John Richard Clark Hall (1855–1931) was a British scholar of Old English, and a barrister. Hall's A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (pictured) became a widely used work upon its 1894 publication, and after multiple revisions remains in print. His 1901 prose translation of Beowulf was still the canonical introduction to the poem into the 1960s; some later editions included a prefatory essay by J. R. R. Tolkien. Hall's other work on Beowulf included a metrical translation in 1914, and the translation and collection of Knut Stjerna's Swedish papers on the poem in the 1912 work Essays on Questions Connected with the Old English Poem of Beowulf. In the final decade of his life, Hall's writings took to a Christian theme. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge published two of his works in this time: Herbert Tingle, and Especially his Boyhood, and Birth-Control and Self-Control. Hall worked as a clerk at the Local Government Board in Whitehall, becoming principal clerk in 1898.

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1919:

First Red Scare: The anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani set off eight bombs in eight cities across the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_bombings

1953:

Queen Elizabeth II was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_of_Elizabeth_II

1994:

The Royal Air Force suffered a significant peacetime disaster when a Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland, killing all 29 people on board. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Mull_of_Kintyre_Chinook_crash

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

snottite: (bacteriology) A colony of single-celled extremophilic bacteria that hangs in a sheet (having the consistency of snot or nasal mucus) from the ceilings of some caves like stalactites. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/snottite

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

A man should be only partially before his time — to be completely to the vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.   --Thomas Hardy https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy