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This is the archive for June 2006

Friday, June 30, 2006


wikipedia photo
Patton at 22 years old, a cadet
at the Virginia Military Institute.
George Smith Patton, Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a leading U.S. Army general in World War II. In his 36-year Army career, he was an advocate of armored warfare and commanded major units of North Africa, Sicily, and the European Theater of Operations. Many have viewed Patton as a pure and ferocious warrior, known by the nickname "Old Blood and Guts", a name given to him after a reporter misquoted his statement that it takes blood and brains to win a war. But history has left the image of a brilliant military leader whose record was also marred by insubordination and some periods of apparent instability. He once said, "Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way."

Read Patton's famous "Speech to the Third Army" on June 5th, 1944, from www.pattonhq.com

Thursday, June 29, 2006

George Santayana (16 December 1863 in Madrid, Spain – 26 September 1952 in Rome, Italy), was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, he was raised and educated in the United States, invariably wrote in English and is considered an American man of letters. He is perhaps best known for his oft-quoted "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" from Reason in Common Sense, the first volume of his The Life of Reason.

Read The Life of Reason by George Santayana, free from Project Gutenberg

Wikipedia photo
George Santayana

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Henry Beston (born June 1, 1888 in Boston; died April 15, 1968 in Nobleboro, Maine) was an American writer and naturalist, best known as the author of The Outermost House, written in 1925.

Read A Volunteer Poilu by Henry Beston, free from Project Gutenberg.

Public Domain Image - 1918
Henry Beston in 1918.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Dr. William Carlos Williams (sometimes known as WCW) (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963), was an American poet closely associated with Modernism and Imagism.

See a video of a William Carlos Williams poem


Read William Carlos Williams' poems at theotherspages.org


Monday, June 26, 2006

Robert Maynard Hutchins (January 17, 1899, Brooklyn, New York – May 17, 1977, Santa Barbara, California) was an educational philosopher, a president (1929–1945) of the University of Chicago and its chancellor (1945–1951).

Read Hutchins' The University of Utopia free from the University of Chicago.

Robert Hutchins
Robert Hutchins

Sunday, June 25, 2006

(George) Bernard Shaw (July 26, 1856 – November 2, 1950) was an Irish playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. After those of William Shakespeare, Shaw's plays are some of the most widely produced in English language theatre.

Listen to excerpts of Shaw's play Caesar and Cleopatra

Read Shaw's Pygmalion, free from Project Gutenberg


Bernard Shaw

Saturday, June 24, 2006

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld, le Prince de Marcillac (September 15, 1613 - March 17, 1680), was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs, as well as an example of the accomplished 17th-century nobleman. He was born in Paris in the Rue des Petits Champs, at a time when the royal court oscillated between aiding the nobility and threatening it. Until 1650, he bore the title of Prince de Marcillac.

Read Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims by François duc de La Rochefoucauld


public domain image

Friday, June 23, 2006

The first President who was the son of a President, John Quincy Adams in many respects paralleled the career as well as the temperament and viewpoints of his illustrious father. Born in Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1767, he watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from the top of Penn's Hill above the family farm. As secretary to his father in Europe, he became an accomplished linguist and assiduous diarist.

Read Orations by John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams

Thursday, June 22, 2006

American writer of poetry and stories, Celia Thaxter was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on 29 June 1835 and grew up in the Isles of Shoals, first on White Island, where her father, Thomas Laighton, was lighthouse keeper, and then on Smuttynose and Appledore Islands. When she was sixteen, she married Levi Thaxter and moved to the mainland. Her life with Levi was not harmonious and she missed her islands, and so after 10 years away, she moved back to Appledore Island. Her first published poem, Landlocked, was written during this time on the mainland.

Read Celia Thaxter''s An Island Garden, free from the University of Pennsylvania

Celia Thaxter
Celia Thaxter in Her Garden, 1892, by Childe Hassam; Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor, OM, PC (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was a British statesman and the last member of the Liberal Party to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Hear a snippet of David Lloyd George speaking (wav)

David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Francis Thompson (December 18, 1859–November 13, 1907) was an English poet born in Preston, Lancashire. His father was a doctor who had converted to Roman Catholicism, following his brother Edward Healy Thompson, a friend of Cardinal Manning.

Read Poems by Francis Thompson, free from Project Gutenberg

FrancisThompson
Francis Thompson

Monday, June 19, 2006

Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (September 18, 1709 – December 13, 1784), often referred to simply as Dr. Johnson, was one of England's greatest literary figures: a poet, essayist, biographer, lexicographer and often considered the finest critic of English literature. He was also a great wit and prose stylist whose bon mots are still frequently quoted in print today.

Read Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson, free from Project Gutenberg

Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson circa 1772, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Thomas Carlyle (December 4, 1795 - February 5, 1881) was a Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian, whose work was hugely influential during the Victorian era. Coming from a strictly Calvinist family, Carlyle was expected by his parents to become a preacher. However, while at the University of Edinburgh he lost his Christian faith. Nevertheless Calvinist values remained with him throughout his life. This combination of a religious temperament with loss of faith in traditional Christianity made Carlyle's work appealing to many Victorians who were grappling with scientific and political changes that threatened the traditional social order.

Read Thomas Carlyle's book On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History, free from Project Gutenberg.

Thomas Carlyle


Saturday, June 17, 2006

Robert Earl Wilson (name changed from Earl Lawrence Wilson) (October 2, 1934 - April 23, 2005) was a starting pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for the Boston Red Sox (1959-60, 1962-66), Detroit Tigers (1966-1970) and San Diego Padres (1970). Wilson batted and threw right handed. He was born in Ponchatoula, Louisiana.

