Camille Saint-Saëns (9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era. His works include Danse macabre (1874), the opera Samson and Delilah (1877), the Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and The Carnival of the Animals (1886). Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy who made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris, and from 1858 at La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire. As a young man, he was enthusiastic for the most modern music of the day, particularly that of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner. He was a scholar of musical history, and remained committed to the structures worked out by earlier French composers. This brought him into conflict in his later years with composers of the impressionist and dodecaphonic schools of music, and by the time of his death, he was often regarded as a reactionary. Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Saint-Sa%C3%ABns> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1708: Great Northern War: Russia defeated Sweden at the Battle of Lesnaya on the Russian–Polish border in what is now Belarus. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lesnaya> 1888: The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., at the time the world's tallest building, officially opened to the general public. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument> 1914: World War I: The civilian authorities of Antwerp surrendered, allowing the German army to capture the city. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Antwerp_%281914%29> 2016: Militants attacked a border police post in Myanmar, killing nine people and triggering a period of intense persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Rohingya_persecution_in_Myanmar> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: acute: 1. Brief, quick, short. 2. High or shrill. 3. Intense, sensitive, sharp. 4. Urgent. 5. (botany) With the sides meeting directly to form an acute angle (at an apex or base). 6. (geometry) Of an angle: less than 90 degrees. 7. (geometry) Of a triangle: having all three interior angles measuring less than 90 degrees. 8. (linguistics, chiefly historical) Of an accent or tone: generally higher than others. 9. (medicine) Of an abnormal condition of recent or sudden onset, in contrast to delayed onset; this sense does not imply severity, unlike the common usage. 10. (medicine) Of a short-lived condition, in contrast to a chronic condition; this sense also does not imply severity. 11. (orthography) After a letter of the alphabet: having an acute accent. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/acute> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:   History moves in contradictions. The skeleton of historic existence, the economic structure of society, also develops in contradictions. Forms eternally follow forms. Everything has only a passing being. The dynamic force of life creates the new over and over again — such is the law inherent in reality.   --Nikolai Bukharin <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nikolai_Bukharin>