Luo Yixiu (1889–1910) was the first wife of the future Chinese
communist revolutionary and political leader Mao Zedong, to whom she was
married from 1908 until her death. She came from a family of
impoverished Han Chinese landowners near Shaoshan, Hunan, in south
central China. Most of what is known about their marriage comes from Mao
and appears in the 1936 book Red Star Over China by the reporter Edgar
Snow. The marriage was arranged by their fathers when Luo was eighteen
and Mao was just fourteen. He later said that he was unhappy with the
marriage, never consummating it and refusing to live with his wife. He
moved out of the village to continue his studies elsewhere, eventually
becoming a founding member of the Communist Party of China. Luo,
socially disgraced, lived with Mao's parents for two years until she
died of dysentery. Various biographers have suggested that this marriage
affected Mao's later views, leading him to become a critic of arranged
marriage and a vocal feminist. He would marry three more times, to Yang
Kaihui, He Zizhen and Jiang Qing.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luo_Yixiu>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1740:
Under the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, Maria
Theresa assumed the throne of the Habsburg Monarchy in Austria.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa>
1818:
The United Kingdom and the United States signed the Treaty of
1818, which settled the Canada–United States border on the 49th
parallel between the Pacific Ocean and Lake of the Woods.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_1818>
1944:
World War II: Fulfilling a promise he made two years previous,
General Douglas MacArthur landed on Leyte to begin the recapture of the
entire Philippine Archipelago.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leyte>
1961:
The Soviet Union performed the first armed test of a submarine-
launched ballistic missile, launching an R-13 from a Golf class
submarine.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine-launched_ballistic_missile>
1982:
During a UEFA Cup match between FC Spartak Moscow and HFC
Haarlem, a large number of attendees tried to leave the Grand Sports
Arena of the Central Lenin Stadium at the same time, resulting in a
stampede that caused 66 deaths.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luzhniki_disaster>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
atrabilious:
1. (medicine, obsolete) Having an excess of black bile.
2. Characterized by melancholy.
3. Ill-natured; malevolent.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atrabilious>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Those who have deprived themselves of this Resurrection by reason
of their mutual hatreds or by regarding themselves to be in the right
and others in the wrong, were chastised on the Day of Resurrection by
reason of such hatreds evinced during their night. Thus they deprived
themselves of beholding the countenance of God, and this for no other
reason than mutual denunciations.
--The Báb
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/B%C3%A1b>