Literary Hub spoke to Cassidy about some of his own “firsts.” * Literary Hub: What was the moment you first realized you wanted to write a book about “firsts”? Cody Cassidy: My ideas nearly always come while I’m reading. In this case, it was Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of all Maladies. Mukherjee begins his book with a fascinating anecdote about the first documented case of cancer, which comes from an ancient Egyptian tablet. The hieroglyph describes the patient and their disease, which is most likely breast cancer judging by the description. I found something deeply interesting not only in that...