Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) was an English crime novelist,
playwright, translator and critic. After winning first class honours
from Somerville College, Oxford, at a time when women were not awarded
degrees, she worked as an advertising copywriter. In 1923 she published
her first novel, Whose Body?, which introduced the upper-class amateur
sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey; she went on to write ten more crime fiction
novels about Wimsey. From the mid-1930s she wrote plays, mostly on
religious themes; the play cycle The Man Born to Be King, broadcast in
1941 and 1942, was a radio dramatisation of the life of Jesus, which was
initially controversial, but was soon recognised as an important work.
From the early 1940s onward she focused on translating
the three books
of Dante's Divine Comedy into colloquial English; her first two
translations were published in 1949 and 1955. She died unexpectedly
during the translation of the third book, aged 64.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_L._Sayers>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1861:
American Civil War: Jefferson Davis was named the provisional
president of the Confederate States of America.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Davis>
1907:
More than 3,000 women in London participated in the Mud March,
the first large procession organised by the National Union of Women's
Suffrage Societies.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_March_%28suffragists%29>
1976:
The Australian Defence Force was formed by the integration of
the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal Australian
Air Force.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Defence_Force>
2016:
Two Meridian commuter trains collided head-on at Bad Aibling in
southeastern Germany, leaving 12 dead and 85 others injured.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Aibling_rail_accident>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
splay:
1. (transitive)
2. To spread, spread apart, or spread out (something); to expand.
3. (chiefly architecture) To construct a bevel or slope on (something,
such as the frame or jamb of a door or window); to bevel, to slant, to
slope.
4. (computing theory) To rearrange (a splay tree) so that a desired
element is placed at the root.
5. (pathology) To dislocate (a body part such as a shoulder bone).
6. (obsolete) To unfurl or unroll (a banner or flag).
7. (intransitive)
8. To have, or lie in, an oblique or slanted position.
9. To spread out awkwardly; to sprawl. [...]
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/splay>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
All is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice,
that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most
afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear
most.
--Crime and Punishment
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Crime_and_Punishment>