The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by
Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins who lived in
Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two
photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 10. The
pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who
used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned
to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of The Strand Magazine. Conan
Doyle, as a Spiritualist, was enthusiastic about the photographs, and
interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena.
Public reaction was mixed; some accepted that the images were genuine,
but others believed they had been faked. Interest in the Cottingley
Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls grew up, married and
lived abroad for a time. Yet the photographs continued to hold the
public imagination; in 1966 a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper
traced Elsie, who had by then returned to the UK. Elsie left open the
possibility that she believed she had photographed her thoughts, and
the media once again became interested in the story. In the early
1980s, both admitted that the photographs were faked using cardboard
cutouts of fairies copied from a popular children's book of the time.
But Frances continued to claim that the fifth and final photograph was
genuine. The photographs and two of the cameras used are on display in
the National Media Museum in Bradford.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1637:
The contract prices of rare tulip bulbs in the Dutch Republic, which
had been steadily climbing for three months, abruptly dropped, marking
the decline of tulip mania.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tulip_mania>
1852:
The Argentine Confederation were defeated in the Battle of Caseros by
an alliance consisting of the Empire of Brazil, Uruguay and the
Argentine provinces of Entre Ríos and Corrientes, ending the Platine
War.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platine_War>
1931:
New Zealand's deadliest natural disaster, the 7.9 M<sub>W</sub>
Hawke's
Bay earthquake, struck, killing 256.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1931_Hawke%27s_Bay_earthquake>
1984:
A woman under the care of Dr. John Buster of the Harbor–UCLA Medical
Center in Los Angeles, California, US, gave birth to a baby that
resulted from the first successful embryo transfer from one person to
another.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/embryo_transfer>
2010:
A cast of L'Homme qui marche I by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti
sold for £65 million (US$103.7 million), setting the record for most
expensive sculpture sold at a public auction.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Homme_qui_marche_I>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
sesquiquadrate (adj):
{{astronomy
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sesquiquadrate>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to
respect it, is capable of love and justice.
--Simone Weil
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Simone_Weil>