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The International Day of Peace is on September 21st of each year and calls for a full day of peace and ceasefire throughout the world.
In this event, the "Peace Bell" is rung at UN Headquarters. The bell
is cast from coins donated by children on all continents, and
considered a symbol of global solidarity. It was given as a gift by Japan,
and is referred to as "a reminder of the human cost of war." The
inscription on its side reads: "Long live absolute world peace."
Observance of the annual International Day of Peace is widespread
across the globe. Celebrations now take place in every country. View
2008 Events at link
across the globe. Celebrations now take place in every country. View
2008 Events at link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Day_of_Peace
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It's the birthday of the science fiction writer H. G. Wells, born Herbert George Wells in 1866 in Bromley, England. Wells' parentswere poor, and their marriage wasn't very happy, but they managed
because his father was a professional cricket
player. But when Herbert's father broke his leg, they couldn't pay for
school anymore, so Herbert became an apprentice to a draper. He failed
at that, and then failed at being a chemist's assistant, and each time
he was out of work he would go stay with his mother, who was living
away from her
husband, as a housekeeper for a rich family. That family had a huge
library, and Herbert would sneak into the library to read. He won a
scholarship to a science school, and he learned about biology and
Darwinism from Thomas Henry Huxley, grandfather of the writer Aldous
Huxley. But he failed his
geology exam and had to leave school. Wells had a series of medical
problems — a shattered kidney, a burst blood vessel in his lung, a
hemorrhage — and he often thought he was dying, but this only prompted
him to write more and more, so he ended up writing more than 100 works,
including
The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).
It's the birthday of the horror writer Stephen King, (books by this author)born in 1947 in Portland, Maine. His family moved around a lot and
ended up in a small town in Maine, and it was there that his official
writing career began at age 11, when he and
his older brother David decided to begin a town newspaper, and it sold
for five cents. In 1957, he was at the local theater watching a matinee
of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and the manager interrupted it to announce that the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik. Stephen King says that for
the first time, he saw "a useful connection between the world of fantasy and that of what My Weekly Reader used to call Current Events." He decided that the main purpose of
horror was "its ability to form a liaison between our fantasy fears and
our real fears." He sold a couple of stories,
and he wrote a novel but it was rejected. He earned $1.25 an hour
pumping gas, and then he worked at a laundromat. Eventually, he got a
job teaching high school, and that job inspired him to write about a
teenager named Carietta White. But he decided his story was worthless
and threw it in the
trash. His wife took it out of the trash, read it, and thought it was
actually pretty good. She told him to keep writing, so he did, and Carrie was published (1974). It didn't get great reviews, but it sold more
than 4 million copies and was made into a movie, and suddenly King had
enough
money to write full-time.
He has written many books, including The Shining (1977), Pet SemataryIt (1986), The Green Mile (1996), and his seven-part Dark Tower series. (1983),
Stephen King said, "We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones."
And, "The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
It was on this day in 1937 that The Hobbit was published with a printing of 1,500 copies. A few years earlier, aprofessor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, a man named J.R.R. Tolkien, was
grading papers and he turned one of those papers over
and wrote, "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit." He didn't
really know what that meant, or what a hobbit was. But in the next few
years, he drew a map of the sort of world he thought a hobbit would
live in, and then he started to write a story about a hobbit named
Bilbo Baggins. Tolkien
only managed to finish the story because he was encouraged by friends.
It was passed around and eventually got to the publishing house of
Allen & Unwin. Mr. Unwin gave it to his 10-year-old son, told him
he would pay him a few pennies in exchange for reading it and giving
him a report, and the
boy was so enthusiastic that Allen & Unwin agreed to publish it. The Hobbit was so popular that they immediately issued a second printing. But
since paper was rationed during the war, it was frequently unavailable
for the next 10 years.
Gustav Theodore Holst (21 September 1874, 1874 – 25 May1934)was an English composer and was a music teacher for nearly 20 years. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets. Having studied at the Royal College of Music in London,Ravel,Grieg, Richard Strauss, and fellow student Ralph Vaughan Williams, but most of his music is highly original, with influences from Hindu spiritualism and English folk tunes. Holst's music is well known for unconventional use of metre and haunting melodies. his early work was influenced by
Holst wrote almost 200 catalogued compositions, including operas, ballets, choral hymns, and songs
Holst became music master at St Paul's Girls' School in 1905 and director of music at Morley College in 1907, continuing in both posts until retirement.
He was the brother of Hollywood actor Ernest Cossart and father of the composer and conductor Imogen Holst, who wrote a biography of him in 1938.
He was originally named Gustavus Theodor von Holst, but he dropped the
"von" from his name in response to anti-German sentiment in Britain
during World War I, making it official by deed poll in 1918.
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It was on this day in 1970 that the first modern op-ed page appeared in The New York Times.
People sometimes think that "op-ed" stands for "opinion-editorial," but
it actually stands for "opposite the editorial page." Op-eds began in
the
1920s, but they were forums for newspapers' columnists, not for outside
writers. The modern op-ed was created by New York Times journalist John Bertram Oakes.
Oakes received a commentary letter thathe thought was excellent, but it was too long to print as a letter to
the editor, and it
couldn't be published in the op-ed page since it wasn't by a columnist.
So he got the idea for an op-ed page that would include outside
opinions. Oakes spent 10 years trying to convince publishers that is
was good idea. Finally the Times editors agreed, and published the first version, and
it's become the model for op-ed pages worldwide.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®
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Have a peaceful day, Ana!