The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing.
Rhetoric
Fact of the Day
Robert Plot, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, devised a cunning plan to enable James II to permanently rid the country of parliaments: he advised James to found a hermetic college for the alchemical creation of gold, thus making the need for parliamentary subsidies redundant.
Quote of the Day
"The enemy should have to carve his way over heaps of corpses.
"
~ General von Below's orders to the German army on the Somme, 1916
On This Day
43 BCE The assassination of Cicero, requested by Marc Antony. When his head was delivered to Anthony, his wife, Fulvia, spat on it and jabbed hairpins into his tongue.
1732 The Theatre Royal, now known as the Covent Garden Opera House, opened with a performance of the Beggar's Opera.
1787 Delaware became the first state of the modern United States.
1817 Rear-Admiral William Bligh died. He had been captain of HMS Bounty during the mutiny.
1941 The Japanese launched a surprise attack on the American naval base a Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, killing 2,403.
1982 Charles Brooks Jr became the first person to be executed by lethal injection, with a huge dose of 'truth serum'
