Margaret Murray (13 July 1863 – 13 November 1963) was an Anglo-Indian Egyptologist, archaeologist, historian, and folklorist. The first female archaeology lecturer in the United Kingdom, she worked at University College London (UCL) and served as President of the Folklore Society. Born in Calcutta, Murray moved to London and began studying Egyptology at UCL. The department head Flinders Petrie encouraged her research and soon appointed her Junior Professor. She established a reputation in Egyptology for her excavations of the Osireion temple and Saqqara cemetery. She taught at the British Museum and also the Manchester Museum, where she led the unwrapping of one of the mummies from the Tomb of the Two Brothers. A first-wave feminist, Murray joined the Women's Social and Political Union. During the First World War, she began promoting the hypothesis that the witch trials of Early Modern Christendom were an attempt to extinguish a surviving pre-Christian religion devoted to a Horned God. Although later academically discredited, the theory gained widespread attention and provided the basis for Wicca.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Murray
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1830:
Scottish Church College, the oldest continuously running Christian liberal arts and sciences college in India, was founded as the General Assembly's Institution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Church_College
1863:
Three days of rioting began in New York City by opponents of new laws passed by the United States Congress to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_draft_riots
1941:
The Communist Party of Yugoslavia initiated a general and popular uprising against Italian occupation forces in Montenegro that was suppressed within six weeks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uprising_in_Montenegro
1962:
In an unprecedented action, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan dismissed seven members of his Cabinet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives_(1962)
2008:
War in Afghanistan: Taliban guerrillas attacked NATO troops near the village of Wanat in the Waygal district in Afghanistan's far eastern province of Nuristan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wanat
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
pentaquark: (physics) Any of a class of subatomic particles (previously hypothetical, since detected, subject to confirmation) consisting of a group of five quarks (compared to three quarks in normal baryons and two in mesons), or more specifically four quarks and one antiquark (symbol Θ). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pentaquark
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
There is (gentle reader) nothing (the works of God only set apart) which so much beautifies and adorns the soul and mind of man as does knowledge of the good arts and sciences. Many arts there are which beautify the mind of man; but of all none do more garnish and beautify it than those arts which are called mathematical, unto the knowledge of which no man can attain, without perfect knowledge and instruction of the principles, grounds, and Elements of Geometry. --John Dee https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Dee
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