Vision in White is the first book of the Bride Quartet series of romance
novels, written by Nora Roberts (pictured). After its April 2009
release, it spent two weeks atop one of the New York Times bestseller
lists and reached number three on the USA Today bestseller list. In her
career, Roberts has published more than 225 novels. Vision in White was
one of ten Roberts novels published in 2009, including five new releases
and five reprints. It marked her return to contemporary romance. Like
several other Roberts novels, Vision in White explores how a protagonist
balances a successful career with a dysfunctional family environment.
The hero is a typical representation of the romance novel archetype of
the professor, but in an unusual twist for a romance novel, he is the
character who is ready for a commitment but must help the heroine
overcome her fears. A downloadable casual-play computer game based on
the book was introduced by I-Play in 2010.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_in_White>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1853:
The first passenger train of the Great Indian Peninsula
Railway, a predecessor of the modern-day Indian Railways, travelled from
Bombay to Tanna.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Indian_Peninsula_Railway>
1963:
In response to an open letter written by white clergymen four
days earlier, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the Letter from Birmingham
Jail, defending the strategy of nonviolent resistance against racism.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail>
2014:
The ferry MVÂ Sewol sank 1.5Â km (0.93Â mi) off Donggeochado,
South Korea, killing 304 of 476 passengers on board, most of whom were
students from Danwon High School.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
boiling frog:
(idiomatic, often attributively) A person who, or thing which, is in a
gradually worsening situation without any realization of the peril until
it is too late.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boiling_frog>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
 We that acquaint ourselves with every zone, And pass both
tropics and behold the poles, When we come home, are to ourselves
unknown, And unacquainted still with our own souls. Â
--John Davies
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Davies_%28poet%29>
Horologium is a constellation of six faintly visible stars in the
southern celestial hemisphere. It was first described by the French
astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1756 and visualized by him as a
clock with a pendulum and a second hand. The boundaries of Horologium
(literally 'an instrument for telling the hour') were specified in 1922
by the International Astronomical Union, and it has since been one of
their designated constellations. All parts of the constellation are
visible to observers south of 23°N. The constellation's brightest
star – and the only one brighter than an apparent magnitude of 4 –
is Alpha Horologii (at 3.85), an ageing orange giant star that has
swollen to around 11 times the diameter of the Sun. The long-period
variable-brightness star, RÂ Horologii (4.7 to 14.3), has one of the
largest variations in brightness known for stars in the night sky
visible to the unaided eye. Four star systems in the constellation are
known to have exoplanets; one – Gliese 1061 – contains an
exoplanet in its habitable zone.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horologium_%28constellation%29>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1802:
English poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy
encountered a "long belt" of daffodils while walking around Ullswater in
the Lake District, inspiring him to pen his best-known work, "I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud>
1994:
At a GATT ministerial meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco,
representatives of 123 countries and the European Communities signed an
agreement to establish the World Trade Organization.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization>
2019:
A fire severely damaged the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral,
destroying the building's timber spire and much of its roof.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Paris_fire>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
mummy brown:
1. (painting, historical) A brown pigment originally prepared from the
ground-up remains of Egyptian animal or human mummies mixed with
bitumen, etc.
2. The colour of this pigment, a variable brown intermediate between raw
umber and burnt umber. mummy brown colour:
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mummy_brown>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
 Doubt comes in at the window, when Inquiry is denied at the door.
Â
--Benjamin Jowett
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Jowett>
The Razing of Friesoythe took place on 14 April 1945 towards the end
of World War II. The 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division, advancing into
north-west Germany, attacked the German-held town of Friesoythe. The
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada captured the town. During
the fighting the battalion's commander was killed by a German soldier,
but it was reported that he had been killed by a civilian. The
division's commander, Major-General Christopher Vokes, ordered that the
town be razed in retaliation, and it was substantially destroyed. Twenty
German civilians died in Friesoythe during the fighting. The rubble of
the town was used to fill craters in local roads to make them passable
for the division's tanks and heavy vehicles. Little official notice was
taken of the incident and the Canadian Army official history glosses
over it. Forty years later, Vokes wrote in his autobiography that he had
"no great remorse over the elimination of Friesoythe".
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razing_of_Friesoythe>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
966:
Mieszko I, ruler of the Polans, converted to Christianity, an
event considered to be the founding of the Polish state.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_during_the_Piast_dynasty>
1935:
Dust Bowl: A severe dust storm swept across Oklahoma and
northern Texas, removing an estimated 300Â million tons of topsoil from
the prairies.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_%28storm%29>
2010:
Nearly 2,700 people were killed in an earthquake registering
6.9 Mw in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, China.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Yushu_earthquake>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
enfeoff:
1. (transitive, chiefly law, historical) To transfer a fief to, to endow
with a fief; to put (a person) in legal possession of a freehold
interest.
2. (transitive, figuratively) To give up completely; to surrender, to
yield.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/enfeoff>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
 I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to
die valorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun. A man
has but one life. It is his all. Therefore I now depart from you, my
pigs, to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure wherein to
discharge my geas. And when my geas is lifted I shall not come back to
you, my pigs, but I shall travel everywhither, and into the last limits
of earth, so that I may see the ends of this world and may judge them
while my life endures. For after that, they say, I judge not, but am
judged: and a man whose life has gone out of him, my pigs, is not even
good bacon. Â
--James Branch Cabell
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Branch_Cabell>
Andha Naal (That Day) is a 1954 Indian Tamil-language mystery-thriller
film, produced by A. V. Meiyappan and directed by S. Balachander
(pictured). It is the first film noir in Tamil cinema, and the first
Tamil film made without songs, dancing, or stunt sequences. It is set in
Madras during World War II; after a radio engineer Rajan (Sivaji
Ganesan) is killed, each suspect's account points to a new suspect. The
film developed from a play script that Balachander wrote, adapting the
narrative style of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. The screenplay was written
by Javar Seetharaman, and cinematography was handled by S. Maruti Rao.
Released on 13 April 1954, the eve of Tamil New Year, the film was
initially a commercial failure, but it was re-released after winning a
Certificate of Merit in 1955 at the National Film Awards and became a
box-office success. In 2013, Andha Naal was included in CNN-News18's
list of the "100 Greatest Indian Films of All Time".
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andha_Naal>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1829:
The Roman Catholic Relief Act received royal assent, removing
the most substantial restrictions on Catholics in the United Kingdom.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Relief_Act_1829>
1943:
The Neoclassical Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., was
formally dedicated on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's
birth.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Memorial>
1976:
Forty people died in an explosion at an ammunition factory in
Lapua, Finland.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapua_Cartridge_Factory_explosion>
1984:
Kashmir conflict: Indian forces launched a pre-emptive attack
on the disputed Siachen Glacier region of Kashmir, triggering a military
conflict with Pakistan.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_conflict>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
Department of Redundancy Department:
(humorous) A fictitious department that is cited to draw attention to
needless repetition or excessiveness.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Department_of_Redundancy_Department>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
 If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen,
I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens,
trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of
the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and
happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate
object of good government. Â
--Thomas Jefferson
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson>
Segnosaurus is a genus of large-bodied therizinosaurid dinosaurs that
lived during the Late Cretaceous. Discovered in the Gobi Desert in
southeastern Mongolia in the 1970s, incomplete but well-preserved
specimens included the lower jaw, neck and tail vertebrae, the pelvis,
the shoulder girdle, and limb bones. Parts of the specimens have since
gone missing or become damaged. Named in 1979, Segnosaurus ('slow
lizard') is estimated to have been about 6–7 m (20–23 ft) long and
to have weighed about 1.3 metric tons (1.4 short tons). It was bipedal,
with the trunk of its body tilted upwards. The head was small with a
beak at the tip of the jaws, and the neck was long and slender, adapted
to browsing. The forelimbs were robust, with three-fingered hands
bearing large claws, and the feet had four toes. The pubic bone was
turned backwards, as in birds. Segnosaurus and its relatives are thought
to have been mainly herbivorous, unlike most other theropods, and slow-
moving.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segnosaurus>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1822:
Greek War of Independence: Ottoman troops began a massacre of
tens of thousands of Greeks on the island of Chios.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chios_massacre>
1910:
SMSÂ ZrÃnyi, one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the
Austro-Hungarian Navy, was launched.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Zr%C3%ADnyi>
1980:
Canadian athlete Terry Fox embarked on an east–west "Marathon
of Hope" with a prosthetic leg, beginning in St. John's, Newfoundland
and Labrador, and intending to reach Vancouver, to raise funds for
cancer research.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Fox>
2014:
A fire broke out in the hills near ValparaÃso, Chile,
eventually destroying at least 2,500 homes and leaving approximately
11,000 people homeless.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Valpara%C3%ADso>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
spraddle:
1. (transitive, Canada, Caribbean (West Indies), US) To spread apart
(the legs).
2. (transitive, Canada, Caribbean (West Indies), US) To spread apart
the legs of (someone or something).
3. (intransitive, Canada, Caribbean (West Indies), US) To lie, move, or
stand with legs spread.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spraddle>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
 Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is
risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,
Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men,
and be crucified, and the third day rise again. Â
--Gospel of Luke
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Luke>
Apollo 13 (April 11–17, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the
Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. The
landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module
(pictured) failed two days into the mission. Apollo 13 was commanded by
Jim Lovell with Jack Swigert as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise
as lunar module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken
Mattingly, who was grounded after exposure to rubella. After the
explosion, the CM's systems had to be shut down to conserve resources,
forcing the crew to transfer to the LM as a lifeboat. Although the LM
was designed to support two men for two days, Mission Control
improvised new procedures so it could support three men for four days.
The astronauts' peril briefly renewed interest in the Apollo program;
tens of millions watched the splashdown in the South Pacific Ocean by
television. The story of Apollo 13 has been dramatized, most notably in
the 1995 film Apollo 13..
