The nature fakers controversy was an early 20th-century American literary debate highlighting the conflict between science and sentiment in popular nature writing. Following a period of growing interest in the natural world beginning in the late 19th century, a new literary movement, in which the natural world was depicted in a compassionate rather than realistic light, began to take shape. Works such as Ernest Thompson Seton's Wild Animals I Have Known (1898) and William J. Long's School of the Woods (1902) popularized this new genre and emphasized sympathetic and individualistic animal characters. In March 1903, naturalist and writer John Burroughs published an article entitled "Real and Sham Natural History" in the Atlantic Monthly. Lambasting writers for their seemingly fantastical representations of wildlife, he also denounced the booming genre of realistic animal fiction as "yellow journalism of the woods". Burroughs' targets responded in defense of their work in various publications, as did their supporters, and the resulting controversy raged in the public press for nearly six years. Dubbed the "War of the Naturalists", the controversy effectively ended when President Theodore Roosevelt publicly sided with Burroughs, publishing his article "Nature Fakers" in the September 1907 issue of Everybody's Magazine. Roosevelt popularized the negative colloquialism by which the controversy would later be known to describe one who purposefully fabricates details about the natural world.

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1779:

Tekle Giyorgis I began the first of his five reigns as Emperor of Ethiopia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekle_Giyorgis_I_of_Ethiopia

1807:

French brothers Claude and Nicéphore Niépce received a patent for their Pyréolophore (diagram pictured), one of the world's first internal combustion engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyr%C3%A9olophore

1922:

The German protectorate of Togoland was divided into the League of Nations mandates of French Togoland and British Togoland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Togoland

1969:

The Apollo 11 lunar module landed on the Sea of Tranquillity, where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon six-and-a-half hours later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11

1992:

Czechoslovak President Václav Havel resigned, saying that he would not preside over the country's breakup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A1clav_Havel

2001:

Twenty-three-year-old Italian anti-globalist Carlo Giuliani was shot dead by a police officer while protesting during the 27th G8 summit in Genoa, Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Carlo_Giuliani

2005:

The Civil Marriage Act received its Royal Assent, legalizing same-sex marriage in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Marriage_Act

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

punctilious: 1. Strictly attentive to detail; meticulous or fastidious, particularly to codes or conventions. 2. Precise or scrupulous; finicky or nitpicky. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/punctilious

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good. --Petrarch https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Petrarch