"I have no fear nor shrinking; I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me."
British nurse Edith Cavell died #OTD in 1915.
She is celebrated for treating wounded soldiers from both sides without discrimination during the First World War and for helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium. Cavell was arrested, court-martialled under German military law and sentenced to death by firing squad.
#OTD in 1798.
Elizabeth Inchbald's Lovers' Vows (adapted from Kotzebue's Das Kind der Liebe – 1780; literally "Love Child," or "Natural Son," as it is often translated) is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London.
It was likewise successful as a print publication, though it also aroused controversy about its "levelling" politics and moral ambiguity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovers%27_Vows
Lovers' Vows at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4554
#OTD in 1923.
A production of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus at The Old Vic, directed by Robert Atkins, is the first in London since 1857. It is also the first to restore the full original text since the playwright's time.
It is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent & bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were extremely popular with audiences throughout the 16th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_Andronicus
Titus Andronicus at PG
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1507
Irish novelist Edith Somerville died #OTD in 1949.
She wrote in collaboration with her cousin "Martin Ross" (Violet Martin) under the pseudonym "Somerville and Ross". Together they published a series of fourteen stories and novels, the most popular of which were The Real Charlotte, published in 1894, and Some Experiences of an Irish R. M., published in 1899.
Books by E. Œ. Somerville at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/5334
American bacteriological chemist, food scientist and refrigeration engineer Mary Engle Pennington was born #OTD in 1872.
She was a pioneer in the preservation, handling, storage and transportation of perishable foods and the first female lab chief at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. She was awarded 5 patents, received the Notable Service Medal from President Herbert Hoover and the Garvin-Olin Medal from the American Chemical Society.
English philosopher and women's rights advocate Harriet Taylor Mill was born #OTD in 1807.
She is considered to have been a key contributor to many of John Stuart Mill’s most famous works, particularly "On Liberty" (1859) & "The Subjection of Women" (1869). Some of her own writings, such as her essay "The Enfranchisement of Women" (1851), argued for women's equality and their right to vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Taylor_Mill
Books by Harriet Taylor Mill at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73404
#art #history: jazz juggernaut, arthur blakey (born #otd in 1919 to a single mum who died soon after art arrived), was raised by a family friend. he first gravitated toward the piano, but soon found his true groove with the drums & rose up through the ranks playing alongside bebop monsters charlie parker, dizzy gillespie & thelonious monk.
[thread!]
#illustration #artBlakey #jazz #music #drummer #drums
#OTD in 1905.
The English actor-manager Sir Henry Irving collapses in his hotel, while playing Thomas Becket on tour in Bradford, dying soon afterwards. 'Into thy hands, O Lord, into thy hands', and though he lived for an hour or so longer he never spoke again" were his last words.
Becket and other plays by Baron Alfred Tennyson at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9162
#OTD in 1773.
French astronomer Charles Messier discovered the Whirlpool Galaxy, an interacting, grand design spiral galaxy located an estimated 31 million light-years away.
Messier made his discovery while hunting for objects that could confuse comet hunters, and was designated in Messier's catalogue as M51. The advent of radio astronomy and subsequent radio images of M51 unequivocally demonstrated that the Whirlpool and its companion galaxy are indeed interacting.
"La reconnaissance a la mémoire courte."
Swiss philosopher & politician Benjamin Constant was born #OTD in 1767. Author of numerous essays on political & religious issues, he also wrote psychological novels, such as Le Cahier rouge and Adolphe.
#OTD in 1922.
T. S. Eliot founds The Criterion magazine, with the first appearance of his poem The Waste Land. This will be first fully published in book form by Boni & Liveright in New York in December.
Eliot's goal was to make it a literary review dedicated to the maintenance of standards and the reunification of a European intellectual community.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Criterion
The Waste Land at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1321
"Were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow."
#OTD in 1848.
Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life is published anonymously by Chapman & Hall in London in two volumes.
Gaskell was paid £100 for the novel. The publisher Edward Chapman had had the manuscript since the middle of 1847.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Barton
Mary Barton at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2153
#OTD in 1846.
William T. G. Morton administers ether anesthesia during a surgical operation, by the use of inhaled ether.
A month after this demonstration, a patent was issued for "letheon", although it was widely known by then that the inhalant was ether. The promotion of his questionable claim to have been the discoverer of anesthesia became an obsession for the rest of his life.
47 years ago today
"Oh Bondage Up Yours!" is the debut single by English punk rock band X-Ray Spex, released on this day in 1977.
#punk #punks #womenofpunk #xrayspex #polystyrene #history #punkrockhistory #otd
#OTD in 1843.
William Rowan Hamilton invents quaternions, a 3D system of complex numbers.
Important precursors to this work included Euler's four-square identity (1748) & Olinde Rodrigues' parameterization of general rotations by 4 parameters (1840), but neither of these writers treated the four-parameter rotations as an algebra. Carl Friedrich Gauss had discovered quaternions in 1819, but this work was not published until 1900.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion
English poet and novelist Letitia Elizabeth Landon died #OTD in 1838.
Her first major breakthrough came with The Improvisatrice and thence she developed the metrical romance towards the Victorian ideal of the Victorian monologue, influencing fellow English writers such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson and Christina Rossetti.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letitia_Elizabeth_Landon
Books about Letitia Elizabeth Landon at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56166
#OTD in 1858.
The farce Our American Cousin by the English playwright Tom Taylor is first performed at Laura Keene's Theatre in New York City, with the American Joe Jefferson in the title rôle and the English actor Edward Askew Sothern as Lord Dundreary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_American_Cousin
Our American Cousin at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/3158
#OTD in 1892.
The first collection of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories from The Strand Magazine (June 1891–June 1892), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, is published by George Newnes in London; it includes Doyle's favourite, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", which was originally published in February.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Sherlock_Holmes
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1661
Swiss chemist Nicolas Théodore de Saussure was born #OTD in 1767.
His book Recherches chimiques sur la Végétation (1804) was the first summation of the fundamental process of photosynthesis and a major contribution to the understanding of plant physiology. In contrast to some of his predecessors in the field of photosynthesis research, Saussure based his conclusions on extensive quantitative data that he had collected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Th%C3%A9odore_de_Saussure
#OTD in 1926.
The children's book Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne first appears, published by Methuen in London.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh_(book)#
Winnie-the-Pooh's entrance into the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2022 was noted by several news publications, generally in the context of a greater Public Domain Day article.
https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2022/#fn6text
Winnie-the-Pooh at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/67098
"Call me Ishmael."
#OTD in 1851.
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London.
In the October 1851 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine "The Town Ho's Story" was published, with a footnote reading: "From 'The Whale'. The title of a new work by Mr. Melville, in the press of Harper and Brothers, and now publishing in London by Mr. Bentley."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/15
#OTD in 1911.
German novelist Hans Fallada, kills his best friend in a suicide pact staged as a duel.
Fallada made a pact with a friend, Hanns Dietrich von Necker, to stage a duel to mask their suicides, feeling that the duel would be seen as more honorable. However, because of both boys' inexperience with weapons, it was a bungled affair. Dietrich missed Fallada, but Fallada did not miss Dietrich, killing him.
Hans Fallada at Projekt Gutenberg-DE
https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/autoren/namen/fallada.html
#OTD in 1771.
Premiere in Milan of the opera Ascanio in Alba, composed by Mozart at age 15.
This is a pastoral opera in two parts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Parini. It was commissioned by the Empress Maria Theresa for the wedding of her son, Archduke Ferdinand Karl, to Maria Beatrice d'Este on 15 October 1771.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascanio_in_Alba
https://imslp.org/wiki/Ascanio_in_Alba,_K.111_(Mozart,_Wolfgang_Amadeus)
Books about Mozart at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=mozart&submit_search=Go%21&start_index=26
Lise Meitner died #OTD in 1968.
She is known for her part in the discovery of nuclear fission. Among physicists she had been known for many years as one of the early pioneers in the study of radioactivity. Einstein nicknamed her ‘the German Madame Curie’.
"The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."
#OTD in 1847.
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is published (as "an autobiography, edited by Currer Bell") in London by Smith, Elder & Co. in 3 volumes.
The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Eyre
Jane Eyre at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1260
