Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) was a novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper". After the success of his first novel This Side of Paradise, the Fitzgeralds became celebrities. The newspapers of New York saw them as embodiments of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties: young, rich, beautiful, and energetic. Following a whirlwind courtship ensued, they married in 1920, and spent the early part of the decade as literary celebrities in New York. Later in the 1920s, they moved to Europe, recast as famous expatriates of the Lost Generation. While Scott received acclaim for The Great Gatsby and his short stories, their marriage was a tangle of jealousy, resentment and acrimony. The strain of her tempestuous marriage, Scott's increasing alcoholism, and her growing instability presaged Zelda's admittance to a sanatorium in 1930. While in a Maryland clinic, she wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz, which was published in 1932. Scott was furious that she had used material from their life together, though he had done the same, such as in Tender Is the Night, published in 1934; the two novels provide contrasting portrayals of the couple's failing marriage. Scott died in Hollywood in 1940, having last seen Zelda a year and a half earlier. She spent her remaining years working on a second novel, which she never completed, and she painted extensively. In 1948, the hospital at which she had been a patient caught fire, causing her death.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelda_Fitzgerald

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1864:

American Civil War: Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman began his "March to the Sea", inflicting significant damage to property and infrastructure on his way from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman

1889:

A military coup led by Field Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca overthrew Emperor Pedro II and declared Brazil a republic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deodoro_da_Fonseca

1935:

The United States formalizes the establishment of the self-governing Philippine Commonwealth, with Manuel L. Quezon as its president. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Commonwealth

1971:

Intel released the 4004 4-bit central processing unit , the world's first commercially available microprocessor, capable of executing approximately 60,000 instructions per second. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004

1985:

Northern Ireland peace process: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and the Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, giving the Irish Government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Irish_Agreement

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

cerebral (adj): 1. (anatomy) Of, or relating to the brain, especially the cerebral cortex of the brain. 2. Intellectual rather than emotional http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cerebral

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius. --Johann Kaspar Lavater http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johann_Kaspar_Lavater