Sabrina Sidney (1757–1843) was a British foundling girl taken in when she was 12 by the author Thomas Day, who wanted to mould her into his perfect wife. As an adult she worked with the schoolmaster Charles Burney, managing his schools. In 1769 Day took Sabrina to France to begin methods of education inspired by Rousseau's Emile, or On Education. When she reached her teenage years, Day's friend Richard Lovell Edgeworth persuaded him that his ideal-wife experiment had failed. In 1783 Sabrina was told the truth about Day's experiment and confronted him in a series of letters. In 1804, Anna Seward published a book about Sabrina's upbringing. In his 1820 memoirs, Edgeworth said that Sabrina and Day made a good match and that she loved him. Sabrina countered that Day had made her miserable, and that she had effectively been a slave. The story of Sabrina's life has been told in Wendy Moore's 2013 book How to Create the Perfect Wife and dramatised in the 2015 BBC Radio 4 play The Imperfect Education of Sabrina Sidney. Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabrina_Sidney> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1386: Grand Duke of Lithuania Jogaila was crowned Władysław II Jagiełło, King of Poland, beginning the Jagiellonian dynasty. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_II_Jagie%C5%82%C5%82o> 1890: The Forth Bridge, a railway bridge connecting Edinburgh to Fife over the Firth of Forth, opened, becoming an internationally recognised Scottish landmark. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge> 1918: The first known case of the so-called Spanish flu was first observed at Fort Riley, Kansas. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic> 1987: US President Ronald Reagan made a nationally televised address in which he accepted full responsibility for illegal actions in the Iran–Contra affair. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair> 2007: Fourteen-year-old English schoolgirl Charlotte Shaw drowned on Dartmoor, becoming the first person to die in connection with the annual Ten Tors challenge. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Charlotte_Shaw> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: swatch: 1. A piece, pattern, or sample, generally of cloth or a similar material. 2. (figuratively) A clump or portion of something. 3. (figuratively) A demonstration, an example, a proof. 4. (Northern England, obsolete) A tag or other small object attached to another item as a means of identifying its owner; a tally; specifically the counterfoil of a tally. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/swatch> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:   Life is a creative endeavor. It is active, not passive. We are the yeast that leavens our lives into rich, fully baked loaves. When we experience our lives as flat and lackluster, it is our consciousness that is at fault. We hold the inner key that turns our lives from thankless to fruitful. That key is "Blessing."   --Julia Cameron <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Julia_Cameron>