Thursday: Hili dialogue

April 14, 2016 • 6:30 am

It’s April 14 in the U.S., and on this day in 1828, Noah Webster copyrighted the first edition of his famous dictionary. On this day in 1865, Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater; he died the next morning. In 1881, the famous “Four Dead in Five Seconds” Gunfight took place in El Paso Texas.  In 1927, the first Volvo car was offered for sale in Sweden, and, in 1986, a terrible hailstorm, with 1 kilogram hailstones, killed 92 people in Bangladesh.  Finally, it was on April 14, 2014, that 276 Nigerian schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram; as far as I know, most of them are still missing. (UPDATE: Malgorzata sent this link, which includes a video made by Boko Haram. It shows that some of the girls are still alive, but want to become suicide bombers to escape their horrible lives of being continuously-raped sex slaves.)

Notables born on this day include Christiaan Huygens (1629), Loretta Lynn (1932), Julie Christie (1940), Francis Collins (1950), and David Buss (1953; wish him a happy birthday if you’re at UT Austin). Those who died on April 14 include John Singer Sargent (1925), Rachel Carson (1964), Simon de Beauvoir (1986), Burl Ives (1995), and Percy Sledge (2015; I believe he topped our poll for The Best Soul Song).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s up in the trees again:

A: What are you looking at?
Hili: I have a feeling that in another week cherry trees will flower.
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In Polish:
Ja: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Hili: Mam wrażenie, że jeszcze tydzień i wiśnie zakwitną.
As lagniappe, we have a picture of reader Clive Adam’s cat Joey, a female. Isn’t she gorgeous? Enlarge to see the freckled nose.
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Reader Gregory reports that this photo and caption appeared on Hemant Mehta’s Twi**er feed:
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Finally, enjoy the latest Duplex cartoon by Glenn McCoy and Gary McCoy, which shows that mockery of The Perpetually Offended is going mainstream:
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8 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. I’ll add one name to your lists of today’s birthdays, since he was (like Jerry) a graduate of William & Mary. James Branch Cabell, a writer from Virginia, was born on this day in 1879. He received his BA from W&M in 1898, and even taught there for a short time. If anyone is interested in learning more about Cabell and his work, clicking on my name will take you to my JBC website, The Silver Stallion, which my writing partner and I are developing with the approval and assistance of the James Branch Cabell Library at Virginia Commonwealth University.

  2. CNN posted a proof of life video of some of the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram yesterday.

  3. Christiaan Huygens was quite a fine fellow. The notions of empiricism and materialism were, in his time, subjects of some debate(as they are today). I find this heartwarming:

    “Newton’s influence on John Locke was mediated by Huygens, who assured Locke that Newton’s mathematics was sound, leading to Locke’s acceptance of a “corpuscular-mechanical” physics.” (Wikipedia)

    Huygens worked with many renowned scientists of his day. I wonder how all the scientists of the day communicated across their many native languages? Did they all write and speak to each other in Latin, or was there another lingua Franca?

    1. I’m not positive what the lingua franca at that time was, but I think it was French. It was Latin before that, and there was some overlap, so they may have communicated in that too.

  4. One of the threats to the civilized world is that too many, have had it good for so long, that it has become inconceivable that there are savages wanting to kill us. My fear is that they won’t wake up until there is a banging at their door.

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