#OTD in 1930.
American novelist Sinclair Lewis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the first writer from the United States to receive the award.
Sinclair Lewis Nobel Lecture:
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1930/lewis/lecture/
The City is of Night; perchance of Death…
James “B.V.” Thomson (1834–1882) – poet, journalist, translator, anarchist, atheist – was born #OTD, 23 Nov, in Port Glasgow. Best known for his long poem THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT, he influenced TS Eliot & is seen as a progenitor of Modernism
1/3
https://psychogeographicreview.com/the-city-of-dreadful-night/
#Scottish #literature #poetry #Victorian #19thCentury #modernism #TSEliot
#OTD in 1878.
Henry Irving's production of Hamlet, with himself in the title rôle playing opposite Ellen Terry as Ophelia, opens at the Lyceum Theatre, London (of which they have taken over the management). The tendency of actor-managers to emphasise the importance of their own central character did not always meet with the critics' approval.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet
Hamlet at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1524
#OTD in 1877.
Anna Sewell's animal welfare novel Black Beauty is published. It was written from a horse as main character's perspective. Sewell wrote it in the last years of her life, during which she was bedridden and seriously ill.
#OTD in 1891.
Maurice Maeterlinck's play The Blind (written in 1890) is premièred. Les Aveugles is, along with L'Intruse, one of Maurice Maeterlinck's first two plays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_(play)
Les Aveugles is available at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48368
"Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel."
Jack London died #OTD in 1916.
A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.
When you were people
We could have loved you,
Found out your names
And brought you presents…
—“Poem for Innocent Victims of War” by AC Jacobs (1937–1994) – born #OTD, 30 May
Published in NAMELESS COUNTRY: Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2018)
A 🎂 🧵
1/6
https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784106751/nameless-country/
#Scottish #literature #poetry #Jewish #diaspora #20thcentury #warpoetry
#OnThisDay, 24 Nov 2015, mathematician Katherine Johnson receives the US Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work on the space programme.
Her story was told in 'Hidden Figures'.
#OnThisDay, 1 Aug 1786, Caroline Herschel discovers comet C/1786 P1, becoming one of the first women to find one (and have it named after her). Her brother was appointed court astronomer to King George III. When Caroline took a government salary for helping him she became the first woman to be paid for her astronomical work.
This week, 2025, Prof Michele Dougherty became the first woman to be Astronomer Royal.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM #Histodons
#OTD in 1899.
William Gillette's play Sherlock Holmes, based (with authorisation) on the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, opens in New York City with himself in the title rôle.
Danish author Marie Bregendahl was born #OTD in 1867.
Her first novel Hendrik i Bakken was published in 1904. She went on to gain fame with En Dødsnat in 1912, based on the death of her mother when she was only 12.
#OTD in 1859
Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, an early example of mystery fiction, begins serialisation in All the Year Round.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman_in_White_(novel)#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Year_Round
#OTD in 1952.
Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London's West End after a premiere in Nottingham, UK. It will become the longest continuously running play in history.
#OnThisDay, 28 Nov 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers the existence of pulsars.
Not included in the 1974 Nobel prize for the discovery, Bell received a £3m prize for her work in 2018. She's used it to set up a foundation to improve the diversity in STEM.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM #Histodons
#OTD in 1919.
The Großes Schauspielhaus opens as a theater in Berlin, with an interior designed by Hans Poelzig. It begins with the director Max Reinhardt's production of the Oresteia.
The House of Atreus at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8604
"The moment of discovery" does not always exist: the scientist's work is too tenuous, too divided, for the certainty of success to crackle out suddenly in the midst of his laborious toil like a stroke of lightening, dazzling him by its fire.
Marie Curie was born #OTD in 1867.
Mary Somerville, a Scottish scientist died #OTD in 1872. Her most famous work, The Mechanism of the Heavens (1831), was a translation and expansion of Laplace's Traité de mécanique céleste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Somerville
"The educator must above all understand how to wait; to reckon all effects in the light of the future, not of the present."
Swedish writer Ellen Key was born #OTD in 1849.
She on many subjects in the fields of family life, ethics and education and was an important figure in the Modern Breakthrough movement. She was an early advocate of a child-centered approach to education and parenting, and was also a suffragist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Key
Ellen Key at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/502
#OTD in 1922.
At Toronto General Hospital, 14-year old Leonard Thompson became the first human to receive an injection of insulin as a treatment for diabetes, administered by Dr. James Collip. Thompson developed an allergic reaction to the injection. Additional work was done to refine the treatment and a second dose given on January 23.
More about insulin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin
#OTD in 1884.
The first London publication of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn occurs.
Twain initially conceived of the work as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that would follow Huckleberry Finn through adulthood. He worked on the manuscript off and on for the next several years, ultimately abandoning his original plan of following Huck's development into adulthood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/76
"Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too,
And the daft sun-assaulter, he
That frightened thee so oft, is fled or dead:
Save only me
...
There is none left to mourn thee in the fields."
#OTD in 1894. Robert Frost's first poem, "My Butterfly" appears in The New York Independent, which pays him $15.
#OTD in 1908.
Cuala Press, set up at Churchtown, Dublin, as a private press independent of the former Dun Emer Press in connection with the Irish Literary Revival and Arts and Crafts movement by Elizabeth "Lolly" Yeats with editorial support from her brother W. B. Yeats, produces its first publication, Poetry and Ireland: Essays by W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson (died 1902).
"I saw you - and from that day
I see only you in the world."
Johan Henric Kellgren, born #OTD in 1751, was a Swedish poet and critic.
Kellgren began as a tutor and later worked as a journalist and editor for Stockholms Posten, where he gained a reputation as a sharp and influential critic. Notable works include "Mina Löjen", which blends satire with lyrical beauty, and "Den nya skapelsen", which highlights themes of renewal & enlightenment.
"A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas."
Godfrey Harold Hardy, who died #OTD in 1947, was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory & mathematical analysis.
In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of population genetics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._H._Hardy
Books by G.H. Hardy at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/39236
"Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies."
#OTD in 1860.
Charles Dickens's Bildungsroman Great Expectations begins serialization in All the Year Round. Although intended for weekly publication, Great Expectations was divided into nine monthly sections, with new pagination for each.
Great Expectations at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1400
![With Estella after all.
Great Expectations
[1867 Edition]
by Charles Dickens
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1400](/proxy/post_attachment/531410/604c689fba.jpg "With Estella after all.
Great Expectations
[1867 Edition]
by Charles Dickens
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1400")