Russian feminist and activist Maria Trubnikova was born #OTD in 1835.
Trubnikova hosted a women-only salon which became a center of feminist activism. Alongside Anna Filosofova and Nadezhda Stasova, whom she mentored, Trubnikova was one of the earliest leaders of the Russian women's movement; the three women were referred to as the "triumvirate".
Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist Kahlil Gibran was born #OTD in 1883.
He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahlil_Gibran
Books by Kahlil Gibran at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1813
Jacob Bernoulli was born #OTD in 1655.
He was an early proponent of Leibnizian calculus; along with his brother Johann, he was one of the founders of the calculus of variations. He also discovered the fundamental mathematical constant e. However, his most important contribution was in the field of probability, where he derived the first version of the law of large numbers in his work Ars Conjectandi.
#OTD in 1904.
The first of Virginia Woolf's published writings, "Haworth, November 1904", an account of a visit to the Brontë family home, appears anonymously in a women's supplement to a clerical journal, The Guardian. (A book review written later has appeared in the same journal a week earlier.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haworth
Books by Virginia Woolf at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/89
"There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt."
Torvald Helmer, Act I
#OTD in 1879.
The first production of Henrik Ibsen's controversial "modern drama" A Doll's House takes place at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen, after publication there on December 4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Doll%27s_House
A Doll's House at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2542
English author Agatha Christie died #OTD in 1976.
She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap.
Watch our podcast about The Big Four:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoKUX5a7T0Y&t=74s
Books by Agatha Chrissie at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/451
The Remarkable Life of Charles Dickens: Hard Times & Great Expectations
One of the greatest writers of English literary history, Charles Dickens’ rags-to-riches story is as incredible as any of his greatest works of fiction.
By Catherine Dent
https://www.thecollector.com/charles-dickens-remarkable-life/
Books by Charles Dickens at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/37
3 philosophy classics that are better than self-help books
Self-help often distills philosophical ideas for the modern ear. Sometimes, its better to go back to the source.
By Jonny Thomson
https://bigthink.com/thinking/3-philosophy-classics-that-are-better-than-self-help-books/
The 3 philosophy classics are available at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Nicomachean+Ethics&submit_search=Search
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3600
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49965
#OTD in 1872.
Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days (Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) finishes serialisation (since November 2) in the daily Le Temps, the day after the concluding date of the narrative. The story was published in installments over the next 45 days, with its ending timed to synchronize Fogg's December 21 deadline with the real world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_in_Eighty_Days
Around the World in Eighty Days at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=le+tour+du+monde&submit_search=Go%21
"All the glories of the sunset,
In the sunrise one may see;
That which others call the dawning
Is the night for you and me."
Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt , who died #OTD in 1919, was an American poet. She published hundreds of poems in nationally circulated newspapers, magazines, and anthologies as well as in eighteen volumes of poems, two of which she co-authored with her husband, the poet John James Piatt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Morgan_Bryan_Piatt
To G. H. Hardy who had expressed worry that the number of a taxi - 1729:
"No, it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways, the two ways being 1^3+12^3 and 9^3+10^3."
Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan was born #OTD in 1887. He is noted for his extraordinary achievements in the field of mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions.
"The trouble with this country is... that there're too many people going about saying "The trouble with this country is—"
Dodsworth, Ch. 10 (1929)
American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright Sinclair Lewis died #OTD in 1951.
Lewis wrote six popular novels: Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis
Sinclair Lewis at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/278
"Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic — and this we know it is, for certain — then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature."
Serbian-American inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla died #OTD in 1943.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
Books by Nikola Tesla at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/5067
What Is Entropy? A Measure of Just How Little We Really Know.
Exactly 200 years ago, a French engineer introduced an idea that would quantify the universe’s inexorable slide into decay. But entropy, as it’s currently understood, is less a fact about the world than a reflection of our growing ignorance. Embracing that truth is leading to a rethink of everything from rational decision-making to the limits of machines.
By Zack Savistky
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-entropy-a-measure-of-just-how-little-we-really-know-20241213/
The Editor Who Drove Hemingway Away
Harry C. Hindmarsh, assistant managing editor of the Toronto Daily Star, knew how to get under Ernest Hemingway’s skin.
https://daily.jstor.org/the-editor-who-drove-hemingway-away/
Hemingway at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/50533
George R.R. Martin has co-authored a physics paper
"I couldn't help but wonder if a simple underlying model might tidy up the canon.”
