January 9, 1924

Virginia Woolf buys a house in Bloomsbury.

I thought this was appropriate, since this evening I have plans to indulge, yet again, in one of my favorite movies: The Hours.



A beautiful and brilliant take on Woolf's, Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours blows my mind every time I watch it. A must see for book nerds.

So in honor of that film, read on about Virginia Woolf's joining the Bloomsbury Group. (Thank you http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/

On this day in 1924, Virginia Woolf and her husband buy a house at 52 Tavistock Square, in the Bloomsbury district of London near the British Museum. Woolf had been associated with the district since 1902, when she took a house in the area with her three siblings after their father's death. She had remained in the neighborhood, becoming a central character of the "Bloomsbury Group," a set of writers and thinkers including biographer Lytton Strachey and writer E.M. Forster.

Woolf, born in 1882, grew up surrounded by intellectuals. The Bloomsbury set embraced progressive intellectual ideas and sexual liberty: Many of the group, including Woolf herself, were bisexual or homosexual. Woolf became a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and also took odd jobs to support herself until she inherited a comfortable income from an aunt.

Virginia married writer and social reformer Leonard Woolf in 1912. The couple established the Hogarth Press in their dining room several years later. In addition to Virginia Woolf's later novels, the press also published T.S. Eliot and translations of Chekhov and Dostoevsky.

Woolf published her groundbreaking novel Mrs. Dalloway in 1925. Its stream-of-consciousness structure deeply influenced later writers. That same year, she fell in love with poet Vita Sackville-West, who was married to the bisexual diplomat and author Harold Nichols. The affair inspired Woolf's most whimsical work, Orlando. Woolf wrote several more novels as well as social and literary criticism. However, she suffered from depression and mental illness all her life. In 1941, fearful for her own sanity and afraid of the coming world war, she filled her pockets with rocks and drowned herself.

Catching the Big Fish, by Meghan

And boy, do I mean big fish. The Whale Shark is the largest living fish species in the world. The largest specimen ever caught was 41.5 feet long, though stories exist of Whale Sharks close to 60 feet long. That is a BIG fish!






Don't worry though, kids; these guys are filter feeders, so no need to fear for your limbs.

December 17, 1843...

On this day in 1843, Charles Dickens' classic story "A Christmas Carol" is published.

Dickens was born in 1812 and attended school in Portsmouth. His father, a clerk in the navy pay office, was thrown into debtors' prison in 1824, and 12-year-old Charles was sent to work in a factory. The miserable treatment of children and the institution of the debtors' jail became topics of several of Dickens' novels.

In his late teens, Dickens became a reporter and started publishing humorous short stories when he was 21. In 1836, a collection of his stories, Sketches by Boz, later known as The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, was published. The same year, he married Catherine Hogarth, with whom he would have nine children. The short sketches in his collection were originally commissioned as captions for humorous drawings by caricature artist Robert Seymour, but Dickens' whimsical stories about the kindly Samuel Pickwick and his fellow club members soon became popular in their own right. Only 400 copies were printed of the first installment, but by the 15th episode 40,000 copies were printed. When the stories were published in book form in 1837, Dickens quickly became the most popular author of the day.

The success of the Pickwick Papers was soon reproduced with Oliver Twist (1838) and Nicholas Nickleby (1839). In 1841, Dickens published two more novels, then spent five months in the United States, where he was welcomed as a literary hero. Dickens never lost momentum as a writer, churning out major novels every year or two, often in serial form. Among his most important works are David Copperfield(1850), Great Expectations (1861), and A Tale of Two Cities (1859).

Beginning in 1850, he published his own weekly circular of fiction, poetry, and essays called Household Words. In 1858, Dickens separated from his wife and began a long affair with a young actress. He gave frequent readings, which became immensely popular. He died in 1870 at the age of 58, with his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, still unfinished.


http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-christmas-carol-is-published

Freshwater Sharks, by Meghan

Though we like to think of sharks as ocean-dwellers, there are some sharks that can survive in freshwater, like the testosterone-fueled Bull Shark. Many experts consider Bull Sharks to be the most dangerous sharks in the world, and they are one of three shark species most likely to attack humans.




Yeah, and these little puppies can live in freshwater. They have been found up to 1,750 miles up the Mississippi River in the USA and 2,500 miles up the Amazon River to hang out in Peru. Wow.

S'darn cute!

I just stumbled upon this blog from a friend on Facebook:
This Animal Is Awesome

(Warning: For some reason, page 1 of the blog has nudity. So the link goes to page 2. Now you're just curious, I know. I just didn't want to be inappropriate.)

Here are some highlights for your viewing pleasure:








P.S. Check out their ARCHIVE!

Today in History, 1512...

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, one of Italian artist Michelangelo's finest works, is exhibited to the public for the first time.


Michelangelo Buonarroti, the greatest of the Italian Renaissance artists, was born in the small village of Caprese in 1475. The son of a government administrator, he grew up in Florence, a center of the early Renaissance movement, and became an artist's apprentice at age 13. Demonstrating obvious talent, he was taken under the wing of Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of the Florentine republic and a great patron of the arts. After demonstrating his mastery of sculpture in such works as the Pieta (1498) and David (1504), he was called to Rome in 1508 to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—the chief consecrated space in the Vatican.

Michelangelo's epic ceiling frescoes, which took several years to complete, are among his most memorable works. Central in a complex system of decoration featuring numerous figures are nine panels devoted to biblical world history. The most famous of these is The Creation of Adam, a painting in which the arms of God and Adam are stretching toward each other. In 1512, Michelangelo completed the work.

After 15 years as an architect in Florence, Michelangelo returned to Rome in 1534, where he would work and live for the rest of his life. That year saw his painting of the The Last Judgment on the wall above the altar in the Sistine Chapel for Pope Paul III. The massive painting depicts Christ's damnation of sinners and blessing of the virtuous and is regarded as a masterpiece of early Mannerism.

Michelangelo worked until his death in 1564 at the age of 88. In addition to his major artistic works, he produced numerous other sculptures, frescoes, architectural designs, and drawings, many of which are unfinished and some of which are lost. In his lifetime, he was celebrated as Europe's greatest living artist, and today he is held up as one of the greatest artists of all time, as exalted in the visual arts as William Shakespeare is in literature or Ludwig van Beethoven is in music.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history




For an extra awesome look at the Sistine Chapel, check out this blog post by Ms. Julia.

Sloth Fact #2, by Meghan

There are two main species of sloths, categorized by whether they have two or three claws. Two-toed sloths are a little bigger, but Three-toed sloths have two extra vertebrae that allow them to turn their heads almost all the way around! Awesome.