Ormond Beatty (1815–1890) was an American educator and academic
administrator who was the seventh president of Centre College in
Danville, Kentucky. An 1835 graduate of Centre, Beatty became a
professor soon after, following a year of studies at Yale University. He
taught chemistry, natural philosophy, mathematics, metaphysics, biblical
history, and church history over the course of his career. He was
president pro tempore following the resignation of William L.
Breckinridge in 1868 and was unanimously elected president by the board
of trustees in 1870. He was Centre's first president who was not a
Christian minister, and he led the school until his resignation in 1888.
He taught for two additional years at the request of the board before
his death. In religious affairs, he served as a ruling elder in the
First and Second Presbyterian Churches in Danville, as a commissioner to
three Presbyterian Church General Assemblies, and as a trustee of the
Danville Theological Seminary.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ormond_Beatty>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1922:
Irish Civil War: Irish nationalist author Erskine Childers was
executed by the Irish Free State for illegally carrying a semi-automatic
pistol.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erskine_Childers_%28author%29>
1925:
The Eugene O'Neill Theatre opened on Broadway, New York, with a
production of the musical The Mayflowers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_O%27Neill_Theatre>
1941:
The Holocaust: The Theresienstadt Ghetto was founded as a
waystation to Nazi extermination camps and a "retirement settlement" for
elderly and prominent Jews to mislead their communities about the Final
Solution.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_Ghetto>
1974:
A group of paleoanthropologists led by Donald Johanson
discovered a 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton in
Ethiopia, nicknaming it Lucy after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
wampum:
1. (uncountable) Small cylindrical beads made from polished shells
(especially white ones) which have been strung together, formerly used
by Native American peoples of eastern North America for various purposes
including as jewellery and money, and for record-keeping; (countable,
archaic) one such bead.
2. (uncountable, slang) Money.
3. (countable, obsolete) Short for wampum snake (“the common kingsnake
or eastern kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula)”)
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wampum>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
How can anyone be interested in war? — that glorious pursuit of
annihilation with its ceremonious bellowings and trumpetings over the
mangling of human bones and muscles and organs and eyes, its
inconceivable agonies which could have been prevented by a few well-
chosen, reasonable words. How, why, did this unnecessary business begin?
Why does anyone want to read about it — this redundant human madness
which men accept as inevitable?
--Margaret Caroline Anderson
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Caroline_Anderson>