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[Antonio]

On this day, May 16, 1718, the Italian mathematician, Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born. Linguist and philosopher, her father being professor of mathematics in the university of Bologna. When only nine years old she had such command of Latin as to be able to publish an elaborate address in that language, maintaining that the pursuit of liberal studies was not improper for her sex. By her thirteenth year, she had acquired Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, German and other languages. Two years later her father began to assemble in his house at stated intervals a circle of the most learned men in Bologna, before whom she read and maintained a series of theses on the most abstruse philosophical questions.

Records of these meetings are given in de Brosse's "Lettres sur l'Italie and in the Propositiones Philosophicae", which her father caused to be published in 1738. These displays, being probably not altogether congenial to Maria, who was of a retiring disposition, ceased in her twentieth year, and it is even said that she had at that age a strong desire to enter a convent. Though the wish was not gratified, she lived from that time in a retirement almost conventual, avoiding all society and devoting herself entirely to the study of mathematics.

The most valuable result of her labours was "Le istituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventu italiana", a work of great merit, which was published at Milan in 1748. The first volume treats of the analysis of finite quantities, and the second of the analysis of infinitesimals. A French translation of the second volume by P. T. d'Antelmy, with additions by Charles Bossut (1730-1814), appeared at Paris in 1775; and an English translation of the whole work by John Colson (1680-1760), the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was published in 1801 at the expense of Baron Maseres.

Madame Agnesi also wrote a commentary on the "Traite analytique des sections coniques of the marquis de l'Hopital", which, though highly praised by those who saw it in manuscript, was never published. She invented and discussed the curve known as the "witch of Agnesi" (q.v.) or versiera.

In 1750, on the illness of her father, she was appointed by Pope Benedict XIV. to the chair of mathematics and natural Philosophy at Bologna. After the death of her father in 1752 she carried out a long-cherished purpose by giving herself to the study of theology, and especially of the Fathers. After holding for some years the office of directress of the Hospice Trivulzio for Blue Nuns at Milan, she herself joined the sisterhood, and in this austere order ended her days on the 9th of January 1799.

The Contest for Knowledge: Debates over Women's Learning in Eighteenth-Century Italy

Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 1

[Evelyn]

Interesting!

[Antonio]

Evelyn wrote: "Interesting!"

Yes, quite right! An avant-garde woman ...

[Antonio]

May 20, 1609 - Shakespeare’s sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.

The word “illicitly” is the key-word for this book. Today, just like yesterday, about printing and publishing history. Authors are always on the run after editors and publishers, publishers and editors after authors. The market is all the time at calling, readers are always anxious to find what to read. Shakespeare’s hand in the production will always remain shrouded, but some evidence can be gleaned from the probity and practices of the publisher, Thorpe, and the printer, Eld.

Thorpe was an unusual figure in the early 17th-century book trade: he was neither a printer nor a bookseller, but an entrepreneur who obtained manuscripts, had them printed, then moved the printed copies on to booksellers. Apart from two dubious ventures of a minor nature, he seems to have been a respectable enough businessman.

His collaboration with George Eld began in 1605 with Chapman’s Al Fooles and Jonson’s Seianus His Fall and he used Eld almost exclusively from 1607 onwards with Jonson’s Volpone and Marston’s What You Will in 1607, Jonson’s The Characters of Two royall Masques, Chapman’s The Conspiracie And Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron and Richard West’s Wits A. B. C. Or A Centurie of Epigrams in 1608, and Shake-speares Sonnets in 1609.

The manuscript of Shake-speares Sonnets, given to Thorpe and Eld, may have had authorial warrant. Whether it was in Shakespeare’s or in a scribal hand with or without emendations cannot be determined. The setting of the type was done by two principal compositors, but the pulls were not likely overseen by Shakespeare, any emended sheets were mixed with the uncorrected, and the collation of sheets for binding drew indiscriminately on both kinds.

If Shakespeare was absent from the printing and binding process (he may have been away from London because of the severity of the plague in 1609), then the non-supervisory role would have repeated the practice that obtained for the publication of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece by Richard Field in 1593 and 1594 during outbreaks of the plague, which also seem not to have been authorially corrected during printing.

Sources:

http://www.williamshakespeare-sonnets...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_...

http://www.williamshakespeare-sonnets...

Shakespeare's Sonnets

[Karin]

Antonio wrote: "Karin wrote: "This rather off-topic, but out of the corner of my eye I thought it was St Pancreas at first."

The importance of a vowel ..."

So true!

[Antonio]

1639 - May 22, Tommaso Campanella died. (b.1568), Italian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet. He spent 27 years imprisoned in Naples (1599-1626) for leading a conspiracy against the Spanish rule. During his detention, he wrote his most important works: The Monarchy of Spain (1600), Political Aphorisms (1601), Atheismus triumphatus (Atheism Conquered, 1605–1607), Quod reminiscetur (1606?), Metaphysica (1609–1623), Theologia (1613–1624), and his most famous work, The City of the Sun (originally written in Italian in 1602; published in Latin in Frankfurt (1623) and later in Paris (1638).

Tommaso Campanella, born Giovanni Domenico Campanella, was a universal thinker, for he was philosopher, theologian, political theorist, educator, utopian, astrologer, and poet. More important, he is significant in the history of ideas as one of those who led in the movement from a medieval worldview to a modern, more scientific one.

The son of an illiterate shoemaker in southern Italy, Campanella entered the Dominican order at fourteen. He became a great scholar, gifted with an extraordinary memory. He was also a prolific writer, producing at least a hundred works in both Latin and Italian. His life and his writing are inextricably linked, for his writings not only expressed his thoughts but also brought about the terrible events of his life.

As a Dominican monk, Campanella was trained in the Aristotelian tradition. The Dominican Saint Thomas Aquinas had used Aristotle for his defense of Christian belief, a defense based upon the reconciliation of reason and faith. Influenced by other readings, especially those of the naturalist philosopher Bernardino Telesio, Campanella rejected Aristotelianism as being abstract and pagan. He argued for a more concrete explanation of the world, although he never rejected reason. Nor did his Catholic faith waver; however, he wished to propound another kind of defense of that faith. Unfortunately, the Church of the day was unwilling to accept such a defense.

His first writings and his own stubborn strength would lead to his being thrown into prison, tortured horribly, and tried for heretical religious ideas as well as for conspiracy against the Spanish rulers of southern Italy. He would remain in prison for nearly twenty-seven years, from 1599 to 1626, writing almost all the time, even in solitary confinement.

As a philosopher-theologian, Campanella held that the things of this world show forth the things of God—that is, humankind can arrive at the knowledge of God’s existence by studying the actualities of the world. In brief, he believed in a kind of scientific method. Yet Campanella was not a practical scientist himself, and some of his ideas about the world were neither modern nor objective. For example, he never quite accepted the idea that the sun was the center of the (local) universe, even though he knew the arguments of Nicolas Copernicus. He also believed strongly in astrology as a science. Nevertheless, he was a friend and defender of Galileo, since Galileo was examining the actual world.

In 1626, Campanella was released from prison; accused once more of heresy, however, he was jailed again, and only in 1629 was he finally freed. For a short time, he was in favor with Pope Urban VIII. Nevertheless, suspected of further conspiracy, he fled from Rome and went to France, where he was received with favor. In 1639, despite his efforts to put off death by using astrology, he died at seventy-one.

As political thinker, Campanella had, in A Discourse Touching the Spanish Monarchy, proposed a universal state with the pope as spiritual head and the Spanish as political defenders (despite his own possible conspiring against the Spaniards). At the end of his life, he argued that the French were the ones to establish that universal state. Campanella’s political theorizing has been seen as a type of Machiavellianism, if one considers Niccolò Machiavelli’s work only as a guide to how to seize and hold power. Campanella, though, would reject the relativism implicit in Machiavelli’s thought, for Campanella held that there were absolutes that the good—not merely the successful—ruler must follow. What Campanella really wanted was a universal, theocratic monarchy in which humankind would be happy, productive, and Christian.

Campanella’s wish for such a state lies behind his most famous work, The City of the Sun, a description of a utopia that he set in Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka). The citizens of his “city” are practical, hardworking, and content. Here, too, Campanella develops his argument that education for the masses should be useful, not merely theoretical. Yet Campanella is not a liberal democrat. His utopia is communistic and, thus, opposed to individualism. Everyone shares the goods produced by common labor; however, virtually absolute power is in the hands of an educated elite, whom Campanella considered most capable of governing justly. Moreover, his state is not Christian, although Campanella suggests that it will become so when it learns the truth about Christianity.

Still, Campanella offers some rather “un-Christian” ideas—for example, there are no families in his imagined city, for he believed that love for one’s children leads to a desire for property to pass on, a kind of egoism. Therefore, to populate his state, men and women must come together in a kind of “free” sex. Still, although sex may seem free, it is really for procreation, and the children are raised by the state. In brief, in Campanella’s universal state, community, not personal pleasure, is the highest good.

“Man lives in a double world: according to the mind he is contained by no physical space and by no walls, but at the same time he is in heaven and on earth, in Italy, in France, in America, wherever the mind's thrust penetrates and extends by understanding, seeking, mastering. But indeed according to the body he exists not, except in only so much space as is least required, held fast in prison and in chains to the extent that he is not able to be in or to go to the place attained by his intellect and will, nor to occupy more space than defined by the shape of his body; while with the mind he occupies a thousand worlds.”
― Tommaso Campanella

Bibliography

Blackwell, Richard J. Introduction to A Defense of Galileo, the Mathematician from Florence, by Tommaso Campanella. Translated by Blackwell. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. A useful summary of Campanella’s thought.

Bonansea, Bernardino M. Tommaso Campanella: Renaissance Pioneer of Modern Thought. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1969. Gives a biography and a thorough but difficult discussion of Campanella’s philosophy and includes a bibliography.

Donno, Daniel J., trans. The City of the Sun: A Poetical Dialogue, by Tommaso Campanella. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Donno offers a short outline of the work’s meanings.

Gardner, Edmund G. Tommaso Campanella and His Poetry. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1923. From the Taylorian lecture series. Includes bibliographical references.

Grillo, Francesco. Tommaso Campanella in America: A Critical Bibliography and a Profile. New York: S. F. Vanni, 1954.

Grillo, Francesco. Tommaso Campanella in America: A Critical Bibliography and a Profile, Supplement. New York: S. F. Vanni, 1957. Contains a short biography, a discussion of Campanella’s thought, and an extensive, annotated bibliography of works in English about Campanella.

