Philetas of Cos am I,
'Twas the Liar who made me die,
And the bad nights caused thereby.

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In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c. 1400), the Clerk of Oxenford is the resident master of the trivia among the pilgrims. John Gay's topographical poem Trivia (1716) contains useful advice about what to do if your wig is stolen. The Terrible Trivium, one of the Demons of Ignorance in Norton Juster's book The Phantom Tollbooth (1961), seduces passers-by with mindlessly easy but pointless tasks on which they eventually waste all their time.

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/Barnstars