Elizabeth David (1913–1992) was a British cookery writer. In the mid-
20th century she helped revitalise home cookery in her native country
and beyond with articles and books about European cuisines and
traditional British dishes. Born to an upper-class family, she studied
art in Paris and travelled to Greece, where she was nearly trapped by
the German invasion in 1941. Returning to England in 1946, she was
dismayed by the contrast between the bad food served in Britain and the
simple foods she had enjoyed in France, Greece and Egypt. She wrote
magazine articles about Mediterranean cooking, and in 1950 published A
Book of Mediterranean Food. Her recipes called for ingredients such as
aubergines, basil, figs, garlic, olive oil and saffron, which at the
time were scarcely available in Britain. By the 1960s David was a major
influence on domestic and professional British cooking. Between 1950 and
1984 she published eight books; after her death a further four were
published.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_David>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
853:
Byzantine–Arab Wars: The Byzantine navy began to sack and
plunder the port city of Damietta on the Nile Delta, whose garrison was
absent at the time.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Damietta_(853)>
1762:
The Trevi Fountain in Rome was officially inaugurated by Pope
Clement XIII.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevi_Fountain>
1849:
Abraham Lincoln was issued a patent for an invention to lift
boats over obstacles in a river, making him the only U.S. President to
ever hold a patent.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln%27s_patent>
1958:
Ethnic rioting broke out in Ceylon, targeted mostly at the
minority Sri Lankan Tamils, resulting in up to 300 deaths over the next
five days.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_anti-Tamil_pogrom>
2012:
Tokyo Skytree, the tallest tower in the world at a height of
634 m (2,080 ft), opened to the public.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Skytree>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
food web:
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/food_web>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The progress of the sciences toward theories of fundamental
unity, cosmic symmetry (as in the unified field theory) — how do such
theories differ, in the end, from that unity which Plato called
“unspeakable” and “indiscribable,” the holistic knowledge shared
by so many peoples of the earth, Christians included, before the advent
of the industrial revolution made new barbarians of the peoples of the
West? In the United States, before spiritualist foolishness at the end
of the last century confused mysticism with “the occult” and
tarnished both, William James wrote a master work of metaphysics;
Emerson spoke of “the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which
every part and particle is equally related, the eternal One . . .”;
Melville referred to “that profound silence, that only voice of
God”; Walt Whitman celebrated the most ancient secret, that no God
could be found “more divine than yourself.” And then, almost
everywhere, a clear and subtle illumination that lent magnificence to
life and peace to death was overwhelmed in the hard glare of technology.
Yet that light is always present, like the stars of noon. Man must
perceive it if he is to transcend his fear of meaningless, for no amount
of “progress” can take its place.
--Peter Matthiessen
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_Matthiessen>