A twelve-year-old boy from Highgate has put himself right up there for the title of London's nerdiest resident after he found five errors in the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Lucian George (even his name is a bit nerdy) wrote to the editors of the encyclopedia to inform them of his findings which included:
- A reference stating that the town of Chotyn, in which two battles between the Poles and the Ottoman Empire were fought, lies in Moldova. As everyone and his dog knows, Chotyn is in Poland.
- The whereabouts of the Polish part of the Belovezhskaya Forest. The encyclopedia says it it lies in the Bialystok, Suwalki and Lomza provinces, but Suwalki and Lomza provinces have not existed since 1998 (duh!).
- The terrain of the European bison, which encompasses parts of Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia and Belarus and not just Poland (can you see a patttern devloping here - the editor of the Polish section of the Encyclopedia Britannica must hate this kid).
The editors of the Encyclopedia (cost: £700) have written back to little Lucian to thank him for"pointing out several errors and misleading statements", but we bet the editors of the Polar Region, Pole Vaulting and Polka entries are pretty worried right now.