Jack Sheppard was a notorious English robber, burglar and thief of early 18th-century London. Born into a poor family, he was apprenticed as a carpenter but took to theft and burglary in 1723, with little more than a year of his training to complete. He was arrested and imprisoned five times in 1724 but escaped four times, making him a notorious public figure, and wildly popular with the poorer classes. Ultimately, he was caught, convicted, and hanged at Tyburn, ending his brief criminal career after less than two years. The inability of the noted "Thief-Taker General" (and thief) Jonathan Wild to control Sheppard, and injuries suffered by Wild at the hands of Sheppard's colleague, Joseph "Blueskin" Blake, led to Wild's downfall. Sheppard was as renowned for his attempts to escape justice as for his crimes. He returned to the public consciousness in around 1840, when William Harrison Ainsworth wrote a novel entitled Jack Sheppard, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. The popularity of his tale, and the fear that others would be drawn to emulate his behaviour, led the authorities to refuse to license any plays in London with "Jack Sheppard" in the title for forty years.
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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1320: After reuniting Poland, Władysław the Short (sarcophagus figure pictured) was crowned king in Kraków. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_%28966%E2%80%931385%29)
1885: LaMarcus Adna Thompson, sometimes called the "Father of Gravity", patented the roller coaster. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/roller_coaster)
1921: The first Turkish Constitution was ratified by the Grand National Assembly, making fundamental changes in Turkey by enshrining the principle of national sovereignty. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Constitution_of_1921)
1942: World War II: At the Wannsee Conference held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, senior Nazi German officials decided the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", accelerating The Holocaust. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conference)
1990: Black January: The Soviet Red Army violently cracked down on Azeri pro-independence demonstrations in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_January)
_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:
redolent: Fragrant or aromatic; having a sweet scent. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/redolent)
_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:
I love child things because there's so much mystery when you're a child. When you're a child, something as simple as a tree doesn't make sense. You see it in the distance and it looks small, but as you go closer, it seems to grow — you haven't got a handle on the rules when you're a child. We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination. -- David Lynch (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Lynch)