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13_%28film%29>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1713:
The main treaties of the Peace of Utrecht were signed in the
city of Utrecht in the Dutch Republic, helping to bring an end to the
War of the Spanish Succession.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Utrecht>
1913:
The cricket pavilion at the Nevill Ground was destroyed in an
arson attack (damage pictured) that was attributed to militant
suffragettes as part of a country-wide campaign co-ordinated by the
Women's Social and Political Union.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevill_Ground>
1979:
Uganda–Tanzania War: The allied forces of Tanzania and the
Uganda National Liberation Front captured the capital Kampala, deposing
Ugandan president Idi Amin.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Kampala>
1993:
Prisoners at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near
Lucasville, Ohio, rioted and took over the prison for 11Â days,
resulting in the deaths of one officer and nine inmates.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ohio_Correctional_Facility>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
flabbergast:
(transitive) To overwhelm with bewilderment; to amaze, confound, or
stun, especially in a ludicrous manner.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flabbergast>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
 We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. We are those
who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those
who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or
returned wordless. Â
--Primo Levi
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Primo_Levi>
Fir Clump Stone Circle was an ancient monument in Burderop Wood near
Wroughton, Wiltshire, in South West England. It was one of at least
seven stone circles known to have been built in northern Wiltshire
south of Swindon, but none of them remain. The ring was part of a
tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of
Britain, Ireland and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze
Age, between 3300 and 900Â BCE. The purpose of such monuments is
unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented
supernatural entities. Around the 1860s, the megaliths in Fir Clump
Stone Circle were levelled, but some of them were rediscovered in 1965
by the archaeologist Richard Reiss, who described and measured the
monument. In 1969, these stones were removed during construction of the
M4 motorway.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fir_Clump_Stone_Circle>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1940:
During the German invasion of Norway, Vidkun Quisling attempted
to seize power in the first coup to be broadcast over radio.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidkun_Quisling>
1945:
The German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer, the most successful
capital-ship surface raider of the Second World War, was sunk by British
bombers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_cruiser_Admiral_Scheer>
1980:
Iraqi philosopher Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister Amina
were executed by the regime of Saddam Hussein.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Baqir_al-Sadr>
2005:
Charles, Prince of Wales, married Camilla Parker Bowles in a
civil ceremony at the Windsor Guildhall.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_of_Prince_Charles_and_Camilla_Parker_…>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
grandfather:
1. (transitive, chiefly US, law) To retain existing laws or rules for (a
person or organization previously affected by them).
2. (intransitive, chiefly US, law) To retain existing laws or rules only
for people or organizations previously affected by them, and to apply
new laws or rules to the unaffected people or organizations.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grandfather>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
 When I get to heaven, I'm gonna shake God's hand Thank him for
more blessings than one man can stand Then I'm gonna get a guitar and
start a rock-n-roll band Check into a swell hotel, ain't the afterlife
grand? Â
--John Prine
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Prine>
Gerard (died 1108) was Archbishop of York between 1100 and 1108 and Lord
Chancellor of England from 1085 until 1092. A Norman, he was a member of
the cathedral clergy at Rouen before becoming a royal clerk under King
William I of England, who appointed him Lord Chancellor. He continued
in that office under King William II Rufus, who rewarded him with the
Bishopric of Hereford in 1096. Soon after Henry I's coronation, Gerard
was appointed to the recently vacant see of York, and became embroiled
in the dispute between York and the see of Canterbury concerning which
archbishopric had primacy over England. He secured papal recognition of
York's jurisdiction over the church in Scotland but was forced to accept
Canterbury's authority over York. He also worked on reconciling the
Investiture Controversy between the king and the papacy over the right
to appoint bishops until the controversy's resolution in 1107. Because
of rumours, as a student of astrology, that he was a magician and a
sorcerer, and also because of his unpopular attempts to reform his
clergy, he was denied a burial inside York Minster but his remains were
later moved into the cathedral.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_%28archbishop_of_York%29>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1630:
Kiliaen van Rensselaer purchased land near present-day Albany,
New York, to found the Manor of Rensselaerswyck, which became the most
successful patroonship under the Dutch West India Company system.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manor_of_Rensselaerswyck>
1911:
American cartoonist Winsor McCay released the silent short film
Little Nemo (featured), one of the earliest animated films.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo_%281911_film%29>
1968:
BOAC Flight 712 experienced an engine fire shortly after take-
off from London Heathrow, leading to the deaths of five people on board,
including flight attendant Jane Harrison, who was posthumously awarded a
George Cross for heroism.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Jane_Harrison>
2013:
Two Sunni Muslim extremist groups, the Islamic State of Iraq
and the Al-Nusra Front, merged to become the Islamic State of Iraq and
the Levant.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
munshi:
1. (South Asia) A clerk or secretary.
2. (South Asia) A language teacher, especially one teaching Hindustani
or Persian.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/munshi>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
 Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against
time. Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a
dime? Â
--Yip Harburg
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yip_Harburg>