The Peterborough Chronicle is one of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles that
contains unique information about the history of England after the
Norman Conquest. According to philologist J.A.W. Bennett, it is the
only prose history in English between the Conquest and the later 14th
century. When William the Conqueror took England and Anglo-Norman
became the official language, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles generally
ceased. The monks of Peterborough Abbey, however, continued to compile
events in theirs. While the Peterborough Chronicle is not professional
history, it is one of the few first-hand accounts of the period 1070
to 1154 in England written in English and from a non-courtly point of
view. It is also a valuable source of information about the early
Middle English language itself. The linguistic innovations recorded in
its second continuation are plentiful, and at least one innovation,
the feminine pronoun "she", is first recorded in the Peterborough
Chronicle.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterborough_Chronicle
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1675:
Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated integral calculus for the first time to
find the area under the graph of a function y = f(x) by using
antiderivatives.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Leibniz)
1930:
A patent was awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their
invention, the Einstein refrigerator.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator)
1965:
Ian Smith, Premier of the British Crown Colony of Southern Rhodesia,
issued the Unilateral Declaration of Independence.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Smith)
1975:
The Australian constitutional crisis of 1975 came to a head as Prime
Minister Gough Whitlam was dismissed from office by Governor-General
Sir John Kerr.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_constitutional_crisis_of_1975)
1978:
Maumoon Abdul Gayoom began his first term as President of the
Maldives.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maumoon_Abdul_Gayoom)
_____________________
Wikiquote of the day:
"Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the
spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that
victory." -- George S. Patton
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_S._Patton)