The Unconquered is a three-act play written by Russian-American author Ayn Rand as an adaptation of her 1936 novel We the Living. Producer George Abbott staged the play on Broadway in February 1940, featuring Helen Craig (pictured) as Kira Argounova, a young woman living in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Her lover Leo Kovalensky develops tuberculosis. To get money for his treatment, Kira has an affair with a Communist official, Andrei Taganov. After Leo recovers from his illness, he becomes involved with black market food sales that Andrei is investigating. When Andrei realizes that Kira loves Leo, he helps his rival avoid prosecution, then commits suicide. Leo leaves Kira, who decides to risk her life escaping the country. The production was troubled by problems with the script and the cast. When the play opened at the Biltmore Theatre, it was a critical and financial failure, and closed in less than a week. It was the last of Rand's plays produced during her lifetime.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unconquered_%281940_play%29

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1867:

Work began on the covering of the Senne, burying the polluted main waterway in Brussels to allow urban renewal in the centre of the city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covering_of_the_Senne

1960:

African-American college students staged the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee, as part of a nonviolent direct-action campaign to end racial segregation in the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_sit-ins

1970:

The English rock band Black Sabbath released their eponymous debut album, which is generally accepted as the first heavy-metal album. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sabbath

2010:

A terrorist bombing at a bakery popular among foreigners in Pune, India, killed 17 people and injured 60 others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Pune_bombing

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

shock stall: (aviation) A stall (“sudden loss of efficiency”) caused when the airflow over an aircraft's wings is disturbed by shock waves that occurs at a specific Mach number when the aircraft is accelerating to transonic speeds. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shock_stall

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Lying has always been a highly approved Nazi technique. Hitler, in Mein Kampf, advocated mendacity as a policy. … Nor is the lie direct the only means of falsehood. They all speak with a Nazi double meaning with which to deceive the unwary. … Before we accept their word at what seems to be its face value, we must always look for hidden meanings. … Besides outright false statements and those with double meanings, there are also other circumventions of truth in the nature of fantastic explanations and absurd professions. … Even Schacht showed that he, too, had adopted the Nazi attitude that truth is any story which succeeds. Confronted on cross-examination with a long record of broken vows and false words, he declared in justification — and I quote from the record: "I think you can score many more successes when you want to lead someone if you don't tell them the truth than if you tell them the truth." This was the philosophy of the National Socialists. When for years they have deceived the world, and masked falsehood with plausibilities, can anyone be surprised that they continue that habit of a lifetime in this dock? Credibility is one of the main issues of this trial. Only those who have failed to learn the bitter lessons of the last decade can doubt that men who have always played on the unsuspecting credulity of generous opponents would not hesitate to do the same now.   --Robert H. Jackson https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_H._Jackson