THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”

— G.K. Chesterton

BIRTHDAYS:

1546 Tycho Brahe, Danish nobleman and astronomer whose meticulously calibrated naked-eye observations achieved unprecedented accuracy for the era, providing the empirical dataset that Johannes Kepler used to formulate the laws of planetary motion.

1789 Maria Szymanowska, a pioneering Polish pianist and composer who emerged as one of the first professional virtuoso performers of the early 19th century, renowned for her technical brilliance and innovative keyboard writing in the pre-romantic stile brillant. Etude no. 15 in C Major, and Nocturne “Le Murmure”, and Polonaise in F minor (First stage)

1824 Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, French painter best known for his large-scale mural decorations in public buildings throughout France and abroad.

1916 Shirley Jackson, an American author renowned for her contributions to horror, mystery, and psychological fiction, often exploring themes of social conformity, domestic unease, and latent violence within ordinary settings.

MISCELLANEOUS:

ATTENTION STAR GAZERS. December’s overlooked meteor shower peaks next week — will the Ursids surprise us?

CHECK IT OUT. 3-2-1

REMINDER:

In the future, before locking things down again (including free speech and the freedom to assemble), the authorities might want to reacquaint themselves with the following:

Nuremberg Code

Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza

Great Barrington declaration