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Features

America's war on sleep

It all goes back to Thomas Edison

25 January 2014

9:00 AM

25 January 2014

9:00 AM

 Fredericksburg, Virginia

Ask an American to name the author of the line ‘Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care’, and he will promptly reply ‘Shakespeare’. It’s pure guesswork but we always credit the Bard with anything that sounds like a literary quotation, so he inadvertently gets it right. But if you recite the rest of the passage and ask what it means you will draw a blank.

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