Colin Robert Chase (February 5, 1935 – October 13, 1984) was an
American academic. An associate professor of English at the University
of Toronto, he was known for his contributions to the studies of Old
English and Anglo-Latin literature. His father was a newspaper executive
and his mother, Mary Chase, was a playwright who won the Pulitzer Prize
for Drama. His best-known work, The Dating of Beowulf, challenged the
accepted consensus as to when the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf (page
pictured) was created; it left behind what was described in A Beowulf
Handbook as "a cautious and necessary incertitude". Chase was also known
for writing Two Alcuin Letter-Books, a scholarly collection of 24
letters by the 8th-century scholar Alcuin. He also contributed to the
Dictionary of the Middle Ages and wrote the Beowulf section of "This
Year's Work in Old English Studies" for the Old English Newsletter for
nearly a decade.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Robert_Chase>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1818:
Charles XIV John succeeded to the thrones of Sweden and Norway
as the first monarch of the House of Bernadotte.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XIV_John>
1861:
In a speech before the U.S. Congress, Representative John
Edward Bouligny refused to join his fellow Louisiana congressmen in
heeding the state's secession convention and resigning.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Bouligny>
1913:
Greek military aviators Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis
Moraitinis performed the first naval air mission in history, with a
Farman MF.7 hydroplane.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristeidis_Moraitinis_%28aviator%29>
2004:
At least 21 cockle-gatherers were drowned by an incoming tide
in Morecambe Bay, England, prompting the establishment of the British
government's Gangmasters Licensing Authority.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morecambe_Bay_cockling_disaster>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
Lantern Festival:
1. A festival marking the end of the Chinese New Year period, celebrated
on the fifteenth day of the first month in the Chinese calendar when the
first full moon of the year is seen (in February or early March).
2. ยี่เป็ง (Yi Peng), a festival celebrated chiefly in northern Thailand
on the day of the full moon in the second month of the northern Thai
lunar calendar (equivalent to the twelfth month of the lunar calendar
used in the rest of Thailand, generally in November).
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lantern_Festival>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
A wise man does not try to hurry history. Many wars have been
avoided by patience and many have been precipitated by reckless haste.
--Adlai Stevenson II
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson_II>