Earl Wilson
Earl Wilson's baseball card.

Review Earl Wilson's career statistics at the Baseball Almanac

Friday, June 16, 2006

Peter De Vries (February 27, 1910 - September 28, 1993) was an American editor and comic novelist known for his satiric wit.

Book cover

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Vincent Willem van Gogh listen (March 30, 1853–July 29, 1890) was a Dutch painter, classified as a Post-Impressionist. His work now attracts very high prices at auction, and several of his paintings appear in lists of the most expensive paintings in the world. His work shows the objects, people and places in his life with bold, usually distorted, draughtsmanship and visible dotted or dashed brushmarks, which are intensely yet subtly coloured.

Self Portrait - Vincent Van Gogh
Self Portrait - Vincent Van Gogh

Visit the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands, via the internet

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Charlotte Brontë (April 21, 1816 – March 31, 1855) was an English novelist, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters whose novels have become enduring classics of English literature.

Click here to read Charlotte Bronte's classic novel, Jane Eyre, free from Project Gutenberg.

Charlotee Bronte, painted by C.B. Richmond

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Elbert Green Hubbard (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915) was an American philosopher and writer. He is perhaps most famous for his essay A Message to Garcia.


Click here to read A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard.


Elbert Hubbard - Public Domain Photo



Sunday, June 11, 2006

Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) is among the most eminent American authors. She is known for her depictions of US life in novels like O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.

Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Read One of Ours, Cather's Nobel Prize-winning book, free from Project Gutenberg.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Sir William Ramsay (October 2, 1852 – July 23, 1916) was a Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 (along with Lord Rayleigh who received the Nobel Prize in Physics that same year for the discovery of argon).

Sir William Ramsay
Sir William Ramsay

Friday, June 09, 2006

Anatole France (April 16, 1844 – October 12, 1924) was the pen name of French author Jacques Anatole François Thibault. He was born in Paris, France, and died in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France. The son of a bookseller, he spent most of his life around books. His father's bookstore was called the Librairie de France and from this name Jacques Anatole François Thibault took his nom-de plume.

Anatole France
Anatole France


Read Anatole France's book Penguin Island, free from Project Gutenberg

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Sa'di (full name in English: Muslih-ud-Din Mushrif-ibn-Abdullah) (1184 - 1283/1291?) is one of the major Persian poets of the medieval period. He is recognized not only for the quality of his writing, but also for the depth of his social thought.

Saadi


Click here to read excerpts from Saadi's "Golestan."

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist and author. He conducted pioneering work on experimental psychology and advocated behaviorism, which seeks to understand behavior as a function of environmental histories of reinforcement. He also wrote a number of controversial works in which he proposed the widespread use of psychological behavior modification techniques, primarily operant conditioning, in order to improve society and increase human happiness, as a form of social engineering.

B.F. Skinner - Library of Congress
B.F. Skinner

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Publius Terentius Afer, better known as Terence, was a comic playwright of the Roman Republic. His date of birth is unknown, but his comedies were performed for the first time ca. 170 BC-160 BC, and he died young in 159 BC. He wrote six plays, all of which have survived (by comparison, his predecessor Plautus wrote twenty-one extant plays).

Bust of Publius Terentius Afer

Monday, June 05, 2006

With the assassination of President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, not quite 43, became the youngest President in the Nation's history. He brought new excitement and power to the Presidency, as he vigorously led Congress and the American public toward progressive reforms and a strong foreign policy.

Click here to hear Roosevelt's speech "The Right of the People to Rule"

Click here to read Roosevelt's book Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches


Theodore Roosevelt -public domain photo, Yellowstone park collection

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804), was a German philosopher from Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) in East Prussia. He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment.

Immanuel Kant -wikipedia image
Immanuel Kant


Download a free copy of Kant's The Critique of Practical Reason from Project Gutenberg

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (April 22, 1766 – July 14, 1817), commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris and abroad. She influenced literary tastes in Europe at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Read Madame de Staël's Ten Years' Exile:Memoirs of That Interesting Period of the Life of the Baroness De Stael-Holstein, Written by Herself, during the Years 1810, 1811, 1812, and 1813, and Now First Published from the Original Manuscript, by Her Son.

Mme Germaine de Stael, by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Mme Germaine de Staël, by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun

Friday, June 02, 2006


William Cowper


William Cowper (pronounced Cooper) (November 20, 1731 – April 25, 1800) was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside.


Download a free copy Cowper's of The Diverting History of John Gilpin from Project Gutenberg.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Douglas MacArthur (January 26, 1880 – April 5, 1964) was an American general and medal of honor recipient, who was Supreme Commander of Allied forces in the South West Pacific Area during World War II. He led the defense of Australia, and the recapture of New Guinea, the Philippines and Borneo. He was poised to invade Japan in November 1945 but instead accepted their surrender on September 2, 1945. MacArthur oversaw the occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1951 and is credited for making far-ranging democratic changes in that country. He led UN forces defending South Korea against a North Korean invasion in 1950-511. MacArthur was relieved of command by President Harry S. Truman in April 1951 for public disagreements with Truman's policies.

Standing outside a military headquarters in France in 1918, young Brig. Gen. Douglas MacArthur exudes confidence and determination. (RG 319, Records of the Army Staff)
Young Brig. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, standing outside a military headquarters in France in 1918.