#OTD in 1902.
The first example of a Sherlockian game – a study of inconsistencies of dates in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (the serialisation of which in The Strand Magazine concludes in April) by publisher Frank Sidgwick – appears in The Cambridge Review.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_of_Sherlock_Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/69
American journalist Nellie Bly died #OTD in 1922.
She was widely known for her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days in emulation of Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg, & for an exposé in which she worked undercover to report on a mental institution from within. Bly was also an inventor, receiving U.S. patent 697,553 for a novel milk can & U.S. patent 703,711 for a stacking garbage can.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly
Nellie Bly at PG
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/9648
#OTD in 1925.
Ravel's opera L'enfant et les sortilèges (written from 1917 to 1925), to a libretto by Colette, is premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.
After being offered the opportunity to write a musical work, Colette wrote the text in eight days. Several composers had proposed to Colette that she write to music, but she was only excited by the prospect of Ravel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27enfant_et_les_sortil%C3%A8ges
L'enfant et les sortilèges at the IMSLP:
https://imslp.org/wiki/L%27enfant_et_les_sortil%C3%A8ges_(Ravel,_Maurice)
Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren died #OTD in 2002.
She is best known for several children's book series, featuring Pippi Longstocking, Emil of Lönneberga, Karlsson-on-the-Roof, and the Six Bullerby Children (Children of Noisy Village in the US), and for the children's fantasy novels Mio, My Son; Ronia the Robber's Daughter; and The Brothers Lionheart.
#OnThisDay, 29 Jan 1891, Liliʻuokalani is sworn in as Queen of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
She is the first, and only, regnant queen of the country and is deposed in a coup in 1893 that was supported by the US marines.
#RegnantWomen #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Histodons
"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted — nevermore!"
#OTD in 1845.
Edgar Allan Poe first publishes the narrative poem "The Raven", under his own name in The Evening Mirror of New York, of which he is a staff critic until February. It is rapidly reprinted across the United States and appears in book form by the end of the year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven
The Raven at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/14082
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/17192
#OnThisDay, 30 Jan 1913, Ida B Wells forms the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, Illinois, to give a voice to Black women who had been excluded by national suffrage organisations because of their race.
In March 1913, the club headed to Washington DC to take part in the national Women’s Suffrage Procession. They were told to march at the back, in a segregated section, so as not to upset white southern women.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons
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#OTD in 1853.
Charlotte Brontë's novel, Villette, appears, its publication having been delayed in order to allow Ruth, by her friend Elizabeth Gaskell, to be given a head start in the press.
Villette was Charlotte Brontë's third & last novel published during her life. It was preceded in writing by The Professor (her posthumously published 1st novel, of which Villette is a reworking, though still not very similar), Jane Eyre, & Shirley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villette_(novel)
"What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won’t seem important at all."
#OTD in 1901.
Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters premieres at Moscow Art Theatre in Russia under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(play)
Three Sisters at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7986
#OTD in 1863.
Jules Verne's novel Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen (Cinq semaines en ballon) is published in Paris. It will be the first of Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires. This was Verne's first novel to be published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel, following the rejection of Voyage en Angleterre et en Écosse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Weeks_in_a_Balloon
Five Weeks in a Balloon at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/3526
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/4548
#OTD in 1848.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) in London.
Published amid the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, the manifesto remains one of the world's most influential political documents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto
Danish seismologist and geophysicist Inge Lehmann died #OTD in 1993.
She is best known for her discovery in 1936 of the solid inner core that exists within the molten outer core of the Earth. The seismic discontinuity in the speed of seismic waves at depths between 190 and 250 km is named the Lehmann discontinuity after her. Lehmann is considered to be a pioneer among women and scientists in seismology research.
#OTD in 1904.
J. M. Synge's tragedy Riders to the Sea is first performed at Molesworth Hall, Dublin, by the Irish National Theatre Society, with Helen Laird playing Maurya.
Synge's use of phrasing from the Irish language is part of the Irish Literary Revival, a period when Irish literature looked to encourage pride and nationalism in Ireland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riders_to_the_Sea
Riders to the Sea at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/994
#OTD in 1909.
The first issue appears of La Nouvelle Revue Française, a literary magazine founded in Paris by André Gide, Jacques Copeau, Jean Schlumberger, Gaston Gallimard, and others.
Established writers such as Paul Bourget and Anatole France contributed to the magazine from its early days. The first published works by André Malraux and Jean-Paul Sartre were in the pages of the Revue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_Revue_Fran%C3%A7aise
Nouvelle Revue Française is available at UPenn:
https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=nouvellerevfr
#OTD (to March 17) in 1877
Robert Louis Stevenson's first published work of fiction, the novella "An Old Song", appears anonymously in four episodes in the magazine London. It is first attributed to Stevenson in 1980.
Books by Robert Louis Stevenson at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/35
"Hvad skal manden være? Sig selv, det er mit korte svar."
"What ought a man to be? Well, my short answer is ‘himself’."
Act IV
#OTD in 1876.
The stage première of the verse-play Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (published 1867) with incidental music by Edvard Grieg, takes place in Christiania, Norway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_Gynt
Peer Gynt at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66239
In Norwegian at @runeberg-org.bsky.social
https://runeberg.org/peergynt/
Today is the start of #BlackHistoryMonth in the US. It is also the anniversary of #OtD 1 Feb 1960 in Greensboro, NC, when four Black college students refused to move from a Woolworth's lunch counter after they were denied service https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10962/greensboro-civil-rights-sit-ins
#OnThisDay, 24 Feb 1968, Jocelyn Bell Burnell - along with her male supervisor and three other men - published a paper confirming the discovery of pulsars. She had built the array, picked up the signal and argued it was not an anomaly. Hewish received the Nobel prize for it in 1974: Bell Burnell did not.
In 2018 Bell Burnell received a £3m prize for her work. She's used it to set up a foundation to improve the diversity in STEM.
#OTD in 1922.
In a "savage creative storm" of less than three weeks beginning today at Château de Muzot in Switzerland, Rainer Maria Rilke writes his Sonnets to Orpheus (Die Sonette an Orpheus) and completes his Duino Elegies (Duineser Elegien).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnets_to_Orpheus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duino_Elegies
Books by Rainer Maria Rilke at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/846
#OTD in 1920.
Beyond the Horizon, Eugene O'Neill's second full-length play, opens with a Morosco Theatre matinée in New York City, partly as a producer's experiment and partly to quiet the actor Richard Bennett, who sought to play the lead. Reviewers hail the play and O'Neill gains fame. It won the 1920 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Horizon_(play)
Beyond the Horizon at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58569
#OTD in 1886.
The first performance of William Gillette's American Civil War drama Held by the Enemy is held at the Criterion Theater, Brooklyn, New York.
The play was a major step toward modern theater, in that it abandoned many of the crude devices of 19th-century melodrama and introduced realism into the sets, costumes, props, and sound effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gillette
William Gillette at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/38243
#OTD in 1920.
Federico García Lorca's first play, The Butterfly's Evil Spell (El maleficio de la mariposa) is poorly received at its première in Madrid.
With only four performances, very poorly received by the public, including booing, it was a total failure for its author. The text, written in verse, is a parable about frustration, love and death; recurring themes in Lorca's work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butterfly%27s_Evil_Spell
Garcia Lorca at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/56772
#OTD in 1826.
In the Mexican Republic, lithographer Claudio Linati inaugurates El Iris, a "pocket sized" bi-weekly. It is in print until August 2, when its popularization of liberal ideas prompts the intervention of state censors.
It was founded as an illustrated literary review, with topics of interest to women. It included articles on poetry, theater and fashion, as well as portraits and biographies of heroes of the recent war of independence.
#OTD in 1856.
Lewis Carroll chooses his pseudonym; on May 1 he takes up photography as a hobby. A romantic poem called "Solitude" appeared in The Train under the authorship of "Lewis Carroll". This pseudonym was a play on his real name: Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll an Irish surname similar to the Latin name Carolus, from which comes the name Charles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll
American philosopher and psychologist Mary Whiton Calkins died #OTD in 1930.
Calkins' work informed theory and research of memory, dreams and the self. In 1903, Calkins was the twelfth in a listing of fifty psychologists with the most merit, chosen by her peers. Calkins was refused a Ph.D. by Harvard University because of her gender.
