The James Logan Courier

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Melvin Jerome Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was a prolific American voice actor, performing on radio, in television commercials, and most famously, in hundreds of cartoon shorts for Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera during the Golden Age of American animation. He is often regarded as one of the most gifted and influential persons in his field, providing the definitive voices for iconic characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and Barney Rubble among hundreds of others. His talents earned him the nickname, "The Man of a Thousand Voices".

Listen to an episode of the Mel Blanc radio show, free from originaloldradio.com.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Frederick Schiller Faust, May 29, 1892 - May 12, 1944) was an American fiction author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns. Faust wrote mostly under pen names, and today he is primarily known by one, Max Brand. Others include George Owen Baxter, Martin Dexter, Evin Evans, David Manning, Peter Dawson, John Frederick, and Pete Morland.

Faust was born in Seattle and both his parents died soon after. He grew up in central California and later worked as a cowhand on one of the many ranches of the San Joaquin Valley. Faust attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he began to write frequently. He did not attain a degree, as he was deemed a troublemaker, and he began to travel extensively.

Read Harrigan by Max Brand, one of 13 of his books available free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (May 28, 1738 – March 26, 1814) proposed on October 10, 1789 the use of a mechanical device to carry out death penalties in France . While he did not invent the guillotine, his name became an eponym for it.

From 1756 until 1762 Guillotin got his formation as Master of Arts as a member of the Jesuit order. He became professor of literature at Irish College in Bordeaux, but subsequently decided to leave the Society of Jesus and to become a physician. He studied medicine at Reims and the University of Paris and graduated from the university in 1770.

Learn more about the history of the guillotine, free from The Guillotine Headquarters at metaphor.dk.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Isadora Duncan (May 27, 1877 – September 14, 1927) was an American dancer.

Born Dora Angela Duncan in San Francisco, California, she is considered by many to be the mother of Modern Dance. Although never very popular in the United States, she entertained throughout Europe.

Early life
Duncan was born in San Francisco, where she lived with her mother Dora, and her father, Joseph Duncan. Mr. Duncan had walked out on his family, giving the family a reason to convert from Roman Catholicism to strict atheism. Duncan attended school for the early years of her life, but dropped out because she found it to be constricting to her individuality. Her family was very poor, so to earn extra money, both she and her sister gave dance classes to local children. Their mother also taught piano lessons.

Read Isadora Duncan and 'The Dance',by B. John Zavrel, free from meaus.com.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (born 26 May 1689 in Thoresby Hall, died 21 August 1762), was an English aristocrat and writer, chiefly remembered today for her letters.

Life
She was the eldest daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, who succeeded his brother as 5th Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull when she was aged one and was later created Marquess of Dorchester and then Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull, and was baptized at Covent Garden. Her mother, who died while Mary was still a child, was a daughter of the 3rd Earl of Denbigh. Her father was proud of her beauty and wit, and when she was eight years old she is said to have been the toast of the Kit-Kat Club. He took small pains with the education of his children, but Lady Mary was encouraged in her self-imposed studies by Gilbert Burnet, the Bishop of Salisbury.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (May 25, 1803–January 18, 1873) was an English novelist, playwright, and politician. Lord Lytton was a florid, popular writer of his day, who coined such phrases as "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", and the infamous incipit "It was a dark and stormy night." Despite his popularity in his heyday, today his name is known as a byword for bad writing. San Jose State University’s annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing is named after him.

Read The Last Days of Pompeii by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton, one of 225 of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Sarah Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 - June 19, 1850) was a journalist, critic and women's rights activist.

The most important gender theorist of her time, Fuller was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (The Margaret Fuller House, in which she was born, is still standing today and is now occupied by an active community outreach program.) Her father, Timothy Fuller, a lawyer and prominent politician, gave her a vigorous classical education which shaped the bent of her mind but--according to Fuller's own testimony--also sensitized her to the personal expense of her society's masculinized values.

In 1836 she taught at the Temple School in Boston and from 1837 to 1839 taught in Providence, Rhode Island.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Dorothea Dandridge "Dolley" Payne Todd Madison (May 20, 1768 – July 12, 1849) was the wife of President James Madison, who served from 1809 until 1817. She also occasionally acted as what is now described as First Lady of the United States during the administration of Thomas Jefferson, fulfilling the ceremonial functions more usually associated with the President's wife, since Jefferson was a widower. Her name has been widely misspelled as "Dolly".

Early life
She was born in New Garden, a Quaker community located in the area now known as Guilford County, North Carolina, on May 20, 1768. Her father was John Payne, and her mother was Mary Coles. In 1783 John took his family back to Philadelphia to allow better educational opportunities for the children and to be more closely associated with their Quaker roots. Dolley spent her teenage years in Philadelphia, and attended Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Know more about Dolley Madison's business; read her letters, free from the University of Virginia.

Omar Khayyam, born: May 18, 1048 in Nishapur, Iran (Persia) – died: December 4, 1131), was a Persian poet, mathematician, philosopher and astronomer. He is best known for the collection of poetry, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

The architecture of his shrine is like a tent because his ancestors' occupation was tentmaking. Some of his poems have been written on the walls surrounding the shrine. His shrine is in a garden that Imamzadeh Mahroq Mosque is placed there as well, about 100 meters near his shrine.

Read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Omar Khayyám, free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Anna Brownell Jameson (May 17, 1794 - March 17, 1860), British writer, was born in Dublin.

Her father, Denis Brownell Murphy (d. 1842), was a miniature and enamel painter. He moved to England in 1798 with his family, and eventually settled at Hanwell, near London.

At sixteen years of age, Anna became governess in the family of Charles Paulet, 13th Marquess of Winchester. In 1821 she was engaged to Robert Jameson. The engagement was broken off, and Anna Murphy accompanied a young pupil to Italy, writing in a fictitious character a narrative of what she saw and did. She gave this diary to a bookseller on condition of receiving a guitar if he secured any profits. Colburn ultimately published it as The Diary of an Ennuyée (1826), which attracted much attention. Anna Murphy was governess to the children of Edward Littleton, later know as Baron Hatherton, from 1821 to 1825, when she married Robert Jameson.

Read The Diary of an Ennuyée by Anna Brownell Jameson, free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Betty Carter (May 16, 1929 – September 26, 1998) was an American jazz singer who was renowned for her improvisational technique and idiosyncratic vocal style. Carter expanded the role of the vocalist in jazz, to a full, improvising member of the band. Although her voice was not as admired by the public as such vocalists as Sarah Vaughan or Ella Fitzgerald, many consider her to have exercised mastery of the human voice previously unheard in jazz. Carmen McRae once claimed that "there's really only one jazz singer - only one: Betty Carter."

Watch Betty Carter perform "Cobbs Choice" with the great Lionel Hampton, free from youtube.com.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856–May 6, 1919) was an American author, actor, and independent filmmaker best known as the creator, along with illustrator W. W. Denslow, of one of the most popular books ever written in American children's literature, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, better known today as simply The Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a plethora of other works, and made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen.
Baum's childhood and early life

Frank was born in Chittenango, New York, into a devout Methodist family of German (father's side) and Scots-Irish (mother's side) origin, the seventh of nine children born to Cynthia Stanton and Benjamin Ward Baum, only five of whom survived into adulthood. He was named "Lyman" after his father's brother, but always disliked this name, and preferred to go by "Frank". His mother, Cynthia Stanton, was a direct descendant of Thomas Stanton, one of the four Founders of what is now Stonington, Connecticut.

Read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, one of 14 of his Oz books available free from literature.org.

Henry John Heinz [11 October 1844 - 14 May 1919] was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a boy, he sold grated horseradish and other vegetables from his family's garden door-to-door. He went on to found one of the most innovative and successful American international packaged food companies, H.J. Heinz Company. Heinz' revolutionary techniques of promoting his "57 Varieties" of processed foods lead to the rise of the "brand name."

Learn more about H.J.Heinz and his company by visiting its website.

From the website of Dr. Kate Maurer of the University of Minnesota - Duluth:

Sholom Aleichem (March 2, 1859 – May 13, 1916), the pseudonym of Sholom Yakov Rabinowitz, whose name is actually a conventional Yiddish greeting meaning "Peace be with you," was born in the Ukraine to a wealthy father who was a religious scholar. At age 12 Sholom Aleichem's family met with hard times and a reversal of fortune, shortly after which his mother died of cholera. He began his writing career in the early 1880s when Jews in western Russia were coming increasingly under attack and the hateful word "pogrom" (an oftentimes governmentally dictated persecution or even massacre) became more and common. As a result of the increasingly frequent pogroms and the restrictive laws associated with them, Jews in Western Europe became increasingly dislocated.

Read "Reading Sholem Aleichem from Left to Right" by Prof. Jeffrey Shandler, free from the Sholem Aleichem Network.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

John Dryden, poet, dramatist, critic, and translator; b. 9 August, 1631, at Oldwinkle All Saints, Northamptonshire, England; d. at London, 30 April, 1700. He was the son of Erasmus Dryden (or Driden) and Mary Pickering, daughter of the Rev. Henry Pickering. Erasmus Dryden was the son of Sir Erasmus Dryden, and was a justice of the peace under Oliver Cromwell.

On both sides Dryden's family were of the Parliamentary party.

Read All for Love by John Dryden, one of 14 of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

Adapted from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica:

JAMES BRYCE (May 10, 1838 - January 22, 1922), British jurist, historian and politician, son of James Bryce of Glasgow, who had a school in Belfast for many years, was born at Belfast, Ireland, on the 10th of May 1838. After going through the high school and university courses at Glasgow, he went to Trinity College, Oxford, and in 1862 was elected a fellow of Oriel.

He practised law in London for a few years, but he was soon called back to Oxford as professor of civil law (1870-1893). His reputation as a historian had been made as early as 1864 by his Holy Roman Empire. He was an ardent Liberal in politics, and in 1880 he was elected to parliament for the Tower Hamlets division of London; in 1885 he was returned for South Aberdeen, where he was reelected on succeeding occasions. His intellectual distinction and political industry made him a valuable member of the Liberal party.

Read William Ewart Gladstone by Viscount James Bryce Bryce, one of two of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia (1910):

Antoine Lavoisier — Chemist, philosopher, economist; born in Paris, 26 August, 1743; guillotined 8 May, 1794. He was the son of Jean-Antoine Lavoisier, a lawyer of distinction, and Emilie Punctis, who belonged to a rich and influential family, and who died when Antoine-Laurent was five years old. His early years were most carefully guarded by his aunt, Mlle Constance Punctis, to whom he was devotedly attached; and through her assistance he was secured the advantage of agood education. He attended the College Mazarin, which was noted for its faculty of science, and here he studied mathematics and astronomy under Abbé de la Caille, who had built an observatory at the college after having won renown by measuring an arc of the meridian at the Cape of Good Hope, by determining the length of the second's pendulum, and by his catalogue of the stars.

Read Antoine Lavoisier's Memoir on the Nature of the Principle which Combines with Metals during their Calcination and which Increases their Weight, free from LeMoyne College.

From biography.com:
Wife and political partner of President Juan Peron of Argentina. Born May 7, 1919, the youngest of five children, in the little village of Los Toldos in Buenos Aires province, Argentiina.Following the death of her father, the family moved to the larger nearby town of Junin, where her mother ran a boarding house. At the age of 16, Evita, as she was often affectionately called, left school and went to Buenos Aires with the dream of becoming an actress. Lacking any theatrical training, she obtained a few bit parts in motion pictures and on the radio, until she was finally employed on a regular basis with one of the larger radio stations in Buenos Aires.

