The nature fakers controversy was an early 20th-century American
literary debate highlighting the conflict between science and sentiment
in popular nature writing. Following a period of growing interest in the
natural world beginning in the late 19th century, a new literary
movement, in which the natural world was depicted in a compassionate
rather than realistic light, began to take shape. Works such as Ernest
Thompson Seton's Wild Animals I Have Known (1898) and William J. Long's
School of the Woods (1902) popularized this new genre and emphasized
sympathetic and individualistic animal characters. In March 1903,
naturalist and writer John Burroughs published an article entitled "Real
and Sham Natural History" in the Atlantic Monthly. Lambasting writers
for their seemingly fantastical representations of wildlife, he also
denounced the booming genre of realistic animal fiction as "yellow
journalism of the woods". Burroughs' targets responded in defense of
their work in various publications, as did their supporters, and the
resulting controversy raged in the public press for nearly six years.
Dubbed the "War of the Naturalists", the controversy effectively ended
when President Theodore Roosevelt publicly sided with Burroughs,
publishing his article "Nature Fakers" in the September 1907 issue of
Everybody's Magazine. Roosevelt popularized the negative colloquialism
by which the controversy would later be known to describe one who
purposefully fabricates details about the natural world.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_fakers_controversy>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1779:
Tekle Giyorgis I began the first of his five reigns as Emperor
of Ethiopia.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekle_Giyorgis_I_of_Ethiopia>
1807:
French brothers Claude and Nicéphore Niépce received a patent
for their Pyréolophore (diagram pictured), one of the world's first
internal combustion engines.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyr%C3%A9olophore>
1922:
The German protectorate of Togoland was divided into the League
of Nations mandates of French Togoland and British Togoland.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Togoland>
1969:
The Apollo 11 lunar module landed on the Sea of Tranquillity,
where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the
moon six-and-a-half hours later.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11>
1992:
Czechoslovak President Václav Havel resigned, saying that he
would not preside over the country's breakup.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A1clav_Havel>
2001:
Twenty-three-year-old Italian anti-globalist Carlo Giuliani was
shot dead by a police officer while protesting during the 27th G8 summit
in Genoa, Italy.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Carlo_Giuliani>
2005:
The Civil Marriage Act received its Royal Assent, legalizing
same-sex marriage in Canada.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Marriage_Act>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
punctilious:
1. Strictly attentive to detail; meticulous or fastidious, particularly to
codes or conventions.
2. Precise or scrupulous; finicky or nitpicky.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/punctilious>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul,
the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming
principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of
eternal good.
--Petrarch
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Petrarch>