The James Logan Courier

From KoreanHero.net:
Yi Sun-sin was born on April 28, 1545 in the aristocratic neighborhood of Geonchondong, Hansung (now Seoul) as the third son of Yi Chong and his wife Byun. Although he was of good ancestry, his family was not well off because his grandfather had been embroiled in a political purge during the reign of King Joong Jong and Yi’s father stayed away from seeking a civil service job. When the economic situation worsened for his family, they moved to Asan, the country home of Yi’s maternal family.

Read The War Diary of Yi Sun-Sin, free from Koreanhero.net.

From Spartacus Educational:

Mary Wollstonecraft, the daughter of a handkerchief weaver, was born in Spitalfields, London in 1759. The family moved a great deal during Mary's childhood and she lived for periods at Epping, Barking, Beverley, Hoxton, Walworth and Laugharne in Wales.

Read Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, one of four of her works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From Ourcivilization.com:

David Hume was born at Edinburgh on April 26, 1711 the younger son in a good but not wealthy family. His father, "who passed for a man of parts," died when Hume was still a child, and he was brought up by his mother at the family estate of Ninewells, near Berwick. About 1723 he entered the University of Edinburgh, and, according to his Autobiography, "passed through the ordinary course of education with success." His letters show that when he returned to Ninewells about three years later he had acquired a fair knowledge of Latin, slight acquaintance with Greek, and a literary taste inclining to "books of reasoning and philosophy, and to poetry and the polite authors." His studious disposition led his family to believe that law was the proper profession for him, but he "found an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring."


Read An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume, one of 11 of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

Dexter (Keith) Gordon (February 27, 1923 - April 25, 1990) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He is considered one of the first bebop tenor players. A famous photograph by Herman Leonard of Gordon smoking a cigarette during a set at the Royal Roost in New York City in 1948 is one of the more iconic images in the history of jazz.

Life and works

Gordon was born and grew up in Los Angeles, where his father was a doctor who counted Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton among his patients. He played clarinet from the age of 7, before switching to saxophone (initially alto, then tenor) at 15. While still at school, he was playing in bands with such contemporaries as Chico Hamilton and Buddy Collette.

Read an interview with Dexter Gordon, free from Downbeat.com

From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica:
ANTHONY TROLLOPE (1815-1882), English novelist, was born in London, on the 24th of April 1815. His father, Thomas Anthony Trollope (1780-1835), a barrister who had been fellow of New College, Oxford, was reduced to poverty by unbusinesslike habits and injudicious speculation, and in 1829 Anthony's mother, Frances Milton Trollope (1780-1863), went with her husband to the United States to open a small fancy-goods shop in Cincinnati. The enterprise was a failure, but her three years' stay in that country resulted in a book on the Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), of which she gave an unflattering account that aroused keen resentment.

Returning to England, her husband was compelled to flee the country in order to escape his creditors, and Mrs. Trollope thereafter supported him in Bruges until his death by her incessant literary work. She published some books of travel, most of which are coloured by prejudice, and many novels, among the best known of which are The Vicar of Wrexhill (1837) and the Widow Barnaby (1839), studies in that vein of broad comedy in which lay her peculiar gift. She wrote steadily for more than twenty years, until her death, at Florence, on the 6th of October 1863.


Read Anthony Trollope's The Warden,one of fifty-two of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From whitehouse.gov:

Tall, stately, stiffly formal in the high stock he wore around his jowls, James Buchanan was the only President who never married.

Presiding over a rapidly dividing Nation, Buchanan grasped inadequately the political realities of the time. Relying on constitutional doctrines to close the widening rift over slavery, he failed to understand that the North would not accept constitutional arguments which favored the South. Nor could he realize how sectionalism had realigned political parties: the Democrats split; the Whigs were destroyed, giving rise to the Republicans.


Read James Buchanan's four "State of the Union" addresses, free from Project Gutenberg.

From the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition:

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY (1816-1902), English poet, author of Festus, was born at Nottingham on the 22nd of April 1816. His father, who himself published both prose and verse, owned and edited from 1845 to 1852 the Nottingham Mercury, one of the chief journals in his native town. Philip James Bailey received a local education until his sixteenth year, when he matriculated at Glasgow University. He did not, however, take his degree, but moved in 1835 to London and entered Lincoln's Inn. Without making serious practice of the law he settled at Basford, and for three years was occupied with the composition of Festus, which appeared anonymously in 1839.

