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A 1757 engraving depicts jeu de paume players going toe-to-toe. Jeu de paume, or “game of the palm,” was the precursor to modern tennis.
Like many city folk in seventeenth-century France, Jean Gascard rented a small apartment—in his case, a two-room, 600-square-foot abode. He ate a lot of salted fish. He signed paperwork with an X, as he did not know how to write. Yet archaeologists have become intensely interested in how Gascard lived. From at least 1631 to 1637, he served as the first
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