Bernard Bosanquet (1877–1936) was an English cricketer best known for
inventing the googly, a delivery designed to deceive the batsman. He
played first-class cricket for Middlesex County Cricket Club and
appeared in seven Test matches for England as an all-rounder. While
playing a tabletop game, Bosanquet devised a new technique for
delivering a ball, later named the "googly", which he practised while
attending Oriel College, Oxford. He first used it in cricket matches
around 1900, but it was not until 1903, when he had a successful season
as a bowler, that his new delivery began to attract attention. He was
selected in 1903–04 to tour Australia with England and made his Test
debut. Although his batting was unsuccessful, he performed well as a
bowler and troubled all the opposing batsmen. His career with the ball
peaked when he bowled England to victory in the first Test against
Australia in 1905, but he remained an inconsistent performer. In
subsequent years, he bowled infrequently and played little first-class
cricket.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Bosanquet_(cricketer)>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1812:
War of 1812: British troops and Mohawk warriors repelled an
American invasion from across the Niagara River at the Battle of
Queenston Heights near Queenston, Ontario.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Queenston_Heights>
1881:
Determined to bring about the revival of Hebrew as a spoken
language as a way of unifying Jews, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda had what is
believed to be the first modern conversation in Hebrew while living in
Paris.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_Hebrew_language>
1911:
Prince Arthur, a son of Queen Victoria, became the only
Governor General of Canada of royal descent.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Arthur,_Duke_of_Connaught_and_Strathearn>
1921:
The Soviet republics of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and
Georgia signed the Treaty of Kars with the Grand National Assembly of
Turkey to establish the contemporary borders between Turkey and the
South Caucasus states.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Kars>
1958:
The first book featuring the English children's literature
character Paddington Bear "from darkest Peru" was published.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddington_Bear>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
purple prose:
Extravagant or flowery writing, especially in a literary work.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/purple_prose>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I write from instinct, from inexplicable sparkle. I don't know why I'm
writing what I'm writing. Usually, I sit and I let my hands wander on my
guitar. And I sing anything. I play anything. And I wait till I come
across a pleasing accident. Then I start to develop it. Once you take a
piece of musical information, there are certain implications that it
automatically contains — the implication of that phrase elongated,
contracted, or inverted or in another time signature. So you start with
an impulse and go to what your ear likes.
--Paul Simon
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Simon>