Madman's Drum is a 1930 wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985). Its 118 images tell the story of a slave trader who steals a demon-faced drum from an African he murders, and of the consequences for him and his family. The book was executed in wood engravings. It is the second of Ward's six wordless novels, after Gods' Man of 1929. Ward was more ambitious with this second work in the medium: the characters are more nuanced, the plot more developed and complicated, and his outrage at social injustice more explicit. He used a finer degree of detail in the artwork, through a wider variety of carving tools, and was expressive in his use of symbolism and exaggerated emotional facial expressions. The success of Ward's first two wordless novels encouraged publishers to issue more books in the genre. In 1943 psychologist Henry Murray used two images from the work in his Thematic Apperception Test of personality traits. Madman's Drum is considered less successfully executed than Gods' Man, and Ward streamlined his work in his next wordless novel, Wild Pilgrimage (1932).

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman%27s_Drum

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1773:

The hymn "Amazing Grace" was probably first used in a prayer meeting in Olney, England, without the music familiar to modern listeners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace

1801:

Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the dwarf planet Ceres, naming it after the Roman goddess of growing plants and of motherly love. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)

1928:

Personal secretary to Josef Stalin Boris Bazhanov crossed the border to Iran to defect from the Soviet Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Bazhanov

1959:

Cuban President Fulgencio Batista fled to the Dominican Republic as forces under Fidel Castro took control of Havana, marking the end of the Cuban Revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Revolution

2010:

A suicide bomber killed 105 spectators at a volleyball game in the Lakki Marwat District of Pakistan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Lakki_Marwat_suicide_bombing

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

Janus: 1. (Roman mythology) The god of doorways, gates and transitions, and of beginnings and endings, having two faces looking in opposite directions. 2. (attributively) Used to indicate things with two faces (such as animals with diprosopus) or aspects; or made of two different materials; or having a two-way action. 3. (chemistry, attributively) Used to indicate an azo dye with a quaternary ammonium group, frequently with the diazo component being safranine. 4. (figuratively) A two-faced person, a hypocrite. 5. (astronomy) A moon of Saturn. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Janus

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century ... To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.   --Barry Goldwater https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater