Lisa del Giocondo was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany in Italy. Her name was given to Mona Lisa, her portrait commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance. Little is known about Lisa's life. Married as a teenager to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local official, she was mother to five children and led what is thought to have been a comfortable and ordinary middle-class life. Lisa outlived her husband, who was about 20 years her senior. Centuries after Lisa's death, Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting and took on a life separate from Lisa, the woman. Speculation by scholars and hobbyists made the work of art a globally-recognized icon and an object of commercialization. During the early 21st century, a discovery made at a university library was powerful enough evidence to end speculation about the sitter's identity and definitively identified Lisa del Giocondo as the subject of the Mona Lisa.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_del_Giocondo

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1598: King Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom of religion to the Huguenots. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Nantes)

1873: In the wake of a contested election for local political offices in Colfax, Louisiana, USA, armed white supremacists overpowered freedmen and the African American state militia trying to control the parish courthouse, killing over 100 of them. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_massacre)

1919: British Indian Army troops opened fire on a peaceful gathering in Amritsar, Punjab in India, killing hundreds of unarmed of men, women and children. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre)

1943: World War II: Germany announced the discovery of a mass grave of Polish prisoners-of-war executed by Soviet forces in the Katyn Forest Massacre. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre)

1984: Indian forces launched a preemptive attack on the disputed Siachen Glacier region of Kashmir, triggering a military conflict with Pakistan. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_Glacier)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

impel: To urge a person; to press on; to incite to action or motion in any way. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/impel)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. -- Thomas Jefferson (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson)