Ludwig Ferdinand Huber (1764–1804) was a German translator, diplomat, playwright, literary critic, and journalist. Born in Paris to the Bavarian-born writer Michael Huber and his French wife, he grew up bilingual in French and German and published translations from English and French from an early age. When he lived in Leipzig and Dresden as a young man, he and his fiancée Dora Stock were both close friends of the poet Friedrich Schiller. From 1788, Huber served as a diplomat in Mainz, where he met world traveller Georg Forster and started an affair with his wife Therese. He and Therese later married after escaping from revolutionary Mainz to Switzerland, where Huber was active as a journalist and reviewer, and as translator of the works of Isabelle de Charrière. In 1798, Huber returned to Germany as an editor for Johann Friedrich Cotta's newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung. Having fallen into relative obscurity after his death, he is studied mostly for his friendships and his literary criticism.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Ferdinand_Huber
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1873:
The Albert Bridge, spanning the River Thames in London, opened to traffic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bridge,_London
1933:
The Chesapeake–Potomac hurricane made landfall in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and went on to cause at least 47 deaths in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Chesapeake%E2%80%93Potomac_hurricane
1943:
Second World War: A decisive Soviet victory against German forces at the Battle of Kursk gave the Red Army the strategic initiative for the rest of the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk
2006:
Natascha Kampusch, who had been abducted at the age of ten in Vienna, escaped from her captor's house in Strasshof an der Nordbahn after more than eight years in captivity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natascha_Kampusch
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
panda car: (Britain, law enforcement, informal) A police car; specifically (historical), one with a broad white stripe painted around its middle on a darker-coloured or, originally, black background. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/panda_car
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
To a reluctant admission of the necessity for State action, we join a burning belief in duty, and a deep spiritual ideal of life. And we have more than an abstract belief in duty, we do not hesitate to unite the advocacy of social reform with an appeal to the various classes who compose society to perform those duties without which all social reform must be merely delusive. --Arnold Toynbee https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arnold_Toynbee