Friday

Oct. 31, 1997

A Thing of Beauty

by John Keats

FRIDAY  10/31

Today's Reading:  "A Thing of Beauty" by John Keats.

Today is Halloween, originating from the Celtic festival Samhain, celebrating the end of summer and the eve of the Celtic new year.

The Edgar Allan Poe Festival starts today in Manheim, Pennsylvania.

After 14 years of work, the Mount Rushmore National Memorial was finished on this day in 1941.

Architect Charles Moore, one of the most influential designers of the post-modern period, was born in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1925.

Historian William H. McNeill, author of THE RISE OF THE WEST, was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1917.

Brazilian poet, journalist and short-story writer Carlos Drummond de Andrade, was born in Itabira, Minas Gerais, in 1902.

Actress and jazz and blues singer Ethel Waters, the first to sing W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues," was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1896.

The founder of the Girl Scouts, Juliette Low, was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1860.

Benoit Fourneyron, inventor of the water turbine, was born in Saint-Etienne, France, in 1802.

English romantic poet John Keats, who lived only to the age of 25, was born in London in 1795.

Dutch painter Jan Vermeer, who painted mainly the interior scenes of bakers and grocers---with whom he often traded paintings for food, was born in Delft in 1632.

Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses denouncing papal corruption to the door of Wittenberg's Palace church in 1517, beginning the Protestant Reformation in Germany.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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