December 11 Meme

December 11: On This Day

What Happened: 

Nothing literary that I could find, so here are some that caught my eye: 

1620: landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock(this one for my US readers)

1901: Marconi sends first transatlantic radio signal - wow! When you think of where that led - just wow!

1936: Edward VIII announces on the radio that he's abdicating to marry Wallis Simpson and history takes a turn for the better(he was known for sympathising with the Nazis)

1997: The Kyoto Protocol - in which 150 nations get together to do the right thing. And all these years later we're STILL facing climate change because short-sighted politicians would  rather look after the economy and jobs - their own jobs - than look after the planet their descendants will inherit. 

Happy Birthday To:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Author of a lot of books that got him into trouble in the Soviet Union, including The Gulag Archipelago and - the one that got him exiled - One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich. (I once saw a Year 7 boy reading this and assuring me he loved it. Pity this was in my pre-TL days. The boy had the unforgettable name of Vincent Price)

Laini Taylor, YA novelist, author of Daughter Of Smoke And Bone, which I still haven't read.

Aussie writer and illustrator Roland Harvey, whose cartoon style has become very familiar to school librarians and kids over the years. 

Today also seems to be Upper Volta's Independence Day.