Headley, John M. Tommaso Campanella and the Transformation of the World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Tommaso Campanella and the Transformation of the World

[Antonio]

1934 - May 23, Bonnie Parker (23) and Clyde Barrow (24) were shot some 4 dozen times early in the morning in a police ambush by Texas Rangers as they were driving a stolen Ford Deluxe along a road in Bienville Parish, near Sailes, La. This ended the most spectacular manhunt seen in America up to that time.

The pair had spent the previous 2 years killing and robbing banks in the Midwest. Bonnie Parker was 19 and Clyde Barrow was 21 when they met in Dallas in 1930. By the time the Barrow gang's crime spree ended four years later, Bonnie, Clyde, Clyde's brother Buck and Buck's wife had terrorised the Southwest and Midwest and were believed to have committed 13 murders.

In 1997 Clyde’s bullet-ridden shirt was auctioned off to a Nevada casino for $85,000. His largest theft was estimated at $4,000.

Bonnie and Clyde were outlaws, who robbed and killed. Police saw the couple as dangerous criminals, while the public viewed Bonnie and Clyde as modern-day Robin Hoods. Part of the couple's charm were Bonnie's poems.

Bonnie Parker wrote two poems while she and Clyde Barrow were on the run from the law. This poem, "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde", was the second of the two. (The first poem is "The Story of Suicide Sal.") Bonnie gave a copy of the poem to her mother just weeks before both Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down.

Interestingly, within the poem, Bonnie tells their version of the story of what turned them into criminals, claims that not all the crimes attributed to them are actually theirs, and foresees that "the law" will beat them in the end.

The Story of Bonnie and Clyde

You've read the story of Jesse James
Of how he lived and died;
If you're still in need
Of something to read,
Here's the story of Bonnie and Clyde.
Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow gang,
I'm sure you all have read
How they rob and steal
And those who squeal
Are usually found dying or dead.
There's lots of untruths to these write-ups;
They're not so ruthless as that;
Their nature is raw;
They hate all the law
The stool pigeons, spotters, and rats.
They call them cold-blooded killers;
They say they are heartless and mean;
But I say this with pride,
That I once knew Clyde
When he was honest and upright and clean.
But the laws fooled around,
Kept taking him down
And locking him up in a cell,
Till he said to me,
"I'll never be free,
So I'll meet a few of them in hell."
The road was so dimly lighted;
There were no highway signs to guide;
But they made up their minds
If all roads were blind,
They wouldn't give up till they died.
The road gets dimmer and dimmer;
Sometimes you can hardly see;
But it's fight, man to man,
And do all you can,
For they know they can never be free.
From heart-break some people have suffered;
From weariness some people have died;
But take it all in all,
Our troubles are small
Till we get like Bonnie and Clyde.
If a policeman is killed in Dallas,
And they have no clue or guide;
If they can't find a friend,
They just wipe their slate clean
And hand it on Bonnie and Clyde.
There's two crimes committed in America
Not accredited to the Barrow mob;
They had no hand
In the kidnap demand,
Nor the Kansas City depot job.
A newsboy once said to his buddy;
"I wish old Clyde would get jumped;
In these awful hard times
We'd make a few dimes
If five or six cops would get bumped."
The police haven't got the report yet,
But Clyde called me up today;
He said, "Don't start any fights
We aren't working nights
We're joining the NRA."
From Irving to West Dallas viaduct
Is known as the Great Divide,
Where the women are kin,
And the men are men,
And they won't "stool" on Bonnie and Clyde.
If they try to act like citizens
And rent them a nice little flat,
About the third night
They're invited to fight
By a sub-gun's rat-tat-tat.
They don't think they're too tough or desperate,
They know that the law always wins;
They've been shot at before,
But they do not ignore
That death is the wages of sin.
Some day they'll go down together;
And they'll bury them side by side;
To few it'll be grief
To the law a relief
But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.
-- Bonnie Parker

In 1979 Ted Hinton and Larry Grove authored "Ambush: The Real Story of Bonnie and Clyde."

Ambush: The Real Story Of Bonnie And Clyde

In 2009 Jeff Guinn authored “Go Down Together: the True Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde."

Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde

[Antonio]

1498 - May 24. The body of Girolamo Savonarola (45), moral scourge of Florence (1494-98), was burned along with 2 Dominican companions. An enraged crowd burned the previously hanged body of Savonarola at the same spot where he had ordered cultural works burned the year before.

The Italian religious and political reformer, Girolamo Savonarola, was born of a noble family at Ferrara and in 1474, entered the Dominican order at Bologna. He seems to have preached in 1482 at Florence, but his first trial was a failure. In a convent at Brescia his zeal won attention, and in 1489 he was recalled to Florence. His second appearance in the pulpit of San Marco -- on the sinfulness and apostasy of the time -- was a great popular triumph, and by some he was hailed as an inspired prophet.

Under Lorenzo the Magnificent art and literature had felt the humanist revival of the 15th century, whose spirit was utterly at variance with Savonarola's conception of spirituality and Christian morality. To the adherents of the Medici therefore, Savonarola early became an object of suspicion but till the death of Lorenzo in 1492, his relations with the Church were at least not antagonistic and when, in 1493, a reform of the Dominican order in Tuscany was proposed under his auspices, it was approved by the pope, and Savonarola was named the first vicar-general.

But now his preaching began to point plainly to a political revolution as the divinely-ordained means for the regeneration of religion and morality, and he predicted the advent of the French under Charles VIII, whom soon after he welcomed to Florence. Soon, however, the French were compelled to leave Florence, and a republic was established, of which Savonarola became the guiding spirit, his party ("the Weepers") being completely in the ascendant.

The republic of Florence was to be a Christian commonwealth, of which God was the sole sovereign, and His Gospel the law: the most stringent enactments were made for the repression of vice and frivolity. Gambling was prohibited and the vanities of dress were restrained by sumptuary laws. Even the women flocked to the public square to fling down their costliest ornaments and Savonarola's followers made huge "bonfires of the vanities."

Meanwhile, his rigor and claim to the gift of prophecy led to his being cited in 1495 to answer a charge of heresy at Rome and on his failing to appear he was forbidden to preach. Savonarola disregarded the order, but his difficulties at home increased. The new system proved impracticable and although the conspiracy for the recall of the Medici failed, and five of the conspirators were executed, yet this very rigor hastened the reaction.

In 1497 came a sentence of excommunication from Rome; and thus precluded from administering the sacred offices, Savonarola zealously tended the sick monks during the plague. A second "bonfire of the vanities" in 1498 led to riots, and at the new elections the Medici party came into power. Savonarola was again ordered to desist from preaching, and was fiercely denounced by a Franciscan preacher, Francesco da Puglia. Dominicans and Franciscans appealed to the interposition of divine providence by the ordeal of fire. But when the trial was to have come off (April 1498) difficulties and debates arose, destroying Savonarola's prestige and producing a complete revulsion of public feeling.

He was brought to trial for falsely claiming to have seen visions, and uttered prophecies, for religious error, and for sedition. Under torture, he made avowals which he afterwards withdrew. He was declared guilty and the sentence was confirmed by Rome. On May 23, 1498, this extraordinary man and two Dominican disciples were hanged and burned, still professing their adherence to the Church.

Source: http://timelines.ws/

Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for Renaissance Florence

[Antonio]

On this day, May 25, 1895, author Oscar Wilde was convicted of a morals charge in London; he was sentenced to two years in prison.

Oscar Wilde is taken to Reading Gaol in London after being convicted of sodomy. The famed writer of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest brought attention to his private life in a feud with Sir John Sholto Douglas, whose son was intimately involved with Wilde.

Homosexuality was a criminal offence and serious societal taboo at this time in Britain. Wilde had gone back and forth between hiding his sexual orientation and attempting to gain some measure of public acceptance. After Douglas, a furious homophobe, began spouting his objections to Wilde’s behaviour to the public, Wilde felt compelled to sue him for libel.

In his defense, Douglas argued that Wilde had solicited 12 boys to commit sodomy between 1892 and 1894. On the third day of the proceedings, Wilde’s lawyer withdrew the suit, since there was abundant evidence of his client’s guilt. After that, the Crown issued a warrant for Wilde’s arrest on indecency charges. Rather than flee to France, Wilde decided to remain and stand trial. At a preliminary bail hearing, chambermaids testified that they had seen young men in Wilde’s bed and a hotel housekeeper stated that there were faecal stains on his bed sheets. Wilde was denied bail.

At Wilde’s first criminal trial, he was cross-examined extensively on the “love that dare not speak its name.” Wilde managed to secure a mistrial when a lone juror refused to vote to convict. The second trial began on May 21. Although many of the potential witnesses refused to betray Wilde by testifying, he was convicted. The judge remarked at his sentencing, “It is the worst case I have ever tried. I shall pass the severest sentence that the law allows. In my judgment, it is totally inadequate for such a case as this. The sentence of the Court is that you be imprisoned and kept to hard labour for two years.”

Wilde served his two years and then spent the last three years of his life in exile. He died at the age of 45 and was buried in Paris.

Sources: http://www.history.com/

The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde

https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...

[Antonio]

May 26, 1703, Samuel Pepys (b.1633), an English diarist, died.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys is a unique document in the annals of English literature, perhaps of all literature. There are other fascinating day-to-day accounts of interesting and momentous times, and some of these were written by people of genius, but there is only one other autobiographical collection that combines fascinating subject matter and genius of composition with the intriguing story that is associated with the Diary of Pepys.

There is an important difference between Boswell and Pepys. Boswell, as his editors admit, was writing for posterity; Pepys was not. Pepys’s Diary was written for himself only, apparently for the sole purpose of allowing its author to savour once more, at the end of each day, the experiences of the preceding twenty-four hours. There is no evidence of revision of any kind, and the book was written in a shorthand that protected it from posterity for more than a hundred years after its author’s failing eyesight forced him to give up keeping his diary.

Pepys’s method of composition gives the Diary an immediacy that makes Boswell’s Journals appear sedulously organised. The coded shorthand allows for admissions of personal animosities and revelations of scandalous behaviour that otherwise would not be found in the writings of a responsible public official. That Pepys was a responsible, high-ranking public official is the last factor that contributes to the importance of his work. Boswell was the scion of an important Scottish family and a member of the Scottish bar, but (aside from his Corsican experience) the only history in which he was involved was literary history. Pepys was involved with the history of a nation at a very important time.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete and free:

http://www.limpidsoft.com/galaxy8/sam...

Diary of Samuel Pepys - Complete

[Antonio]

On this day, May 27, 1840, the sometimes called "the Devil's Violinist," Niccolò Paganini, died. A virtuoso talent, accompanied by his extraordinary dexterity and flexibility which gave him an almost mythic reputation, he is considered the greatest violinist of all time.

Italian virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini may be the perfect example of nature meets nurture. Taught the violin by his father as a child and tutored by the best teachers, Paganini was considered a prodigy. The ferocity with which he played, coupled with his elongated fingers and extraordinary flexibility, gave him a mysterious, almost mythical reputation. Mobbed in the street and rumored to have a deal with the devil to achieve the heights of his virtuoso performances, he ultimately became considered the greatest violinist of all time.

Niccolò Paganini was born in Genoa, Italy, on October 27, 1782, the third of six children born to Teresa and Antonio Paganini. The elder Paganini was in the shipping business, but he also played the mandolin and began teaching his son the violin at an early age. Niccolo's mother had high hopes of her son becoming a famous violist. He had a weakness for gambling, womanizing and alcohol, reportedly having a breakdown early in his career due to the latter. Post recovery he returned to Lucca, earning the favor of Napoleon's sister, Princess Elisa Baciocchi, and securing the position of court violinist.

He eventually grew restless and returned to the life of a virtuoso, touring Europe, amassing wealth by enchanting audiences with the ferocity or sensitivity of his playing—audiences were said to have burst into tears at his execution of tender passages. Paganini's reputation began to take on mythic proportions—he was often mobbed in the streets.

His pure talent, showmanship and dedication to his craft was further augmented by possibly two physical syndromes: Marfan's and Ehlers-Danlos, one giving him particularly long limbs, especially fingers, the other giving him extraordinary flexibility. These certainly would have factored into his exceptional virtuosity, earning him nicknames such as "the Devil's Violinist" and "Rubber Man." He also perpetuated the mythology with stunts like severing strings on a violin and playing a piece such as the Witches Dance on a sole string.

Paganini had a few close friends, including composers Gioachino Rossini and Hector Berlioz, who composed Harold en Italie for him, and a mistress with whom he had a son, Achilles, who he later legitimized and left his fortune to. Plagued with illness later in life, Niccolò Paganini lost his voice in 1838. He moved to Nice, France, to recover, but died there on May 27, 1840.
Paganini is considered perhaps the greatest violinist that ever lived and his compositions, including 24 Caprices, for violin alone are some of the most complex pieces ever composed for the instrument.

Sources: https://www.biography.com/people/nicc...

Nicolò Paganini

[Antonio]

Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson, April 4, 1928, died today May 28, 2014. She was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.

Maya Angelou is, true to the title of her own poem, a “Phenomenal Woman.” Few people can say they have been a novelist, professor, actress, singer, director, scholar, researcher, poet, and brothel madam, yet Angelou has filled all of these roles and many more. She was an integral part of the civil rights movement, working closely with both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. As a survivor of poverty, familial discord, and a harrowing childhood, Angelou was able to turn her remarkable, tumultuous life into creative inspiration, particularly in the autobiographical work “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, which launched her career. Today, she is celebrated as one of the most notable African American women of the twentieth century, yet her accomplishments cross lines of race, gender, sexuality, and culture.

Maya Angelou read her poem “On the Pulse of the Morning” at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration. Maya Angelou was the second poet to perform at a presidential inauguration; before her, he only other poet to have performed was Robert Frost, who read at Kennedy’s.

Although Maya Angelou did not have a college education, she received over fifty honorary degrees and countless academic engagements. Her lack of a doctorate does not stop people from referring to the accomplished scholar as "Dr. Maya Angelou". In August 2006, Angelou received the Mother Teresa Award “for her untiring devotion and service to humanity.”
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Like Angelou’s autobiographies and like her volumes of poetry, “On the Pulse of Morning” speaks of survival. Lyrical and inspirational, it calls human beings to have the imagination and courage to build up instead of tear down, and it echoes the titles of Angelou’s other works, especially “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”. If all caged birds sing together, this poem asserts, then the human race will indeed survive.

THE INAUGURATION:
Maya Angelou: 'On the Pulse of Morning'
A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Marked the mastodon, The dinosaur, who left dried tokens Of their sojourn here On our planet floor, Any broad alarm of their hastening doom Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages. But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my Back and face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow. I will give you no hiding place down here. You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness Have lain too long Face down in ignorance. Your mouths spilling words Armed for slaughter. The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me, But do not hide your face. Across the wall of the world, A River sings a beautiful song, Come, rest here by my side. Each of you, a bordered country, Delicate and strangely made proud, Yet thrusting perpetually under siege. Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore, currents of debris upon my breast. Yet today I call you to my riverside, If you will study war no more. Come, Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs The Creator gave to me when I and the Tree and the rock were one. Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your Brow and when you yet knew you still Knew nothing. The River sang and sings on. There is a true yearning to respond to The singing River and the wise Rock. So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew The African, the Native American, the Sioux, The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh, The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, The Privileged, the Homeless, the Teacher. They hear. They all hear The speaking of the Tree. Today, the first and last of every Tree Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River. Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River. Each of you, descendant of some passed On traveller, has been paid for. You, who gave me my first name, you, Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then Forced on bloody feet, Left me to the employment of Other seekers -- desperate for gain, Starving for gold. You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot, You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought, Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare Praying for a dream. Here, root yourselves beside me. I am that Tree planted by the River, Which will not be moved. I, the Rock, I, the River, I, the Tree I am yours -- your passages have been paid. Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream. Women, children, men, Take it into the palms of your hands, Mold it into the shape of your most Private need. Sculpt it into The image of your most public self. Lift up your hearts Each new hour holds new chances For new beginnings. Do not be wedded forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness. The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this fine day You may have the courage To look up and out and upon me, the Rock, the River, the Tree, your country. No less to Midas than the mendicant. No less to you now than the mastodon then. Here, on the pulse of this new day You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister's eyes, into Your brother's face, your country And say simply Very simply With hope Good morning.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/21/us/...

On The Pulse Of Morning: Inscribed

[Antonio]

At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, become the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth. The two, part of a British expedition, made their final assault on the summit after spending a fitful night at 27,900 feet. News of their achievement broke around the world on June 2, the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, and Britons hailed it as a good omen for their country’s future.

The two men hugged each other with relief and joy but only stayed on the summit for 15 minutes because they were low on oxygen. Mr Hillary took several photographs of the scenery and of Sherpa Tenzing waving flags representing Britain, Nepal, the United Nations and India. Sherpa Tenzing buried some sweets and biscuits in the snow as a Buddhist offering to the gods. They looked for signs of George Mallory and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine who had disappeared in 1924 in a similar attempt to conquer Everest, but found nothing. Then they began the slow and tortuous descent to rejoin their team leader Colonel John Hunt further down the mountain at Camp VI.

When he saw the two men looking so exhausted Col Hunt assumed they had failed to reach the summit and started planning another attempt. But then the two climbers pointed to the mountain and signalled they had reached the top, and there were celebrations all round. Col Hunt attributed the successful climb to advice from other mountaineers who had attempted the feat over the years, careful planning, excellent open-circuit oxygen equipment and good weather. Mr Hillary described the peak, which is 29,028 feet (8,847 m) above sea level, as "a symmetrical, beautiful snow cone summit".

He was one of the members of the expedition led by Eric Shipton in 1951 that discovered the southern route to the top of the mountain. A year later, Tenzing reached the record height of 28,215 feet (8,599 m) during a Swiss expedition led by Raymond Lambert. Mount Everest was named after Sir George Everest, the surveyor-general of India who was the first to produce detailed maps of the Indian subcontintent including the Himalayas.

Sources: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/defau...

Sir Edmund Hillary: An Extraordinary Life

[Antonio]

Saint Joan of Arc, byname the Maid of Orléans, French Sainte Jeanne d’Arc or La Pucelle d’Orléans (born c. 1412 ce, Domrémy, Bar, France—died May 30, 1431, Rouen; canonized May 16, 1920; feast day May 30; French national holiday, second Sunday in May), national heroine of France, a peasant girl who, believing that she was acting under divine guidance, led the French army in a momentous victory at Orléans that repulsed an English attempt to conquer France during the Hundred Years’ War. Captured a year afterwards, Joan was burned to death by the English and their French collaborators as a heretic. She became the greatest national heroine of her compatriots, and her achievement was a decisive factor in the later awakening of French national consciousness. (Britannica)

“And on Wednesday the penultimate day of May, being the last day of the trial, By Us the said Jeanne was cited to hear the law and to appear in person before Us in the Old Market of the town of Rouen at eight o'clock in the morning, to see herself declared relapsed into her errors, heretic and excommunicate; together with the intimations customary to be made in such a case.

Later on the same day, at about nine o'clock in the morning, We the bishop and judges being in the Old Market of Rouen, near to the church of Saint Sauveur, in the presence of the Bishops of ThÈrouanne and Noyon, and several other doctors, clerks and masters, after the sermon had been preached, We admonished Jeanne, for the salvation of her soul, that she should repent her evil deeds and show true contrition, by means of counsel from two Friar Preachers, who were near her in order that they might continually advise her, whom for this purpose We had appointed.

All these matters referred to being done, We, the aforesaid bishop and Vice‑Inquisitor, having regard to the afore‑mentioned matters wherein it appeared that Jeanne remained obstinate in her errors, and through malice and devilish obstinacy had falsely shown signs of contrition and penitence; and that she had blasphemed the holy and divine Name of God; and showing herself an incorrigible heretic had relapsed into heresy and error, and was unworthy and incapable of any pity,

We proceeded to the Definitive Sentence in the manner following: IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, AMEN

We Pierre, by Divine pity, humble Bishop of Beauvais, and We, Brother Jean le MaÓtre, deputy of the Inquisitor of the Faith, judges competent in this matter,

Since you, Jeanne, called the Pucelle, have been found by Us relapsed into divers errors and crimes of schism, idolatry, invocation of devils, and various other wickednesses,

And since for these reasons by just judgment We have found you so to be, Nevertheless, since the Church never closes her arms to those who would return to her, We did believe that, with full understanding and unfeigned faith, you had left all the errors which you had renounced, vowing, swearing and publicly promising that never again would you fall into such errors, nor into any other heresies, but would live in Catholic unity and communion with our Church and our Holy Father the Pope, as is stated in a schedule signed by your own hand.

None the less time and again you have relapsed, as a dog that returns to its vomit, as We do state with great sorrow. Wherefore We declare that you have again incurred the Sentence of excommunication which you formerly incurred, and are again fallen into your previous errors, for which reasons We now declare you to be a heretic.

And by this Sentence, seated upon Our tribunal of justice, as it is herein written, We do cast you forth and reject you from the communion of the Church as an infected limb, and hand you over to secular justice, praying the same to treat you with kindness and humanity in respect of your life and of your limbs.

After the Sentence was read, the bishop, the Inquisitor, and many of the judges went away, leaving Jeanne upon the scaffold.Then the Bailli of Rouen, an Englishman, who was there, without any legal formality and without reading any Sentence against her, ordered that she should be taken to the place where she was to be burned.

When Jeanne heard this order given, she began to weep and lament in such a way that all the people present were themselves moved to tears. The said Bailli immediately ordered that the fire should be lighted, which was done. And she was there burned and martyred tragically, an act of unparalleled cruelty. And many, both noble and peasant, murmured greatly against the English …”

Sources: The Trial of Joan of Arc: being the verbatim report of the proceedings from the Orleans manuscript

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Tr...

[Antonio]

Voltaire died on this day 1778. He was the greatest of French Enlightenment writers – a historian, poet, playwright, scientist and philosopher. Of his many works, the most popular today is Candide: the most widely taught piece of French literature in the world. This mordant novella has not one but a dozen targets for its satire: organised religion, the overweening pride of aristocrats, merchants’ greed, colonial ambition and the hopeless complacency of Leibnizian philosophy in the face of reality. All are dissected with a few sharp strokes of Voltaire’s pen.

Candide and Other Stories

[Antonio]

It happened today, May 31

1. 1859 - Big Ben rings out over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time
2. 1911 - The hull of the Titanic is launched in Belfast. At the ceremony, a White Star Line employee claimed, 'Not even God himself could sink this ship'
3. 1931 - Clint Eastwood is born
4. 1957 - US playwright Arthur Miller is convicted of contempt of Congress after refusing to reveal the names of alleged Communist writers
5. 1961 - South Africa becomes an independent republic
6. 1962 - Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler's wish to exterminate Europe's Jewish population, is executed for his crimes against humanity
7. 1966 - Nguyen Thi Can becomes the fifth Buddhist in three days to set fire to herself in protest against South Vietnam's regime
8. 1970 - An earthquake in Peru leaves more than 50,000 dead
9. 1985 - The Football Association, supported by Margaret Thatcher, bans English clubs from playing in Europe following the Heysel stadium tragedy
10. 1998 - Geri Halliwell, aka Ginger Spice, leaves the phenomenally successful Spice Girls band
11. 2005 - Former member of the FBI W. Mark Felt stepped forward to reveal himself as Deep Throat, the secret Washington Post source who worked with reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate scandal

Source: BBC, Wikipedia, historyorb.com, infoplease.com, history.co.uk, brainyhistory.com, on-this-day.com, thepeopleshistory

[Antonio]

Marilyn Monroe was born today, June 1, 1926. Norma Jeane Mortenson, who will become better known around the world as the glamorous actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, was born in Los Angeles, California. She was later given her mother’s name, and baptized Norma Jeane Baker ...

"Did you ever begin Ulysses? Did you ever finish it? Marilyn Monroe (June 1, 1926–August 5, 1962) did both. She took great pains to be photographed reading or holding a book, insistence born not out of vain affectation but of a genuine love of literature. Her personal library contained four hundred books, including classics like Dostoyevsky and Milton, and modern staples like Hemingway and Kerouac. While she wasn’t shooting, she was taking literature and history night classes at UCLA. And yet, the public image of a breezy, bubbly blonde endures as a caricature of Monroe’s character, standing in stark contrast with whatever deep-seated demons led her to take her own life.

But her private poetry, fragmentary, poem-like texts scribbled in notebooks and on loose-leaf paper, published for the first time in Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters, reveals a complex, sensitive being who peered deeply into her own psyche and thought intensely about the world and other people. What these texts bespeak, above all, is the tragic disconnect between a highly visible public persona and a highly vulnerable private person, misunderstood by the world, longing to be truly seen.

Beyond her poems, the rest of Monroe’s intimate thoughts collected in Fragments are equally soul-stirring. Writing in her famous Record notebook in 1955, she echoes Kerouac’s famous line, “No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge”:

Tender, tortured, thoughtful, the texts in Fragments hint at what playwright Arthur Miller, whom Monroe eventually married, must have meant when he said that she “had the instinct and reflexes of the poet, but she lacked the control."

… On August 5, 1962, Monroe was found dead from an overdose of barbiturates in her home in Brentwood, California. She was only 36 years old.

Sources: https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/07...

Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

[Karin]

May 31 (still that day here).

1578 Martin Frobisher sails from Harwich, England, to Frobisher Bay, Canada. Eventually mines fools gold, famously used to pave the streets of London.

[Antonio]

1897, Jun 2, responding to rumors that he was dying or perhaps even dead, writer Mark Twain, 61, was quoted by the New York Journal in London as saying that "the report of my death was an exaggeration."

Mark Twain was in London in 1897 as part of a speaking tour around the world. He had considerable debt in the US and hoped to earn enough money to pay it off. While he was in London, a rumor started that he was seriously ill. This was followed by a rumor that he was dead. The story goes that an American newspaper printed Twain's obituary. Supposedly after that, when asked about all this by a reporter, Twain said: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Another version of the quote is: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

The fact is this whole matter was greatly exaggerated. The truth is Frank Marshall White, an American journalist, contacted Twain by cable in London to ask about Twain's health. In point of fact, all such commonly-heard versions using “greatly exaggerated” and “grossly exaggerated” are misquotes.

It is true that in late May of 1897 the English correspondent for the New York Journal, Frank Marshall White, contacted Twain in London to inquire about his health, and then later, to ask for comment about reports that Twain was on his deathbed. Twain responded: “I can understand perfectly how the report of my illness got about, I have even heard on good authority that I was dead. [A cousin] was ill in London two or three weeks ago, but is well now. The report of my illness great out of his illness,. The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
----
The expression derives from the popular form of a longer statement by the American writer, Mark Twain, which appeared in the New York Journal of 2 June 1897: ‘The report of my death was an exaggeration’. The correction was occasioned by newspaper accounts of Twain’s being ill or dead. At the time, Twain’s cousin James Ross Clemens was seriously ill in London, and appears that some reports confused him with Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain).

Sources: Quora.com

Oxford Academic: Misquotation: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”

http://oupacademic.tumblr.com/post/48...
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain

[Antonio]

June 4, 1989 - Massacre in Tiananmen Square
Several hundred civilians have been shot dead by the Chinese army during a bloody military operation to crush a democratic protest in Peking's (Beijing) Tiananmen Square.

Tanks rumbled through the capital's streets late on 3 June as the army moved into the square from several directions, randomly firing on unarmed protesters. The injured were rushed to hospital on bicycle rickshaws by frantic residents shocked by the army's sudden and extreme response to the peaceful mass protest. Demonstrators, mainly students, had occupied the square for seven weeks, refusing to move until their demands for democratic reform were met …

The demonstrations in Tiananmen Square have been described as the greatest challenge to the communist state in China since the 1949 revolution. They were called to coincide with a visit to the capital by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, by students seeking democratic reform. Troops were used to clear the square despite repeated assurances from Chinese politicians that there would be no violence.

It has been suggested that the Communist leader Deng Xiaoping personally ordered their deployment as a way of shoring up his leadership. Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people were killed in the massacre, although it is unlikely a precise number will ever be known.Peking has since become more widely known as Beijing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/da...

The Tiananmen Square Protests

[Antonio]

I’m recording this event because on the days of this famous sexual and political scandal I was in England working my days as a young student nurse in a Mental Hospital in St Albans, north London. I was only 22. Those were really amazing days: Mary Quant, The Beatles, the Profumo affairs, Lady Chatterly’s book and all the rest …

On June 5, 1963, British Secretary of War John Profumo resigns his post following revelations that he had lied to the House of Commons about his sexual affair with Christine Keeler, an alleged prostitute. At the time of the affair, Keeler was also involved with Yevgeny “Eugene” Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache who some suspected was a spy. Although Profumo assured the government that he had not compromised national security in any way, the scandal threatened to topple Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s government.

Age 48 in 1963, John Dennis Profumo was appointed secretary of war by Macmillan in 1960. As war minister, he was in charge of overseeing the British army. The post was a junior cabinet position, but Profumo looked a good candidate for future promotion. He was married to Valerie Hobson, a retired movie actress, and the Profumos were very much at the center of “swinging ’60s” society in the early 1960s. One night in July 1961, John Profumo was at the Cliveden estate of Lord “Bill” Astor when he was first introduced to 19-year-old Christine Keeler. She was frolicking naked by the Cliveden pool.

Keeler was at Cliveden as a guest of Dr. Stephen Ward, a society osteopath and part-time portraitist who rented a cottage at the estate from his friend Lord Astor. Keeler was working as a showgirl at a London nightclub when she first met Dr. Ward. Ward took her under his wing, and they lived together in his London flat but were not lovers. He encouraged her to pursue sexual relationships with his high-class friends, and on one or more occasions Keeler apparently accepted money in exchange for sex. Ward introduced her to his friend Ivanov, and she began a sexual relationship with the Soviet diplomat. Several weeks after meeting Profumo at Cliveden, she also began an affair with the war minister. There is no evidence that either of these men paid her for sex, but Profumo once gave Keeler some money to buy her mother a birthday present.

After an intense few months, Profumo ended his affair with Keeler before the end of 1961. His indiscretions might never have come to public attention were it not for an incident involving Keeler that occurred in early 1963. Johnny Edgecombe, a West Indian marijuana dealer, was arrested for shooting up the exterior of Ward’s London flat after Keeler, his ex-lover, refused to let him in. The press gave considerable coverage to the incident and subsequent trial, and rumors were soon abounding about Keeler’s earlier relationship with Profumo. When Keeler confirmed reports of her affair with Profumo, and admitted a concurrent relationship with Ivanov, what had been cocktail-party gossip grew into a scandal with serious security connotations.

On March 21, 1963, Colonel George Wigg, a Labour MP for Dudley, raised the issue in the House of Commons, inviting the member of government in question to affirm or deny the rumors of his improprieties. Wigg forced Profumo’s hand, not, he claimed, to embarrass the Conservative government but because the Ivanov connection was a matter of national security. Behind closed doors, however, British intelligence had already concluded that Profumo had not compromised national security in any way and found little evidence implicating Ivanov as a spy. Nevertheless, Wigg had raised the issue, and Profumo had no choice but to stand up before Parliament on March 22 and make a statement. He vehemently denied the charges, saying “there was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler.” To drive home his point, he continued, “I shall not hesitate to issue writs for libel and slander if scandalous allegations are made or repeated outside the House.”

Profumo’s convincing denial defused the scandal for several weeks, but in May Dr. Stephen Ward went on trial in London on charges of prostituting Keeler and other young women. In the highly sensationalized trial, Keeler testified under oath about her relationship with Profumo. Ward also wrote Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour opposition in Parliament, and affirmed that Profumo had lied to the House of Commons. On June 4, Profumo returned from a holiday in Italy with his wife and confessed to Conservative leaders that Miss Keeler had been his mistress and that his March 22 statement to the Commons was untrue. On June 5, he resigned as war minister.

Prime Minister Macmillan was widely criticized for his handling of the Profumo scandal. In the press and in Parliament, Macmillan was condemned as being old, out-of-touch, and incompetent. In October, he resigned under pressure from his own government. He was replaced by Conservative Alec Douglas-Home, but in the general election in 1964 the Conservatives were swept from power by Harold Wilson’s Labour Party.

Dr. Stephen Ward fell into a coma after attempting suicide by an overdose of pills. In his absence, he was found guilty of living off the immoral earnings of prostitution and died shortly after without regaining consciousness. Christine Keeler was convicted of perjury in a related trial and began a prison sentence in December 1963. John Profumo left politics after his resignation and dedicated himself to philanthropy in the East End of London. For his charitable work, Queen Elizabeth II named him a Commander of the British Empire, one of Britain’s highest honors, in 1975.

Keeler’s autobiography, The Truth at Last: My Story was published in 2001. Profumo died on March 10, 2006, two days after suffering a stroke.

Source: History.com

The Truth at Last: My Story

[Antonio]

On the sixth of June, in Canto I, verse CIII, Don Juan lost his virginity …

Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womaniser but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire". Byron completed 16 cantos, leaving an unfinished 17th canto before his death in 1824. Byron claimed that he had no ideas in his mind as to what would happen in subsequent cantos as he wrote his work. When the first two cantos were published anonymously in 1819, the poem was criticised for its "immoral content", but it was also immensely popular. On the sixth of June, in Canto I, verse CIII, Don Juan loses his virginity …

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Jua...

It was upon a day, a summer's day;--
Summer's indeed a very dangerous season,
And so is spring about the end of May;
The sun, no doubt, is the prevailing reason;
But whatsoe'er the cause is, one may say,
And stand convicted of more truth than treason,
That there are months which nature grows more merry in,--
March has its hares, and May must have its heroine.
CIII.
'T was on a summer's day--the sixth of June:
I like to be particular in dates,
Not only of the age, and year, but moon;
They are a sort of post-house, where the Fates
Change horses, making History change its tune,[q]
Then spur away o'er empires and o'er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.[r]
CIV.
'T was on the sixth of June, about the hour
Of half-past six--perhaps still nearer seven--
When Julia sate within as pretty a bower
As e'er held houri in that heathenish heaven
Described by Mahomet, and Anacreon Moore,[57]
To whom the lyre and laurels have been given,
With all the trophies of triumphant song--
He won them well, and may he wear them long!
CV.
She sate, but not alone; I know not well
How this same interview had taken place,
And even if I knew, I should not tell--
People should hold their tongues in any case;
No matter how or why the thing befell,
But there were she and Juan, face to face--
When two such faces are so, 't would be wise,
But very difficult, to shut their eyes.
CVI.
How beautiful she looked! her conscious heart
Glowed in her cheek, and yet she felt no wrong:
Oh Love! how perfect is thy mystic art,
Strengthening the weak, and trampling on the strong!
How self-deceitful is the sagest part
Of mortals whom thy lure hath led along!--
The precipice she stood on was immense,
So was her creed in her own innocence.[s]
CVII.
She thought of her own strength, and Juan's youth,
And of the folly of all prudish fears,
Victorious Virtue, and domestic Truth,
And then of Don Alfonso's fifty years:
I wish these last had not occurred, in sooth,
Because that number rarely much endears,
And through all climes, the snowy and the sunny,
Sounds ill in love, whate'er it may in money ...

http://www.online-literature.com/byro...

Don Juan

[Antonio]

Rome, June 7, 1929 - From 11 o' clock this morning there was another sovereign independent State in the world. At that time Premier Mussolini, as Italian Foreign Minister representing King Victor Emmanuel, the first Italian Premier ever to cross the threshold of the Vatican, exchanged with Cardinal Gasparri, Papal Secretary of State, representing Pope Pius XI, ratifications of the treaties signed at the Lateran Palace on Feb. 11. By that simple act the sovereign independent State of Vatican City came into existence …

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/gener...

Vatican City State was founded following the signing of the Lateran Pacts between the Holy See and Italy on February 11th 1929. These were ratified on June 7th 1929. Its nature as a sovereign State distinct from the Holy See is universally recognized under international law.

The Catholic Church carries out its mission of announcing the truth of the Gospel for the salvation of all humanity and in the service of peace and justice in favour of all peoples, both through the various specific and local Churches spread throughout the world, as well as through its central government. This is made up of the Pope and the Departments of the Roman Curia that assist him in carrying out his responsibilities towards the universal Church (identified as the Apostolic See or Holy See).

The Pope lives in Vatican City where several of the aforementioned Departments are to be found. Vatican City State has the singular characteristic of being an instrument of the independence of the Holy See, and of the Catholic Church, from any earthly power. In a way, it is a sign of the Church’s supernatural character insofar as the structures of Vatican City are reduced to the minimum necessary to guarantee its functions.

The Pontifical Military Corps, except for the Swiss Guard, was disbanded by will of Pope Paul VI, as expressed in a letter of September 14th 1970. The Gendarme Corps of Vatican City State is responsible for all police activities and answers to the State Authority. It is a civil, not a military, organisation ...

http://www.vaticanstate.va/content/va...

Holy See History: Vatican State and governance, Relationship to the outside world, Holy see politics under Christianity, Holy See Culture, Life in Vatican

[Antonio]

Tim Berners-Lee was born on 8th June 1955.

Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web (WWW). Berners-Lee enabled a system to be able to view web pages (hypertext documents) through the internet. He also serves as a director for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which oversees standards for the Internet and World Wide Web. Berners-Lee is also concerned about issues relating to freedom of information and censorship on the internet.

Tim Berners-Lee was born on 8th June 1955 in London, England. After doing his A Levels at Emanuel School, he went to Queen’s College, Oxford University, where he received a first-class degree in physics. After graduation, he gained employment for a printing firm in Plessey, Poole. From 1980, he was employed as an independent contractor at CERN in Switzerland. An essential part of his job involved sharing information with researchers in different geographical locations. To help this process, he suggested a project based on the use of hypertext. (a language for sharing text electronically) The first prototype was a system known as ENQUIRE.

The Internet had been developed since the 1960s as a way to transfer information between different computers. However, Tim Berners-Lee sought to make use of internet nodes and combine it with hypertext and the idea of domains. Tim Berners-Lee later said that all the technology involved in the web had already been developed – ‘hypertext’, the internet; his contribution was to put them all together in one comprehensive package.

In 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau, he produced the first version of the World Wide Web, the first web browser and the first web server. It was put online in 1991. “Info.cern.ch” was the address of the world’s first-ever web site and web server, running on a NeXT computer at CERN. The first web page address was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/The....
Essentially the contribution of the World Wide Web was to make it easy for people to view hypertext web pages anywhere on the internet.

The essential elements of this new development was: A universal system for recognising the location of web pages (Uniform Resource Locator, URL). HTML – Hypertext Markup Language – how web pages are published. Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) – serves up web pages on request.

Tim Berners-Lee said: “I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and - ta-da! the World - Wide Web.”

Source: biographyonline.net

Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web

[Antonio]

George Orwell's seminal text, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was first published on this day in 1949. Since White House counselor Kelly-Anne Conway's invocation of "alternative facts" earlier this year, sales of the dystopian novel have shot up ...

1984

[Antonio]

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, (15 December 37 AD - 9 June 68 AD) was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68 AD, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero, along with Rome’s first four emperors—Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius—made up what is called the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great uncle Claudius to become his successor, and upon Claudius’s death in AD 54 Nero became the youngest emperor at age 16. His reign lasted nearly fourteen years, until AD 68 when he committed suicide at the age of 30.

Nero took the throne approximately two decades after Christ was crucified. Although still in its infancy, Christianity was spreading rapidly during this time. In fact, approximately fourteen of the New Testament’s twenty-seven books were written in whole or in part during Nero’s emperorship. Also during Nero’s reign the apostle Paul was confined to house arrest in Rome (AD 60—63), where he wrote Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Nero was the “Caesar” to whom Paul appealed for justice during his trial in Caesarea (Acts 25:10–12).

The early years of Nero’s rule were marked by an enhancement of the cultural life of the Roman Empire. Thanks to the guidance of his advisors, namely the Praetorian Prefect Burrus and the famous Roman philosopher Seneca, Rome maintained a stable government during his early years. Nero loved the arts and was an accomplished singer and musician. He also enjoyed athletic competitions and took part in many chariot races, even winning a race in the Olympic Games at Greece.

Nero’s legacy, however, is not a pleasant one. Although his regime began with mildness and idealism, it ended with cruelty and tyranny. He began murdering anyone who became an obstacle to him; his victims include his own wife and mother as well as his step-brother Britannicus—Emperor Claudius’s biological son. In July of 64, the Great Fire of Rome broke out and lasted for six days. Of Rome’s fourteen districts, only three escaped damage from the fire. Some historians believe Nero may have been responsible for the fire, although his involvement is not clear. What is clear is that Nero deflected the focus from himself by blaming the fire on the Christians, many of whom he tortured and killed. The historian Tacitus describes these atrocities: “Covered with the skins of beasts, [Christians] were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as nightly illumination when daylight had expired.” Nero’s use of Christians as human torches to light his evening garden parties is well documented. Ultimately, it is the brutality inflicted on the early Christians for which Nero is best remembered.

