The Phantom Tollbooth is a 1961 children's adventure novel by Norton Juster with illustrations by Jules Feiffer (pictured). It tells the story of a bored young boy named Milo, who unexpectedly receives a magic tollbooth one afternoon and, having nothing better to do, drives through it in his toy car. The tollbooth transports him to the Kingdom of Wisdom, once prosperous, now troubled. There, he acquires two faithful companions and goes on a quest to restore to the kingdom its exiled princesses, named Rhyme and Reason. The text is full of puns and wordplay; many events, such as when Milo unintentionally jumps to Conclusions (an island in Wisdom), explore the literal meanings of idioms. A major theme of the book is a love for education. Although the book was not expected to sell well, it received strong reviews and has sold in excess of three million copies. It has been adapted into a film, opera, and play, and translated into many languages. Critics have compared its appeal to that of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1588:

Anglo-Spanish War: The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and over 30,000 men, set sail from Lisbon for the English Channel in an attempt to invade England. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Armada

1830:

US President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law, authorizing him to negotiate with Native Americans for their removal from their ancestral homelands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Removal_Act

1936:

English mathematician Alan Turing introduced the Turing machine, a basic abstract symbol-manipulating device that can simulate the logic of any computer algorithm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

1998:

The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission carried out five underground nuclear tests, becoming the seventh country in the world to successfully develop and publicly test nuclear weapons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagai-I

2010:

A train derailment and collision in the Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal, India, caused the deaths of at least 141 passengers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jnaneswari_Express_train_derailment

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

brushy: 1. Having a similar texture to a fox’s tail; brushlike, bushy. 2. Of the countryside: having thick vegetation, taller than grass but shorter than trees; having abundant brush; shrubby. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brushy

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal.   --Louis Agassiz https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz