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The Daily Triptych297 / 365

24 OCT 2026

Day 297

The rat that has but one hole is quickly taken.

George Herbert · Outlandish Proverbs
Oil painting of several Tahitian women in westernised dress gathered in the shade of a verandah; one irons while others sit and talk, with a shopping bag in the foreground.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Siesta

Paul Gauguin · 1892 · Oil on canvas

In the shade of a verandah, Tahitian women in western dress rest and iron. Gauguin reworked this everyday scene for years, until a dog in the foreground became a shopping bag.

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A small, irregularly shaped grey moon covered in craters, with one very large impact crater dominating one side, photographed against the black of space.

II · THE DISCOVERY · HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Phobos

17 or 18 August 1877 · Asaph Hall · 22.5 kilometres

Asaph Hall found two moons orbiting Mars within days of each other. The inner one circles the planet in less than eight hours — faster than Mars itself rotates.

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A dense, chaotic street scene. A crowd of civilians attacks mounted soldiers. A man in a white shirt lunges forward at the centre, arms raised. Horses rear, mouths open. Bodies tangle in the lower half of the canvas.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Second of May 1808

Francisco Goya · 1814 · Oil on canvas

A crowd attacks mounted soldiers in a narrow street. Goya painted it six years after the event, when the outcome of the war was known and the question was what the uprising had meant.

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Head-and-shoulders portrait of a man in a white baseball uniform with orange trim, an orange cap with the letters SF in white, holding a bat across his chest and looking directly at the camera.

IV · THE GAME · MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

Willie McCovey

First Base · 30 July 1959 · San Francisco Giants

He played fifty-two games in his debut season and hit .354. The next year he hit .238. The career that followed those two numbers lasted twenty-two seasons.

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