The Shakers are an offshoot of the Religious Society of Friends (or Quakers) that originated in Manchester, England the early 18th century. Strict believers in celibacy, they maintained their numbers through conversion and adoption. Once boasting thousands of a dherents, today the only remaining Shakers are a handful of people living in Maine. One of the major attributes of the shakers was to build. Shakers were known for an exquisite style of furniture that was plain, durable, and functional. By the middle of the 20th century, as the Shaker communities themselves were disappearing, some American collectors whose visual tastes were formed by the stark aspects of the modernist movement, found themselves drawn to the spare artifacts of Shaker culture.
Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers
Today's selected anniversaries:
1187 - Third Crusade: Saladin and the Seljuk Turks captured Jerusalem. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Crusade)
1535 - French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed along the St. Lawrence River and reached an Iroquois fort on an island now known as Montréal. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Montreal)
1835 - Mexican dragoons dispatched to disarm settlers at Gonzales, Texas encountered stiff resistance from a Texian militia in the Battle of Gonzales, thus beginning the Texas Revolution. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gonzales)
1950 - Peanuts, a syndicated comic strip by Charles M. Schulz featuring Charlie Brown and his pet beagle Snoopy, was first published in major newspapers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanuts)
1968 - The Tlatelolco massacre: A peaceful student demonstration in Tlatelolco, Mexico City ended at sunset, when army and police forces began firing into the crowd. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre)
Wikiquote of the day:
"When you get to a fork in the road, take it." (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra)