THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”

— John Stuart Mill

BIRTHDAYS:

1593 Jacob Jordaens, Flemish baroque artist/painter (leading after Rubens and van Dyck).

1764 Johann Gottfried Schadow, German sculptor (noted for the Brandenburg Gate chariot).

1799 Honoré de Balzac, French novelist and playwright whose monumental cycle of works, La Comédie humaine, comprising over ninety interrelated novels and short stories, offers a comprehensive portrayal of French society following the Napoleonic era.

1806 John Stuart Mill, English philosopher, political economist, and utilitarian.

1851 Emile Berliner, German-American inventor (flat phonograph record; founded Deutsche Grammophon).

1882 Sigrid Undset, Norwegian writer/novelist (Kristin Lavransdatter; Nobel Prize in Literature 1928).

1904 Margery Allingham, English detective writer/novelist (one of the “Queens of Crime”).

MISCELLANEOUS:

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