Ormond Beatty (1815–1890) was an American educator and academic administrator who was the seventh president of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. An 1835 graduate of Centre, Beatty became a professor soon after, following a year of studies at Yale University. He taught chemistry, natural philosophy, mathematics, metaphysics, biblical history, and church history over the course of his career. He was president pro tempore following the resignation of William L. Breckinridge in 1868 and was unanimously elected president by the board of trustees in 1870. He was Centre's first president who was not a Christian minister, and he led the school until his resignation in 1888. He taught for two additional years at the request of the board before his death. In religious affairs, he served as a ruling elder in the First and Second Presbyterian Churches in Danville, as a commissioner to three Presbyterian Church General Assemblies, and as a trustee of the Danville Theological Seminary.

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1922:

Irish Civil War: Irish nationalist author Erskine Childers was executed by the Irish Free State for illegally carrying a semi-automatic pistol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erskine_Childers_%28author%29

1925:

The Eugene O'Neill Theatre opened on Broadway, New York, with a production of the musical The Mayflowers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_O%27Neill_Theatre

1941:

The Holocaust: The Theresienstadt Ghetto was founded as a waystation to Nazi extermination camps and a "retirement settlement" for elderly and prominent Jews to mislead their communities about the Final Solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_Ghetto

1974:

A group of paleoanthropologists led by Donald Johanson discovered a 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton in Ethiopia, nicknaming it Lucy after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

wampum: 1. (uncountable) Small cylindrical beads made from polished shells (especially white ones) which have been strung together, formerly used by Native American peoples of eastern North America for various purposes including as jewellery and money, and for record-keeping; (countable, archaic) one such bead. 2. (uncountable, slang) Money. 3. (countable, obsolete) Short for wampum snake (“the common kingsnake or eastern kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula)”) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wampum

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

How can anyone be interested in war? — that glorious pursuit of annihilation with its ceremonious bellowings and trumpetings over the mangling of human bones and muscles and organs and eyes, its inconceivable agonies which could have been prevented by a few well- chosen, reasonable words. How, why, did this unnecessary business begin? Why does anyone want to read about it — this redundant human madness which men accept as inevitable?   --Margaret Caroline Anderson https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Caroline_Anderson