The Private Case is a collection of erotica and pornography held
initially by the British Museum and, from 1973, by the British Library.
The collection began between 1836 and 1870 and grew from the receipt of
books from legal deposit, and from requests made to the police following
seizures of obscene material. Access to the material in the Private Case
was restricted. At its height numbering some 4,000 items, the contents
of the Private Case shrank as works were moved to the general
collection, and grew with the arrival of bequests and donations from
collectors. From 1964, reflecting the changing social mores of the time,
the library began to review the Private Case, allowing public access to
its contents, a process that was completed in 1983. There have been no
new entries since 1990 and all new erotic and pornographic material is
put on open access in the general collection. There is no restriction on
access to Private Case material, except for some items which are in a
fragile condition.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Case>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1890:
The Uddevalla Suffrage Association was founded in Uddevalla,
Sweden, with the purpose of bringing about universal suffrage.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uddevalla_Suffrage_Association>
1928:
The iron lung (example pictured), a type of medical ventilator,
was used for the first time, to treat an eight-year-old girl paralyzed
by polio.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_lung>
1933:
The United States Department of Justice acquired a military
prison on Alcatraz Island, transforming it over the next year into the
last-resort Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatraz_Federal_Penitentiary>
1960:
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev reportedly pounded his shoe on
a desk during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in
protest at a speech by Philippine delegate Lorenzo Sumulong.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-banging_incident>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
winker:
1. A person or an animal that winks (“blinks with one eye; blinks with
one eye as a message, signal, or suggestion, usually with an implication
of conspiracy”).
2. A person who connives with another; a conniver.
3. A thing which is used to wink with, or which winks.
4. (automotive, informal) Synonym of turn signal (“each of the flashing
lights on each side of a vehicle which is used to indicate that the
vehicle is moving left or right”); a blinker, an indicator.
5. (equestrianism, also attributive and figurative) Chiefly in the
plural: synonym of blinker (“a shield attached to the bridle of a horse
or other domesticated animal to prevent it from seeing things behind it
and to its side”)
6. (music) A small bellows in an organ, regulated by a spring, which
controls variations of wind pressure.
7. (ornithology) The nictitating membrane (“transparent protective fold
of skin acting as an inner eyelid”) of a birds's eye.
8. (Britain, dialectal or slang) An eye.
9. (Britain, US, dialectal or slang) An eyelash. [...]
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/winker>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
No one can ever forget what the terrorists did in Israel.
Thousands of missiles against peaceful cities. Shooting people in cars
on the roads. Men, women, children. No one was spared. Streets covered
in blood. Hostages. The terrorists themselves gave the world footage of
the atrocities, and were proud of them. Women who were beaten. Elderly
people who were kidnapped from their homes. Abducted children. And we do
not yet know how many people were captured and brutally taken away by
the terrorists. They even tried to humiliate the dead by mocking their
bodies. We saw all of this in Israel. And the Israelis themselves —
Israeli journalists who were here in Ukraine, who were in Bucha, are now
saying that they saw the same evil where Russia came. The same evil, and
the only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that
attacked Israel, and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine.
The intentions declared are different, but the essence is the same. You
see it. You see the same blood on the streets. You see the same civilian
cars shot up. You see the same bodies of people who have been tortured.
--Volodymyr Zelenskyy
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Zelenskyy>
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