Read "Helen's Song," a poem by Philip James Bailey, one of three available free from Poets' Corner on theotherpages.org.

From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica:

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE (1828-1893), French critic and historian, the son of Jean Baptiste Taine, an attorney, was born at Vouziers on the 21st of April 1828. He remained with his father until his eleventh year, receiving instruction from him, and attending at the same time a small school which was under the direction of M. Pierson. In 1839, owing to the serious illness of his father, he was sent to an ecclesiastical pension at Rethel, where he remained eighteen months. J. B. Taine died on the 8th of September 1840, leaving a moderate competence to his widow, his two daughters, and his son. In the spring of 1841 Taine was sent to Paris, and entered as a boarder at the Institution Mathe, where the pupils attended the classes of the College Bourbon. Madame Taine followed her son to Paris. Taine was not slow to distinguish himself at school. When he was but fourteen years old he had already drawn up a systematic scheme of study, from which he never deviated. He allowed himself twenty minutes' playtime in the afternoon and an hour's music after dinner; the rest of the day was spent in work.

Read The Ancient Regime by Hippolyte Taine, one of five of his works available, in Engish and French, free from Project Gutenberg.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Roman Emperor, A.D. 161-180, born at Rome, 26 April, 121; died 17 March, 180.

HIS EARLY LIFE (121-161)
His father died while Marcus was yet a boy, and he was adopted by his grandfather, Annius Verus. In the first pages of his "Meditations" (I, i-xvii) he has left us an account, unique in antiquity, of his education by near relatives and by tutors of distinction; diligence, gratitude and hardiness seem to have been its chief characteristics. From his earliest years he enjoyed the friendship andpatronage on the Emperor Hadrian, who bestowed on him the honour of the equestrian order when he was only six years old, made him a member of the Salian priesthood at eight, and compelled Antoninus Pius immediately after his own adoption to adopt as sons and heirs both the young Marcus and Ceionius Commodus, known later as the Emperor Lucius Verus. In honour of his adopted father he changed his name from M. Julius Aurelius Verus to M. Aurelius Antoninus. By the will of Hadrian he espoused Faustina, the daughter of Antoninus Pius. He was raised to the consularship in 140, and in 147 received the "tribunician power".

Read Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius, free from Project Gutenberg.

From www.latin-american.cam.ac.uk:
Juana Inés Ramírez was born in 1648 on the farmstead of San Miguel Nepantla on the slopes of the Popocatépetl volcano, some 60km from the capital of Nueva España (now México). She was the 'illegitimate' daughter of a criolla mother (Doña Isabel Ramírez de Santillana) and a Biscayan father (Pedro Manuel de Asbaje), and her four sisters and a brother (some of them by a different father) were also illegitimate.

Read some of Sor Juana's poetry, free from photoaspects.com

LUNCH:
Spicy Chicken Patty, Milk, Baby Carrots,
Fresh Fruit, Cookie, and Fun Chips

ACTIVITIES:
The Day of Silence is Wednesday, April 18th. Drop by Room 52 or 451 to participate.

Attention ALL African-American men: The next event for you will be today after school in the Spot from 2:50-3:55 pm. Come talk about the book “Holla Back”, and other important topics. Be there Today!

Bessie Smith (July, 1892 – September 21, 1937) is largely regarded as the most popular and successful blues singer in the 1920s and 1930s, and by some as the most influential performer in blues history.

She has had an enormous influence on singers throughout the history of American popular music, including Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, and Janis Joplin.

She has often been referred to as the "Empress of the Blues."

Watch Bessie Smith perform Saint Louis Blues, with Fetcher Henderson Band and Hall Johnson Choir, via google video.

Nellallitea 'Nella' Larsen (April 13, 1891 – March 30, 1964) was a mixed-race novelist of the Harlem Renaissance who wrote two novels and a few short stories. Though her literary output was scant, what she wrote was of extraordinary quality, earning her recognition by her contemporaries and by present day critics.

