Giovanni Antonio Grassi (10 September 1775 – 12 December 1849)
was an Italian Jesuit who led many academic and religious institutions
in the United States and Europe. Born in Lombardy, he studied at the
Jesuit College in Polotsk, where he began his academic career. He was
soon ordered to China as a missionary, but after traveling across Europe
for two years attempting to secure passage, his orders were rescinded
and he instead began teaching at Stonyhurst College in England. In 1810,
Grassi was sent to the United States, where he became known as the
"second founder" of Georgetown College for greatly improving its quality
and reputation. Grassi returned to Italy in 1817 as Archbishop Leonard
Neale's representative before the Propaganda Fide in Rome. He then spent
time as a provincial superior in Turin, rector of the Turin College of
Nobles, and confessor to monarchs of the House of Savoy. In 1840, he
became the rector of the Pontificio Collegio Urbano de Propaganda Fide
in Rome.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Antonio_Grassi>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1897:
A sheriff's posse fired on a peaceful labor demonstration
mostly comprising Polish- and Slovak-American anthracite coal miners in
Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, killing 19 people and wounding many
others.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattimer_massacre>
1946:
While riding a train to Darjeeling, India, Sister Teresa
Bojaxhiu, later Mother Teresa, experienced what she later described as
the "call within the call", directing her to "leave the convent and help
the poor while living among them".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa>
1961:
At the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, German driver Wolfgang von
Trips's car collided with another, causing it to become airborne and
crash into a side barrier, killing him and 15 spectators.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_von_Trips>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
manacle:
1. A shackle for the wrist, usually consisting of a pair of joined
rings; a handcuff; (by extension) a similar device put around an ankle
to restrict free movement.
2. (figuratively) A fetter, a restriction.
3. (transitive, intransitive) To confine with manacles.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/manacle>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
We live in an essential and unresolvable tension between our
unity with nature and our dangerous uniqueness. Systems that attempt to
place and make sense of us by focusing exclusively either on the
uniqueness or the unity are doomed to failure. But we must not stop
asking and questing because the answers are complex and ambiguous.
--Stephen Jay Gould
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould>