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Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic. After achieving 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. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Jonos Escort

... that Jonos offered Gucci carrying cases with their Escort portable computers (example pictured) in 1982?
... that swimmer Jin Hao competed in eight events, the most of any participant, during the 2001 National Games of China, causing him to lose 4 kilograms (8.8 lb)?
... that Bdóte, an area of sacred significance to the Dakota people, centered on the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, was also the site of their forced exile from Minnesota?
... that Thomas of Chobham's Summa confessorum was one of the most copied works on penance in the late medieval period?
... that the Apollo 16 Heat Flow Experiment was disabled when astronaut John Young tripped over a cable and tore it from its connector?
... that for her presentation at the 2008 Game Developers Conference, Jessica Mak simply played music and released balloons in the audience?
... that completion of South Bellevue station was delayed by more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a workers' strike?
... that Matei Donici, a general in the Imperial Russian Army, secretly wrote poetry with Romanian-nationalist and anti-Russian messages?

In the news

Sebastián Piñera

Former President of Chile Sebastián Piñera (pictured) dies in a helicopter crash at the age of 74.
Wildfires in the Valparaíso Region of Chile leave at least 131 people dead.
Nayib Bukele is re-elected President of El Salvador.
Ibrahim Iskandar of Johor is sworn in as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan is sentenced to ten years in prison for leaking state secrets, fourteen years for corruption, and seven years for illegal marriage.

On this day

February 9: Chinese New Year's Eve (2024)

Participants in the Mud March

1799 – Quasi-War: USS Constellation captured the French frigate Insurgente in a single-ship action in the Caribbean Sea.
1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis was named the provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
1907 – More than 3,000 women in London participated in the Mud March (pictured), the first large procession organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.
1976 – The Australian Defence Force was formed by the integration of the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal Australian Air Force.
2016 – Two commuter trains collided head-on at Bad Aibling in southeastern Germany, killing 12 people and injuring 85.

Judith Quiney (d. 1662)
Aletta Jacobs (b. 1854)
Howard Martin Temin (d. 1994)
Masatoshi Gündüz Ikeda (d. 2003)

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Books about Catullus

Various bibliographies and literature reviews have attempted to systematically cover books, chapters, articles, dissertations, and other research about the Latin poet Gaius Valerius Catullus and his poetry. Catullus's works, comprising 113 poems, have been the subjects of many books and papers in classical studies and other fields, including literary criticism, gender studies, and cultural studies; there are many critical editions, commentaries, translations and student guides of his poetry as well. Even in 1890, Max Bonnet wrote that Catullus was "inundated" with academic publications concerning his life and works. More than two thousand publications about Catullus appeared between 1959 and 2003. Denis Feeney has described Catullus 68 alone as having "legions of critics", producing a "labyrinth" of literature. (Full list...)

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Laocoön is an oil painting created between 1610 and 1614 by El Greco, a Greek painter of the Spanish Renaissance. The painting depicts the Greek and Roman mythological story of the deaths of Laocoön, a Trojan priest of Poseidon, and his two sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus. Laocoön and his sons were strangled by sea serpents, a punishment sent by the gods after Laocoön attempted to warn his countrymen about the Trojan Horse. Although inspired by the recently discovered monumental Hellenistic sculpture Laocoön and His Sons in Rome, El Greco's Laocoön is a product of Mannerism, an artistic movement originating in Italy during the 16th century that countered the artistic ideals of the Renaissance. The painting is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Painting credit: El Greco

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