Biography
Nella Larsen went by various names throughout her life. She was born in Chicago on April 13, 1891 as Nellie Walker, the daughter of the Danish immigrant domestic case worker Marie Hanson and Peter Walker, a West Indian man of color from Saint Croix who soon disappeared from her life. Taking the surname of her Scandinavian stepfather Peter Larsen, she also at times went by Nellye Larson, Nellie Larsen and, finally, Nella Larsen as well as by her married name Nella Larsen Imes.

Read "Self-delusion and self-sacrifice in Nella Larsen's 'Quicksand,"' an article from African American Review, by Kimberly Monda, free from findarticle.com.

Percy Lavon Julian (April 11, 1899 – April 19, 1975) was an American research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine. While at Glidden, his chemical synthesis of human steroids from plant steroid precursors would lay the foundation for the birth control pill and cortisone. After leaving Glidden, he started his own company and competed against Syntex, and testified before a US Senate subcommittee to break their virtual monopoly on synthesizing steroid intermediates from the Mexican yam. His competition helped reduce the cost of steroid intermediates to large multinational pharmaceutical companies.

During his lifetime he received more than 130 chemical patents. Julian was the second African American to receive a doctorate in chemistry. He was the first African American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the second African American scientist inducted from any field.

Learn more about Percy Julian, free from De Pauw University

Eadweard Muybridge (April 9, 1830 – May 8, 1904) was an English-born photographer, known primarily for his early use of multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated celluloid film strip still used today.

Early life and career
Muybridge was born Edward James Muggeridge at Kingston upon Thames, England. He is believed to have changed his first name to match that of King Eadweard as shown on the plinth of the Kingston coronation stone, which was re-erected in Kingston in 1850. Muggeridge became Muygridge and then Muybridge after he had emigrated to the United States in the early 1850s.

View Eadweard Muybridge's photos of native Americans in the Yosemite Valley, free from the Modesto Bee.

Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton, Sc.D. (April 6, 1903–January 4, 1990) was a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is largely credited with transforming the stroboscope from an obscure laboratory instrument into a common device seen in nearly every camera.

He grew up in Aurora, Nebraska and attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. After graduating, he married Esther Garret in 1928. During their marriage they had three children: William, Robert, and Mary Lou.

See Harold Edgerton's breakthrough photos free from the Massachusett's Institute of Technology website.

Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author of the early 19th century. Best known for his short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip van Winkle” (both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon), he was also a prolific writer of essays, biographies, and other forms as well. He and James Fenimore Cooper were the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving is said to have mentored authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Read The Sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon, one of 21 of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

Francisco Baltazar (April 2, 1788—February 20, 1862), known much more widely through his nom-de-plume Francisco Balagtas, was a prominent Filipino poet, and is widely considered as the Tagalog equivalent of William Shakespeare for his impact on Filipino literature. The famous epic, Florante at Laura, is regarded as his defining work.

Early years
Born in the town of Bigaa (now named Balagtas in his honor) in the province of Bulacan, Francisco Balagtas was the youngest of four children. His parents were the blacksmith, Juan Baltazar, and his wife, Juana de la Cruz. He was nicknamed Kiko, while his siblings were named Felipe, Concha, and Nicholasa.

Read Forante, by Francisco Balagtas, in tagalog, or spanish, free from Project Gutenberg.

James Fisk, Jr. (April 1, 1834 – January 6, 1872), known variously as "Big Jim," "Diamond Jim," and "Jubilee Jim," was an American financier. Fisk was born in Bennington, Vermont. After a brief period in school, he ran away in 1850 and joined Van Amberg's Mammoth Circus & Menagerie, a circus. Later, he became a hotel waiter, and finally adopted the business of his father, a peddler. He adopted what he learned in the circus to his peddling and grew his father's business. He then became a salesman for Jordan Marsh, a Boston dry goods firm. A failure as a salesman, he was sent to Washington D.C. in 1861 to sell textiles to the government. By his shrewd dealing in army contracts during the Civil War, and, by some accounts, cotton smuggling across enemy lines (in which he enlisted the help of his father), he accumulated considerable wealth, which he soon lost in speculation.

Read Avoiding the Big Bang, by Kurt Vonnegut, source of the Big Jim Fisk quotation, free from vonnegutweb.com.