Hope is an 1886 Symbolist oil painting by the English artist George Frederic Watts. Radically different from previous treatments of the subject, it shows a lone blindfolded female figure sitting on a globe, playing a lyre which has only a single string remaining. Watts intentionally used symbolism not traditionally associated with hope to make the painting's meaning ambiguous. As reproductions began to circulate in large quantities worldwide, it became a widely popular image. Theodore Roosevelt displayed a copy at his Sagamore Hill home in New York, and a 1922 film was based on the painting. Although Watts was rapidly falling out of fashion by this time and Hope was increasingly seen as outdated and sentimental, it remained influential. Martin Luther King Jr. based a 1959 sermon on the theme of the painting, as did Jeremiah Wright in 1990. Among the congregation for the latter was the young Barack Obama, who took "The Audacity of Hope" as the theme of his 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address, and as the title of his 2006 book; he based his successful 2008 presidential campaign around the theme of "Hope".

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_(painting)

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1607:

San Agustin Church in Manila, the oldest extant church in the Philippines, was completed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Agustin_Church_(Manila)

1862:

American Civil War: In their first significant victory, Union forces defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Mill Springs near modern Nancy, Kentucky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mill_Springs

1945:

World War II: Soviet forces liberated the Łódź Ghetto; only 877 Jews of the initial population of 164,000 remained at that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%81%C3%B3d%C5%BA_Ghetto

1972:

The French newspaper l'Aurore revealed that the Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon", had been found to be living in Peru. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Barbie

2007:

Turkish-Armenian journalist and human rights activist Hrant Dink was assassinated by a Turkish nationalist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Hrant_Dink

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

unpaid: 1. Not paid (for). 2. Of work: done without agreed payment, usually voluntarily. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unpaid

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

If justice be a natural principle, then it is necessarily an immutable one; and can no more be changed — by any power inferior to that which established it — than can the law of gravitation, the laws of light, the principles of mathematics, or any other natural law or principle whatever; and all attempts or assumptions, on the part of any man or body of men — whether calling themselves governments, or by any other name — to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion, in the place of justice, as a rule of conduct for any human being, are as much an absurdity, an usurpation, and a tyranny, as would be their attempts to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion in the place of any and all the physical, mental, and moral laws of the universe. If there be any such principle as justice, it is, of necessity, a natural principle; and, as such, it is a matter of science, to be learned and applied like any other science. And to talk of either adding to, or taking from, it, by legislation, is just as false, absurd, and ridiculous as it would be to talk of adding to, or taking from, mathematics, chemistry, or any other science, by legislation.   --Lysander Spooner https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner