Simon Hatley (1685 – after 1723) was an English sailor involved in
two hazardous privateering voyages to the South Pacific Ocean. With his
ship beset by storms south of Cape Horn, Hatley shot an albatross, an
incident immortalised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner (illustrated). Hatley went to sea in 1708 under Captain
Woodes Rogers, but was captured by the Spanish on the coast of Ecuador
and was tortured by the Inquisition. Hatley's second voyage, under
George Shelvocke, was the source of the albatross incident, recorded in
Shelvocke's journal for 1 October 1719, and also ended with his capture
by the Spanish, who held him as a pirate for looting a Portuguese ship.
Hatley returned to Britain in 1723, though he hastily sailed to Jamaica
lest he risk trial for piracy. His fate thereafter is unknown. In 1797,
Wordsworth suggested Hatley's shooting of an albatross as the basis of a
poem, which Coleridge published in Lyrical Ballads (1798).
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Hatley>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1891:
Stanford University, founded by railroad magnate and California
governor Leland Stanford and his wife Jane on their former farm lands in
Palo Alto, California, admitted its first students.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University>
1949:
Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong publicly proclaimed
the establishment of the People's Republic of China, in Beijing's
Tiananmen Square.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China>
1989:
Denmark became the first country to legalise civil unions
between same-sex couples.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Denmark>
2012:
A ferry collision off Lamma Island, Hong Kong, killed 39 people
and injured 92 others.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Lamma_Island_ferry_collision>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
witch doctor:
A person who is believed to ward off witchcraft and heal through magical
powers; a shaman.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/witch_doctor>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position;
denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.
--Annie Besant
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Annie_Besant>