Edward Drinker Cope (1840–1897) was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, as well as a noted herpetologist and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of nineteen. Cope had little formal scientific training, and eschewed a teaching position for field work. He made regular trips to the American West prospecting in the 1870s and 1880s, often as part of United States Geological Survey teams. A personal feud between Cope and paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh led to a period of intense fossil-finding competition now known as the Bone Wars. Cope's scientific pursuits nearly bankrupted him, but his contributions helped define the field of American paleontology. He was a prodigious writer, with 1,400 papers published over his lifetime, although his rivals would debate the accuracy of his rapidly published works. Cope discovered, described, and named more than 1,000 vertebrate species, including hundreds of fishes and dozens of dinosaurs. His theories on the origin of mammalian molars and "Cope's Law", on the gradual enlargement of mammalian species, are among his theoretical contributions.
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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1809:
Peninsular War: French forces under Joseph Bonaparte suffered 7,270 casualties while Sir Arthur Wellesley's Anglo-Spanish army had 6,700 at an inconclusive battle in Talavera, Spain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Talavera
1896:
Miami, today the principal city and the center of the South Florida metropolitan area, the seventh largest metro area in the United States, was incorporated with a population of just over 300. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Miami
1976:
An earthquake measuring at least 8.2 on the Richter magnitude scale, one of the deadliest in history, flattened Tangshan, China, killing at least 240,000 people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Tangshan_earthquake
2001:
At the World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, Australian Ian Thorpe became the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single World Championships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Thorpe
2005:
The Provisional Irish Republican Army announced an end to its armed campaign to overthrow British rule in Northern Ireland to create a United Ireland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
bait and switch (n): 1. An unscrupulous and sometimes illegal sales technique, in which an inexpensive product is advertised to attract prospective customers who are then told by sales personnel that the inexpensive product is unavailable or of poor quality and are instead urged to buy a more expensive product. 2. (by extension) Any similar deceptive behavior, especially in politics or in romantic relationships http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bait_and_switch
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
We do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things — and above all on ourselves. --Karl Popper http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Popper