The end of Nero’s reign was filled with strife. Tension among Roman leaders ultimately became so great that the Praetorian Guard transferred their loyalty from Nero to Galba, leading the Senate to declare Nero a public enemy. Nero was forced to flee Rome, and he later took his own life. Having no heir to succeed him, Nero was the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero’s death was followed by a brief period of civil war, which was then followed by the rise and fall of four emperors in a single year, a chaotic period of Roman history known as “The Year of the Four Emperors.”

Christianity Through the Centuries: A History of the Christian Church

[Antonio]

On this day in 1881, Count Leo Tolstoy sets off on a pilgrimage to a monastery disguised as a peasant.

Tolstoy had already produced his two greatest masterpieces War and Peace (1865-1869) and Anna Karenina (1875-1877). The Russian nobleman was engaged in a spiritual struggle and felt torn between his responsibility as a wealthy landlord to improve the lot of the people, and his desire to give up his property and wander the land as an ascetic. He had started giving away his possessions and declared that the public owned his works, but his wife, Sofya, worried about the financial stability of the couple’s 13 children, gained control of the copyrights for all his work published before 1880.

Tolstoy was born in 1828. His parents died when he was a child, and he was raised by relatives. He went to Kazan University at age 16 but was disappointed in the quality of education there and returned to his estate in 1847 without a degree. He lived a wild and dissolute life in Moscow and St. Petersburg until 1851, when he joined the army. He fought in the Crimean war, and his experiences in the defense of Sevastopol became a successful literary memoir, Sevastopol Sketches, in 1855. While in the army, he wrote several other autobiographical works.

In 1857, Tolstoy visited Europe and became interested in education. He started a school for peasant children on his estate and studied progressive educational techniques. In 1862, he married, and the following year he published a successful novel, The Cossacks.

Later in his life, Tolstoy embraced Christian anarchism and was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1910, he fled his home secretly with his youngest daughter but caught pneumonia and died at a remote railway station a few days later.

Tolstoy: A Biography

[Antonio]

On this day in 1979, John Wayne, an iconic American film actor famous for starring in countless westerns, dies at age 72 after battling cancer for more than a decade.

The actor was born Marion Morrison on May 26, 1907, in Winterset, Iowa, and moved as a child to Glendale, California. A football star at Glendale High School, he attended the University of Southern California on a scholarship but dropped out after two years. After finding work as a movie studio laborer, Wayne befriended director John Ford, then a rising talent. His first acting jobs were bit parts in which he was credited as Duke Morrison, a childhood nickname derived from the name of his beloved pet dog.

Wayne’s first starring role came in 1930 with The Big Trail, a film directed by his college buddy Raoul Walsh. It was during this time that Marion Morrison became “John Wayne,” when director Walsh didn’t think Marion was a good name for an actor playing a tough western hero. Despite the lead actor’s new name, however, the movie flopped. Throughout the 1930s, Wayne made dozens of mediocre westerns, sometimes churning out two movies a week. In them, he played various rough-and-tumble characters and occasionally appeared as “Singing Sandy,” a musical cowpoke a la Roy Rogers.

In 1939, Wayne finally had his breakthrough when his old friend John Ford cast him as Ringo Kid in the Oscar-winning Stagecoach. Wayne went on to play larger-than-life heroes in dozens of movies and came to symbolize a type of rugged, strong, straight-shooting American man. John Ford directed Wayne in some of his best-known films, including Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962).

Off-screen, Wayne came to be known for his conservative political views. He produced, directed and starred in The Alamo (1960) and The Green Berets (1968), both of which reflected his patriotic, conservative leanings. In 1969, he won an Oscar for his role as a drunken, one-eyed federal marshal named Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. Wayne’s last film was The Shootist (1976), in which he played a legendary gunslinger dying of cancer. The role had particular meaning, as the actor was fighting the disease in real life.

During four decades of acting, Wayne, with his trademark drawl and good looks, appeared in over 250 films. He was married three times and had seven children.

John Wayne: The Life and Legend

[Antonio]

On this day, Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, receives a diary for her 13th birthday. A month later, she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in rooms behind her father’s office. For two years, the Franks and four other families hid, fed and cared for by Gentile friends. The families were discovered by the Gestapo, which had been tipped off, in 1944. The Franks were taken to Auschwitz, where Anne’s mother died. Friends in Amsterdam searched the rooms and found Anne’s diary hidden away. Anne and her sister were transferred to another camp, Bergen-Belsen, where Anne died of typhus a month before the war ended. Anne’s father survived Auschwitz and published Anne’s diary in 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl. The book has been translated into more than 60 languages.

The Diary of a Young Girl

[Antonio]

Wordsworth visits Tintern Abbey on this day, June 13 - 1798

While on a walking tour, William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy visit a ruined church called Tintern Abbey.

The ruins inspired Wordsworth’s poem “Tintern Abbey,” in which Wordsworth articulated some of the fundamental themes of Romantic poetry, including the restorative power of nature. The poem appeared in Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems in 1798, which Wordsworth collaborated on with his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The book, which also included Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, sold out within two years. The book’s second edition included an important preface that articulated the Romantic manifesto.

Wordsworth was born near England’s Lake District in 1770. He lost his mother when he was eight, and his father died five years later. Wordsworth attended Cambridge, then traveled in Europe, taking long walking tours with friends through the mountains. During his 20s, Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy and became close friends with Coleridge.

In 1802, after years of living on a modest income, Wordsworth came into a long-delayed inheritance from his father and was able to live comfortably with his sister. He married their longtime neighbor Mary Hutchinson and had five children. The poet’s stature grew steadily, although most of his major work was written by 1807. In 1843, he was named poet laureate of England, and he died in 1850, at the age of 80.

Source: http://www.history.com
Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

[Antonio]

One of Italy’s greatest 19th century writers, Giacomo Leopardi, died on this day in 1837 in Naples.

A brilliant scholar and philosopher, Leopardi led an unhappy life in Recanati in the Papal States, blighted by poor health, but he left as a legacy his superb lyric poetry.

By the age of 16, Leopardi had independently mastered Greek, Latin and several modern languages and had translated many classical works. He had also written some poems, tragedies and scholarly commentaries.

He had been born deformed and excessive study made his health worse. He became blind in one eye and developed a cerebrospinal condition that was to cause him problems for the rest of his life.

He was forced to suspend his studies and, saddened by an apparent lack of concern from his parents, he poured out his feelings in poems such as the visionary work, Appressamento della morte - Approach of Death - written in 1816 in terza rima, in imitation of Petrach and Dante.

His frustrated love for his married cousin, and the death from consumption of the young daughter of his father’s coachman, only deepened his despair. The death of the young girl inspired perhaps his greatest lyric poem, A Silvia.

The scholar and patriot Pietro Giordani visited Leopardi in 1818 and urged him to leave home. Leopardi then spent a few unhappy months in Rome, but returned to live in Recanati.

After accepting an offer to edit Cicero’s works in Milan in 1825, he left home again.

He spent the next few years travelling between Bologna, Pisa and Florence while he wrote a collection of poems and a philosophical work.

His frustrated love for a Florentine beauty, Fanny Targioni-Tozzetti, inspired some of his saddest poetry.

Leopardi finally settled in Naples in 1833, where he wrote the long poem, Ginestra.

The death he had long regarded as the only escape from his unhappiness came to him suddenly in 1837 during a cholera epidemic.

His genius and frustrated hopes during his life had found their way into his poetry which has long been admired for its intensity and musicality.

Source: Italy on this day

Zibaldone

[Antonio]

Bloomsday is a celebration that takes place both in Dublin and around the world. It celebrates Thursday 16 June 1904, which is the day depicted in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The day is named after Leopold Bloom, the central character in Ulysses. The novel follows the life and thoughts of Leopold Bloom and a host of other characters – real and fictional – from 8 am on 16 June 1904 through to the early hours of the following morning.
Celebrations often include dressing up like characters from the book and in clothes that would have been the style of the era. One of the hallmark fancy dress items of Bloomsday is the straw boater hat. Celebrations come in many different forms like readings, performances and visiting the places and establishments that are referenced in the book. The Bloomsday Breakfast is another common celebration, which involves eating the same breakfast as Leopold Bloom consumes on the morning of 16 June. This includes liver and kidneys alongside the typical ingredients of an Irish fried breakfast …

Source: http://jamesjoyce.ie/bloomsday/

Ulysses|595038]

Ulysses

[Antonio]

On this day June 17, in 1972, five men are caught trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. The story of the break-in, which seemed like a minor event, was handed to two young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, by their Washington Post editor-in-chief, Ben Bradlee. The reporters pursued the story tirelessly and broke the scoop of White House involvement in a pattern of unethical practices against political enemies. The pair later wrote the bestselling book All the President’s Men (1974), about the journalistic process of exposing the Watergate scandal …
All the President's Men

[Antonio]

18 June 1982: God’s banker, Roberto Calvi, is found dead beneath Blackfriars Bridge, in London.

Roberto Calvi’s death had the hallmarks of a Mafia killing. The discovery of the body of Roberto Calvi dangling from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge by a passer-by on the morning of 18 June 1982 had all the hallmarks of a Hollywood thriller.

Nicknamed ‘God’s banker’, Calvi was the chairman of Italian bank Banco Ambrosiano, in which the Vatican bank was a major shareholder. But the bank had been engaged in some very unholy activities, and by 1982, it was on the verge of collapse. The bank was £800m in the red, and owed money to the Sicilian mafia among others.

Calvi was “a brilliant financier”, The Independent wrote in 2005. “And though shy and socially gauche, he combined a lightening accountant’s brain with recklessness in a very Italian fashion”.

It was while in custody for illegal foreign currency dealings that Calvi tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists and taking an overdose. But he lived to be released on appeal, and on 11 June, a week before his death, he fled to London, taking with him a briefcase stuffed with incriminating documents.

Clearly not wanting to be found, he shaved off his moustache and checked into a nondescript £40-a-night hotel in Chelsea. Meanwhile, back in Italy, his secretary threw herself from a fourth-floor window. In her suicide note, she blamed Calvi for the bank’s demise, and Calvi was relieved of his duties as chairman.

The next day, Roberto Calvi was found dead. Bricks from a nearby building site had been stuffed into his clothes, but apart from that, nothing else suggested anything other than suicide. He still wore his luxury Patek Philippe watch and was carrying around £10,000 in various currencies.