By Jennifer Ouellette
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/01/george-r-r-martin-has-co-authored-a-physics-paper/
Ergodic Lagrangian dynamics in a superhero universe
By I. L. Tregillis and George R. R. Martin
https://pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp/article/93/2/127/3331568/Ergodic-Lagrangian-dynamics-in-a-superhero
Join the Texas Observer in conversation with author Jessica Pishko on February 5th for this FREE event at Alienated Majesty Books.
We'll discuss Pishko's provocative and important book about the dangers posed by extremist sheriffs in the United States.
RSVP: https://buff.ly/4gzkA5r
#events #books #bookstodon @bookstodon #Austin #Texas #police #extremism #CriminalJustice #law
#OTD in 1815.
Jane Austen's novel Emma is published anonymously by John Murray in London dated 1816. About 1500 copies sell over the next 5 years. Murray offered Austen £450 for this plus the copyrights of Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility, which she refused. Instead, she published two thousand copies of the novel at her own expense, retaining the copyright and paying a 10% commission to Murray.
Emma at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/158
After Failing Math Twice, a Young Benjamin Franklin Turned to This Popular 17th-Century Textbook
A 19th-century scholar claimed that “Cocker’s Arithmetick” had “probably made as much stir and noise in the English world as any [book]—next to the Bible”
By James Fox
1716 edition of Cocker's Arithmetick is available at @internetarchive
https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_cockers-arithmetick-be_cocker-edward_1716/page/n4/mode/1up?view=theater
#OTD in 1910.
Serialisation of Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) concludes in the Paris newspaper Le Gaulois.
Because of his fascination with both Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he wrote a detective mystery entitled The Mystery of the Yellow Room in 1907, and four years later he published Le Fantôme de l'Opéra.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_of_the_Opera_(novel)
The Phantom of the Opera at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/175
#OTD in 1818.
Lord Byron, in Venice, sends the final part of Childe Harold to his publisher.
The poem contains elements thought to be autobiographical, as Byron generated some of the storyline from experience gained during his travels through Portugal, the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea between 1809 and 1811.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childe_Harold%27s_Pilgrimage
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/5131
#OTD in 1851.
A fire at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., destroys 35,000 books, about two–thirds of the collection. Between 1890 and 1897, a new library building (Thomas Jefferson Building), was constructed. Two additional buildings, the John Adams Building (opened in 1939) and the James Madison Memorial Building (opened in 1980), were later added.
New Media, Old Anxieties:
Why is “Brain Rot” the Word of the Year?
Josh Abbey Considers “Savage Torpor” and Other Nice Things
https://lithub.com/new-media-old-anxieties-why-is-brain-rot-the-word-of-the-year/
#OTD in 1879.
During construction of an extension to Birmingham Central Library in England, a fire destroys 50,000 books and the original manuscript of the Coventry Mystery Plays (including the "Coventry Carol").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Mystery_Plays
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Carol
Coventry Carol at PG (as audio book):
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20603
#OTD in 1818.
Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" appears in Leigh Hunt's weekly The Examiner (London; p. 24) under the pen name "Glirastes". Horace Smith's contribution to the same informal sonnet-writing competition, "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below" is published on February 1 under his initials.
![Cover of the French first edition of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. Published on January 30, 1873,[1] printed by Gauthier-Villars, published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel & Cie, Paris. 217 pages, illustrated with B/W engravings by De Neuville and Benett. (publisher's binding).
Centered prominently is the title, "Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours," surrounded by ornate borders and motifs inspired by travel, exploration, and exotic destinations. Visual elements such as globes, compasses, and decorative frames emphasize the book's focus on global circumnavigation.
The illustrations by De Neuville and Benett, reproduced in black and white within the 217 pages, add further detail to the narrative, bringing key scenes to life with precision and dramatic flair. The overall design of the cover communicates a sense of grandeur and excitement, perfectly encapsulating the spirit of Verne’s iconic tale.](/proxy/post_attachment/554920/7139f6e747.jpg "Cover of the French first edition of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. Published on January 30, 1873,[1] printed by Gauthier-Villars, published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel & Cie, Paris. 217 pages, illustrated with B/W engravings by De Neuville and Benett. (publisher's binding).
Centered prominently is the title, \"Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours,\" surrounded by ornate borders and motifs inspired by travel, exploration, and exotic destinations. Visual elements such as globes, compasses, and decorative frames emphasize the book's focus on global circumnavigation.
The illustrations by De Neuville and Benett, reproduced in black and white within the 217 pages, add further detail to the narrative, bringing key scenes to life with precision and dramatic flair. The overall design of the cover communicates a sense of grandeur and excitement, perfectly encapsulating the spirit of Verne’s iconic tale.")
