#OTD in 1864 (until April 16).
James Payn publishes his most popular story, Lost Sir Massingberd, in Chambers's Journal. He follows it in the magazine (August 6 – December 24) by Married Beneath Him. Lost Sir Massingberd was published as a book in two volumes in 1864.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Sir_Massingberd
Lost Sir Massingberd at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37170
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37171
"Nothing is stranger to man than his own image."
#OTD in 1921.
World premiere of the science fiction play R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti) by the Czech writer Karel Čapek in a theater in Hradec Králové. It introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.
R.U.R. at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/59112
Fra banc to banc, fra wod to wod, I rin
Ourhailit with my feble fantasie,
Lyk til a leif that fallis from a trie
Or til a reid ourblawin with the wind…
—“Sonet of Venus & Cupid”, by Mark Alexander Boyd (1563–1601), born #OTD, 13 Jan
published in THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF SCOTTISH VERSE, @canongatebooks 2021
https://canongate.co.uk/books/3267-the-golden-treasury-of-scottish-verse/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #sonnet #16thcentury #17thcentury #earlymodern #Scots #Scotslanguage
#OTD in 1893.
The first story featuring the private detective character Sexton Blake, "The Missing Millionaire", appears in Alfred Harmsworth's new boys' story paper The Halfpenny Marvel, written by Harry Blyth under the pen-name Hal Meredeth.
Sexton Blake adventures were featured in a wide variety of British and international publications from 1893 to 1978, comprising more than 4,000 stories by some 200 different authors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexton_Blake
"What remains?" cried Ivanhoe; "Glory, maiden, glory! which gilds our sepulchre and embalms our name."
#OTD in 1819.
Walter Scott's popular Waverley Novel Ivanhoe is published anonymously in 3 volumes by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh, dated 1820. A chivalric romance set in 12th-century England, it represents a move away from Scott setting his fiction in Scotland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/82
#OTD in 1895.
The première of Oscar Wilde's comedy An Ideal Husband takes place at the Haymarket Theatre in London. In April, on the last day of the Haymarket run, Wilde was arrested for gross indecency; his name was removed from the playbills and programmes when the production transferred to the Criterion Theatre, where it ran for a further 13 performances, from 13 to 27 April.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Ideal_Husband
An Ideal Husband at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/885
#OTD in 1846.
Fyodor Dostoevsky's first original novel, Poor Folk, is published in the St. Petersburg Collection.
The first English translation was provided by Lena Milman in 1894, with an introduction by George Moore, cover art design by Aubrey Beardsley and publication by London's Mathews and Lane. It is the first novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, written over the span of nine months between 1844 and 1845.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Folk
Poor Folk at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2302
#OTD in 1787.
William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.
Orbiting at a much greater distance from Uranus are the ten known irregular moons. The planet's magnetosphere is highly asymmetric and has many charged particles, which may be the cause of the darkening of its rings and moons.
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
Happy Birthday to Kathryn 'Kathy' Valentine, songwriter and bassist for the pop punk band the Go-Go's, born on this day in 1959, Austin, Texas
Photo by Pam Martinez at the Roxy Theater in 1981
#punk #punkrock #kathyvalentine #thegogos #womenofpunk #history #punkrockhistory #otd
#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.
#OTD in 1610.
Galileo Galilei makes his first observation of the four Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io & Europa, although he is not able to distinguish the last two until the following night.
His work Sidereus Nuncius contains the results of his early observations of the imperfect and mountainous Moon, of hundreds of stars not visible to the naked eye in the Milky Way and in certain constellations, and of the Medicean Stars (later Galilean moons) that appeared to be circling Jupiter.
1/2
#OTD in 1929.
The Adventures of Tintin begin with the first appearance of Hergé's Belgian comic book hero in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, serialized in the children's newspaper supplement Le Petit Vingtième.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_in_the_Land_of_the_Soviets
There is a controversy about Tintin entering the public domain in United States. For Alain Berenboom, lawyer for the Hergé Foundation, according to the Berne Convention, Tintin will enter the public domain in 2034.
#OTD in 1894.
Thomas Edison makes a kinetoscopic film of someone sneezing. On the same day, his employee, William Kennedy Dickson, receives a patent for motion picture film.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Ott%27s_Sneeze
According to the Library of Congress, it is the second oldest surviving U.S. motion picture to be copyrighted, although it is now in the public domain.
"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
“I have a harmonium and it’s going to explode in two minutes”
Ivor Cutler (1923–2006) – poet, singer, musician, songwriter, artist, humorist – was born #OTD, 15 Jan
In 2013, to mark what would have been his 90th birthday, BBC Radio 4 celebrated his life & career:
1/7
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0381jzt
#Scottish #literature #poetry #music #humour #surrealism #absurdist #IvorCutler
#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
![Title page of Lost Sir Massingberd.
The book is in two volumes, with this being Volume I.
Published in London by Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, located at 14, Ludgate Hill, in 1864.
It includes the note: "[The Right of Translation is Reserved.]".](/proxy/post_attachment/567629/66fd41f7dd.png "Title page of Lost Sir Massingberd.
The book is in two volumes, with this being Volume I.
Published in London by Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, located at 14, Ludgate Hill, in 1864.
It includes the note: \"[The Right of Translation is Reserved.]\".")
![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.")