The first London inquest into his death returned a verdict of suicide. The second returned an open verdict, raising a number of eyebrows back in Italy. Calvi’s widow and children hired a private investigator, whose findings suggested a Mafia murder.

This conclusion appeared to be confirmed on the 30th anniversary of Calvi’s death in 2012, when a suspect, Francesco ‘Frankie the Strangler’ Di Carlo, although denying his involvement, claimed he had been contacted to make ‘the hit’. The case continues.

Source: http://moneyweek.com/18-june-1982-god...

Crime: Unsolved Murders: The Pope's Banker: The Roberto Calvi Murder

[Antonio]

The Rosenbergs execution June 19, 1953

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War.

Julius was arrested in July 1950, and Ethel in August of that same year, on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. Specifically, they were accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence, but after a brief trial in March 1951 they were convicted. On April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them to death.

The pair was taken to Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, to await execution. During the next two years, the couple became the subject of both national and international debate. Many people believed that the Rosenbergs were the victims of a surge of hysterical anticommunist feeling in the United States, and protested that the death sentence handed down was cruel and unusual punishment. Most Americans, however, believed that the Rosenbergs had been dealt with justly.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke for many Americans when he issued a statement declining to invoke executive clemency for the pair. He stated, “I can only say that, by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world. The execution of two human beings is a grave matter. But even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done.”

Julius Rosenberg was the first to be executed, at about 8 p.m. on June 19, 1953. Just a few minutes after his body was removed from the chamber containing the electric chair, Ethel Rosenberg was led in and strapped to the chair. She was pronounced dead at 8:16 p.m. Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths. Two sons, Michael and Robert, survived them.

Source: www.history.com


Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

[Antonio]

Today June 20, 1978, Giulio Andreotti, many times former Italian Prime Minister, in an interview said that "Power wears out … those who don't have it" …

Il potere logora... ma è meglio non perderlo

---------

On this day in 1975, Jaws, a film directed by Steven Spielberg that made countless viewers afraid to go into the water, opens in theaters. The story of a great white shark that terrorizes a New England resort town became an instant blockbuster and the highest-grossing film in movie history until it was bested by 1977’s Star Wars. Jaws was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Picture category and took home three Oscars, for Best Film Editing, Best Original Score and Best Sound. The film, a breakthrough for director Spielberg, then 27 years old, spawned three sequels.

The film starred Roy Scheider as principled police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as a marine biologist named Matt Hooper and Robert Shaw as a grizzled fisherman called Quint. It was set in the fictional beach town of Amity, and based on a best-selling novel, released in 1973, by Peter Benchley. Subsequent water-themed Benchley bestsellers also made it to the big screen, including The Deep(1977).

With a budget of $12 million, Jaws was produced by the team of Richard Zanuck and David Brown, whose later credits include The Verdict (1982), Cocoon (1985) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989). Filming, which took place on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, was plagued by delays and technical difficulties, including malfunctioning mechanical sharks.

Jaws put now-famed director Steven Spielberg on the Hollywood map. Spielberg, largely self-taught in filmmaking, made his feature-length directorial debut with The Sugarland Express in 1974. The film was critically well-received but a box-office flop. Following the success of Jaws, Spielberg went on to become one of the most influential, iconic people in the film world, with such epics as Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), ET: the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Jurassic Park (1993), Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). E.T., Jawsand Jurassic Park rank among the 10 highest-grossing movies of all time. In 1994, Spielberg formed DreamWorks SKG, with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. The company has produced such hits as American Beauty (1999), Gladiator (2001) and Shrek (2001).

Source: www.history.com

Jaws

[Antonio]

Niccolò Machiavelli was born 3 May 1469 and died 21 June 1527

Nine Quotes

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.

There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.

For whoever believes that great advancement and new benefits make men forget old injuries is mistaken.

He who is highly esteemed is not easily conspired against.
Therefore the best fortress is to be found in the love of the people, for although you may have fortresses they will not save you if you are hated by the people.

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian Renaissance historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer. He is most most widely known for his treatises on realist political theory, The Prince, and republicanism, Discourses on Livy.

Source: https://writerswrite.co.za

[Antonio]

376 years ago today, The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe.

The following letter was published in the NYT on November 17, 1992

What Galileo Actually Proved and Disproved

To the Editor:
Galileo Galilei, who first incurred the Roman Catholic Church's wrath on March 5, 1616, when he was ordered neither to "hold nor defend" the Copernican theory, did not prove the theory by his observations of satellites circling the planet Jupiter, as you report in "After 350 years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves" (front page, Oct. 31).

Instead, Galileo disproved the Ptolemaic theory, sanctioned for centuries by the Church, which held the Earth to be the central and principal object in the universe, about which all celestial objects orbited. By default, the Copernican theory of planets (including Earth) orbiting the Sun was the only credible one remaining.

The Church's belated removal of its 1633 condemnation of Galileo comes 376 years, 7 months and 26 days after the 1616 decree that attempted to intimidate and restrict the great scientist.

Actually, Copernicus did not discover the movements of the planets about the Sun. His observations, published in 1543, confirmed the heliocentric theory first promulgated 1,800 years earlier, about 270 B.C., by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, who attributed the annual reappearance of the constellations in the same celestial position to the Earth orbiting the Sun. This, and periodic reappearances of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, in the same respective celestial places, persuaded him to proclaim that all planets orbit the Sun.

Interestingly, the burning of the Great Library at Alexandria in the year 391 was considered an unsuccessful attempt by Christian zealots to destroy all records of Aristarchus, discoveries that the Church considered contrary to its dogma. To the credit of Copernicus, he mentioned Aristarchus in his 1543 paper. Because he feared torture by Church inquisitors, Copernicus delayed publication of his work (which eventually led to the Renaissance) until he was on his deathbed and beyond the Inquisition's grasp.

Now that Galileo has been rehabilitated by the Vatican, what about his colleague Giordano Bruno, who was condemned, tortured and burned at the stake in 1600 for heresy in connection with thoughts and teachings of the heliocentric theory?

Will the Church now take a further enlightened step and remove the heretical curse on Bruno before the 400th anniversary of his deplorable execution?

JULIAN KANE Great Neck, L.I., Nov. 1, 1992 The writer is a professor of geology at Hofstra University.

Source: https://goo.gl/2LQfUm

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

[Antonio]

June 23, 1868

The evolution of the typewriter is part of the ongoing history of the human need to communicate. Gradually a machine emerged that revolutionized the work of the writer. In 1867, Christopher Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soule invented the first practical mechanical typewriter machine.

Definition: A mechanical or electromechanical machine for writing in characters similar to those produced by printer's type by means of keyboard-operated types striking a ribbon to transfer ink or carbon impressions onto the paper.

Patent: 79,265 (US) issued June 23, 1868
Inventor: Christopher Latham Sholes

Criteria; First practical.
Birth: February 14, 1819 in Mooresburg, Pennsylvania
Death: February 17, 1890 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Nationality: American

The idea behind the typewriter was to apply the concept of movable type developed by Johann Gutenberg in the invention of the printing press century to a machine for individual use. Descriptions of such mechanical writing machines date to the early eighteenth century. In 1714, a patent something like a typewriter was granted to a man named Henry Mill in England, but no example of Mills’ invention survives.

In 1829, William Burt from Detroit, Michigan patented his typographer which had characters arranged on a rotating frame. However, Burt’s machine, and many of those that followed it, were cumbersome, hard to use, unreliable and often took longer to produce a letter than writing it by hand.
Finally, in 1867, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin printer-publisher-politician named Christopher Latham Sholes, with assistance from Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soule, patented what was to be the first useful typewriter. He licensed his patent to Remington & Sons of Ilion, New York, a noted American gun maker. In 1874, the Remington Model 1, the first commercial typewriter, was placed on the market.

Based on Sholes’ mechanical typewriter, the first electric typewriter was built by Thomas Alva Edison in the United States in 1872, but the widespread use of electric typewriters was not common until the 1950s.

The electronic typewriter, a typewriter with an electronic "memory" capable of storing text, first appeared in 1978. It was developed independently by the Olivetti Company in Italy and the Casio Company in Japan.

Source: http://ideafinder.com/home.htm

The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting

[Antonio]

June 25, 1984: Michel Foucault dies.

In his original and controversial book, "The Order of Things", Michel Foucault asks a simple question: Where do books come from, especially those that seem definitive in one way or another? One obvious answer comes to mind: Books are the works of individual geniuses, and they reflect progress in the authors’ disciplines or in their larger intellectual climates. Foucault resists the obvious, however, in his search for the answer to his simple question. He suggests, to the contrary, that books—as well as authors, disciplines, and periods—are products of the way people agree to use language, and all reflect the possibilities and limits of particular verbal systems.

"The Order of Things" sold out within a month after it first appeared – or so goes the advertising legend. The work numbers among those outward signs of culture the trained eye should find on prominent display in every private library. Have you read it? One’s social and intellectual standing depends on the response . . . Foucault is brilliant (a little too brilliant). His writing sparkles with incisive formulations. He is amusing. Stimulating. Dazzling. His erudition confounds us; his skill compels assent; his art seduces.’ (Michel de Certeau)

‘Foucault’s most important work.’ (Hayden V. White)

‘One is left with a sense of real and original force.’ (George Steiner)

‘The Order of Things studies the ways in which people accept the taxonomies of an epoch without questioning their arbitrariness . . . Even scholars who are in a position to scold Foucault . . . admit his brilliant ingenuity and scholarly resource.’ (Frank Kermode)

‘In The Order of Things, Foucault investigates the modern forms of knowledge (or epistemes) that establish for the sciences their unsurpassable horizons of basic concepts.’ (Jürgen Habermas)

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences

[Karin]

Antonio wrote: "June 23, 1868

The evolution of the typewriter is part of the ongoing history of the human need to communicate. Gradually a machine emerged that revolutionized the work of the writer. In 1867, Chri..."

This really was a great invention. I remember when I was studying Women's Studies (that's what the entire department was back then), that at first it was said that women were not well suited to do this and that only men should. However, as the demand for paying typists less came along, suddenly you start seeing writings about how well suited women were for typing.

[Antonio]

Karin wrote: "Antonio wrote: "June 23, 1868

The evolution of the typewriter is part of the ongoing history of the human need to communicate. Gradually a machine emerged that revolutionized the work of the write..."

Well said, Karin ... I wonder what men could do without the help of "well suited women" not just in writing ...

[Antonio]

A federal minimum wage law guaranteeing workers 25 cents an hour was established on this day in 1938. Passed as the Fair Labor Standards Act, it also capped regular weekly working hours to 40, banned child labor, and instituted time-and-a-half pay for overtime.

President Franklin Roosevelt had been campaigning for reelection when a young girl trying to pass him a note was held back by police. When he had someone retrieve the letter, it read, "I wish you could do something to help us girls." She described her pay in a sewing factory as just $4 per week. Roosevelt decided then that he needed to act on child labor and minimum wage laws.

The first minimum wage law had been enacted in New Zealand in 1894. Several other countries adopted the practice before the United States. Since its inception in 1938, the federal U.S. wage has been adjusted 22 times by 12 different presidents - most recently by President Obama, who raised it to $7.25/hour in 2009. Minimum wage does not increase automatically with inflation over time, but rather must be adjusted intentionally by a sitting president and the administration.

Most state have their own minimum wage laws, with the exception of Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina. Several states have wage rates lower than the federal rates. The highest minimum wage is $9.32 in Washington State.

Source: www.writersalmanac.org

The Federal Minimum Wage: In Brief

[Antonio]

June 26, 1892, Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl Buck is born in West Virginia to parents on furlough from their missionary work in China. The family soon returned to China, where Buck lived for the better part of 40 years. Her novel The Good Earth (1930), describing peasant life in China, became an international bestseller.

Young Pearl learned to speak Chinese before English. She returned to the U.S. to attend college, then married an American agriculture specialist in China. The two settled down to live in the province where she later set The Good Earth. The couple later moved to Nanking to teach college.

In 1930, Buck created a literary sensation with The Good Earth. Her novel won the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes and was translated into 30 languages. In the ’30s, The Good Earth and other novels and stories by Buck were more widely read in Europe than those of any other American author. However, today few of her 80 novels and books retain as much interest as The Good Earth.

Buck created several charitable foundations for Asian-American children abroad, including an adoption agency. She spoke strongly against the internment of Japanese during World War II and wrote a letter of protest to The New York Times in 1954 that helped change immigration policy. She received many awards for her humanitarian activities. Buck died in 1973.

The Good Earth

[Antonio]

June 27, 1940, Germans get Enigma. On this day in 1940, the Germans set up two-way radio communication in their newly occupied French territory, employing their most sophisticated coding machine, Enigma, to transmit information.

The Germans set up radio stations in Brest and the port town of Cherbourg. Signals would be transmitted to German bombers so as to direct them to targets in Britain. The Enigma coding machine, invented in 1919 by Hugo Koch, a Dutchman, looked like a typewriter and was originally employed for business purposes.

The German army adapted the machine for wartime use and considered its encoding system unbreakable. They were wrong. The Brits had broken the code as early as the German invasion of Poland and had intercepted virtually every message sent through the system. Britain nicknamed the intercepted messages Ultra.

The German Enigma Cipher Machine

[Antonio]

The Globe Theater, where most of Shakespeare’s plays debuted, burned down on this day June 30 in 1613.

The Globe was built by Shakespeare’s acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, in 1599 from the timbers of London’s very first permanent theater, Burbage’s Theater, built in 1576. Before James Burbage built his theater, plays and dramatic performances were ad hoc affairs, performed on street corners and in the yards of inns. However, the Common Council of London, in 1574, started licensing theatrical pieces performed in inn yards within the city limits. To escape the restriction, actor James Burbage built his own theater on land he leased outside the city limits. When Burbage’s lease ran out, the Lord Chamberlain’s men moved the timbers to a new location and created the Globe. Like other theaters of its time, the Globe was a round wooden structure with a stage at one end, and covered balconies for the gentry. The galleries could seat about 1,000 people, with room for another 2,000 “groundlings,” who could stand on the ground around the stage.

The Lord Chamberlain’s men built Blackfriars theater in 1608, a smaller theater that seated about 700 people, to use in winter when the open-air Globe wasn’t practical.

Source: www.history.com

[Antonio]

The transistor radio was a technological marvel that put music literally into consumers’ hands in the mid-1950s. It was cheap, it was reliable and it was portable, but it could never even approximate the sound quality of a record being played on a home stereo. It was, however, the only technology available to on-the-go music lovers until the Sony Corporation sparked a revolution in personal electronics with the introduction of the first personal stereo cassette player. A device as astonishing on first encounter as the cellular phone or digital camera would later be, the Sony Walkman went on sale for the very first time on July 1, 1979.

The Sony Walkman didn’t represent a breakthrough in technology so much as it did a breakthrough in imagination. Every element of the Walkman was already in production or testing as part of some other device when Sony’s legendary chairman, Masaru Ibuka, made a special request in early 1979. Ibuka was a music lover who traveled frequently, and he was already in the habit of carrying one of his company’s “portable” stereo tape recorders with him on international flights. But the Sony TC-D5 was a heavy device that was in no way portable by modern standards, so Ibuka asked his then-deputy Norio Ohga if he could cobble together something better. Working with the company’s existing Pressman product—a portable, monaural tape recorder that was popular with journalists—Ohga had a playback-only stereo device rigged up in time for Ibuka’s next trans-Pacific flight.

Even though this proto-Walkman required large, earmuff-like headphones and custom-made batteries (which, of course, ran out on Ibuka midway through his flight), it impressed the Sony chairman tremendously with its sound quality and portability. Many objections were raised internally when Ibuka began his push to create a marketable version of the device, the biggest of which was conceptual: Would anyone actually buy a cassette device that was not for recording but only for playback? Ibuka’s simple response—”Don’t you think a stereo cassette player that you can listen to while walking around is a good idea?”—proved to be one of the great understatements in business history.

After a breakneck development phase of only four months, Sony engineers had a reliable product ready for market at 30,000 Yen (approximately US$150 in 1979 dollars) and available before the start of summer vacation for Japanese students—both critical targets established at the outset of development. The initial production run of 30,000 units looked to be too ambitious after one month of lackluster sales (only 3,000 were sold in July 1979). But after an innovative consumer-marketing campaign in which Sony representatives simply approached pedestrians on the streets of Tokyo and gave them a chance to listen to the Walkman, the product took off, selling out available stocks before the end of August and signaling the beginning of one of Sony’s greatest success stories.

Source: www.history.com

Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman

[Antonio]

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking breaks British publishing records on this day in 1992. His book A Brief History of Time has been on the nonfiction bestseller list for three and a half years, selling more than 3 million copies in 22 languages.

A Brief History of Time explained the latest theories on the origins of the universe in language accessible to educated lay people. The book was made into an acclaimed documentary in 1992, which focused largely on Hawking’s own story. Diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in his 20s, Hawking was told he had only two years to live. Despite the sobering prognosis, Hawking pursued his studies in theoretical physics, married, and had a son. Eventually, his disease left him paralyzed except for his left hand. He was able to speak, although his speech was difficult to understand, until he underwent a tracheotomy in 1985 during a bout with pneumonia. Afterward, he relied on a mouse-controlled voice synthesizer, which improved the clarity of his speech. His familiar, synthesized voice can be heard in the Brief History of Time documentary, a popular Pink Floyd song, and an episode of The Simpsons.

A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and numerous other honors, Hawking has written several additional popular science books, including Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993) and The Grand Design (2010), which he cowrote with fellow physicist Leonard Mlodinow. He is known for his scientific contributions to cosmology and quantum gravity and is affiliated with the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology, among other institutions.

Source: www.history.com

A Briefer History of Time

[Antonio]

Planet Earth reaches a milestone today, its aphelion, or most distant point from the sun. We reach this point on July 3, 2017 at 20:11 UTC. That’s 15:11 (3:11 p.m.) Central Daylight Time in the U.S. Is it hot outside for you on your part of Earth right now? Or cold out? Earth’s aphelion comes in the midst of Northern Hemisphere summer and Southern Hemisphere winter. That should tell you that our distance from the sun doesn’t cause the seasons.

The fact is that Earth’s orbit is almost, but not quite, circular. So our distance from the sun doesn’t change much. Today, we’re about 3 million miles (5 million km) farther from the sun than we will be six months from now. That’s in contrast to our average distance from the sun of about 93 million miles (150 million km). The word aphelion, by the way, comes from the Greek words apo meaning away, off, apart and helios, for the Greek god of the sun. Apart from the sun. That’s us, today. Looking for Earth’s exact distance from the sun at aphelion? It’s 94,505,901 miles (152,092,505 km). Last year, on July 4, 2016, the Earth at aphelion was a tiny bit farther, at 94,512,904 miles (152,103,775 km).

Here’s what does cause the seasons. It’s not a distance thing. We’re always farthest from the sun in early July during northern summer and closest in January during northern winter.

It’s a tilt thing. Right now, it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere because the northern part of Earth is tilted most toward the sun. Meanwhile, it’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere because the southern part of Earth is tilted most away from the sun. Earth’s varying distance from the sun does affect the length of the seasons. That’s because, at our farthest from the sun, like now, Earth is traveling most slowly in its orbit. That makes summer the longest season in the Northern Hemisphere and winter the longest season on the southern half of the globe.
Conversely, winter is the shortest season in the Northern Hemisphere, and summer is the shortest in the S. Hemisphere, in each instance by nearly 5 days.

Source and more details: http://earthsky.org/?p=34670

[Antonio]

On 4 July 1862 Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), accompanied by the three eldest daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, Lorina, Alice and Edith, and The Rev. Robinson Duckworth of Trinity College, took a boat trip ‘up the river to Godstow’.

During the trip, the first outlines of the story of Alice’s Adventures under Ground were narrated. On return to Christ Church, Alice urged Dodgson to write out the story for her. That evening and on a train journey the next day, he set out the main headings. He started a manuscript text on 13 November 1862, completing it on 10 February 1863.

It is likely that he left spaces in the text to be filled with his own illustrations at a later date. The manuscript was seen by the novelist Henry Kingsley and the family of the writer of children’s books George MacDonald, who all urged him to consider publication.

Dodgson retained the manuscript version for reference as he expanded the book into the fuller text of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In November 1864 he presented the manuscript volume of Alice’s Adventures under Ground, complete with his own illustrations, to Alice Liddell.

Meanwhile, the artist John Tenniel was approached and commissioned to illustrate the final expanded text of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Source: http://lewiscarrollsociety.org.uk/ind...