Simon Hatley (1685 – after 1723) was an English sailor involved in two hazardous privateering voyages to the South Pacific Ocean. With his ship beset by storms south of Cape Horn, Hatley shot an albatross, an incident immortalised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (illustrated). Hatley went to sea in 1708 under Captain Woodes Rogers, but was captured by the Spanish on the coast of Ecuador and was tortured by the Inquisition. Hatley's second voyage, under George Shelvocke, was the source of the albatross incident, recorded in Shelvocke's journal for 1 October 1719, and also ended with his capture by the Spanish, who held him as a pirate for looting a Portuguese ship. Hatley returned to Britain in 1723, though he hastily sailed to Jamaica lest he risk trial for piracy. His fate thereafter is unknown. In 1797, Wordsworth suggested Hatley's shooting of an albatross as the basis of a poem, which Coleridge published in Lyrical Ballads (1798).

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Hatley

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1891:

Stanford University, founded by railroad magnate and California governor Leland Stanford and his wife Jane on their former farm lands in Palo Alto, California, admitted its first students. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University

1949:

Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong publicly proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China, in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China

1989:

Denmark became the first country to legalise civil unions between same-sex couples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Denmark

2012:

A ferry collision off Lamma Island, Hong Kong, killed 39 people and injured 92 others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Lamma_Island_ferry_collision

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

witch doctor: A person who is believed to ward off witchcraft and heal through magical powers; a shaman. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/witch_doctor

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.   --Annie Besant https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Annie_Besant