Learn more about Eva Peron, free from the James Logan High School website.

Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926) was an Italian actor. He was born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi in Castellaneta, Italy, to a middle-class family.

As a boy in Castellaneta, Italy, Rodolpho couldn't have anticipated the fame he would gain in America as Rudolph Valentino. The bi-lingual and intelligent Rodolpho enjoyed a comfortable, middle-class, and somewhat boring childhood punctuated with episodes of mischief. Rudy completed his studies at a nearby agricultural college, and with his mother's reluctant blessing set sail for America in 1913.

Watch Blood and Sand, a 61-minute, black and white, silent film from 1922 starring Rudolph Valentino as a bullfighter, free from LikeTelevision.com.

From the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 Edition:
Soren Aaby Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Danish philosopher, the seventh child of a Jutland hosier, was born in Copenhagen on the 5th of May 1813.

As a boy he was delicate, precocious and morbid in temperament. He studied theology at the university of Copenhagen, where he graduated in 1840 with a treatise On Irony. For two years he travelled in Germany, and in 1842 settled finally in Copenhagen, where he died on the 11th of November 1855.


Read Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing by Sören Kierkegaard, free from religion-online.org.

Horace Mann, ardent abolitionist, social reformer, and visionary educator, founding President of Antioch College (1853-59), was born in Franklin, Massachusetts, on May 4, 1796; he died in Yellow Springs, Ohio, on August 2, 1859.

His father was a farmer without enough money to pay for his son's education, and Horace was forced to obtain an education using his own resources. He earned his school-books when a child by braiding straw, and his frugal lifestyle taught him habits of self-reliance and independence.

Read The Educational Theory of Horace Mann, by Robert Badolato, free from newfoundations.com.

ALFRED AUSTIN (1835-1913), English poet-laureate, was born at Headingley, near Leeds, on the 30th of May 1835. His father, Joseph Austin, was a merchant of the city of Leeds; his mother, a sister of Member of Parliment Joseph Locke. Alfred Austin was educated at Stonyhurst, Oscott, and London University, where he graduated in 1853.

He practiced law for a short time; but, in 1861, after two comparatively false starts in poetry and fiction, he made his first noteworthy appearance as a writer with a satire called The Season, which contained incisive lines, and was marked by some promise both in wit and observation.

Read six of Alfred Austin's sonnets, free from sonnets.org.

WILLIAM CAMDEN (1551-1623), English antiquary and historian, was born in London on the 2nd of May 1551. His father, Sampson Camden, a native of Lichfield, had settled in London, and, as a painter, had become a member of the company of painter-stainers. His mother, Elizabeth, belonged to the old Cumberland family of Curwen.

Read William Camden's Britannia, in English and Latin, free from the Philological Museum.

From the U.S. Korean War Commemoration:

General Mark Wayne Clark served as commander of United Nations (U.N). Forces in Korea from May 12, 1952, to October 7, 1953, and signed the Military Armistice Agreement on behalf of the U.N. Command with the North Korean Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers at Munsan-ni, Korea, July 27, 1953.

The son of a career infantry officer, Clark was born in Madison Barracks, New York, and spent much of his youth in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, near Fort Sheridan. With the assistance of his aunt, Zettie Marshall (the mother of General George C. Marshall), Clark secured, at age 17, an early appointment to the U.S. Military Academy. A tall, lean, and often sickly youth, Clark failed to distinguish himself at West Point as either an athlete or scholar, graduating 110th in a class of 139 in 1917. Following graduation, he was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the infantry. Severe health problems, which troubled him throughout his youth, caused him to be hospitalized and set him behind his classmates. Nevertheless, he was promoted to captain in August 1917, and saw action with the 11th Infantry in France, where he was wounded in action and later decorated for bravery.

Read a 1975 interview with General Mark Clark, by Richard Gilbert, and free from threemonkeysonline.com