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The tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte in the central crypt of the Eglise du Dome Church at the Hotel des Invalides, Paris.
Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz, self-taught scholar and poet, passed away 318 years ago.
She was born in San Miguel Nepantla, near Mexico City. She was the illegitimate child of a Spanish Captain, Pedro Manuel de Asbaje, and a Criollo woman, Isabel Ramírez. Her father, according to all accounts, was absent from her life. She was baptized 2 December 1651 and described on the baptismal rolls as “a daughter of the Church”. She was raised in Amecameca, where her maternal grandfather owned a hacienda… (more)
“Women desire six things: they want their husbands to be brave, wise, rich, generous, obedient to wife, and lively in bed.”
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer telled the Canterbury Tales for the first time 616 years ago at the court of Richard II.
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly written in verse although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return… (more)
Dowload the Canterbury Tales here: http://goo.gl/1muxc.
“Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.”
Francisco de Goya
“Proclaim forgiveness and reconciliation, which are the only way to achieve stable harmony.”
Joseph Ratzinger
Francisco de Goya passed away 185 years ago.
He was a spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the old masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era. The subversive imaginative element in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, provided a model for the work of later generations of artists, notably Manet, Picasso and Francis Bacon… (more)
Check out his gallery here: http://goo.gl/k7dWn.
Joseph Ratzinger, one of the most powerful minds alive, celebrates today his 86th birthday.
He was born on 16 April 1927, at Schulstraße 11, at 8:30 in the morning in his parents’ home in Marktl, Bavaria, Germany. He was baptised the same day. He was the third and youngest child of Joseph Ratzinger, Sr., a police officer, and Maria Ratzinger. His mother’s family was originally from South Tyrol (now in Italy). His brother, Georg Ratzinger, a priest and former director of the Regensburger Domspatzen choir, is still alive. His sister, Maria Ratzinger, who never married, managed Cardinal Ratzinger’s household until her death in 1991. Their grand-uncle was the German politician Georg Ratzinger… (more)
“People of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived, was born 561 years ago.
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the renaissance man, a man of “unquenchable curiosity” and “feverishly inventive imagination”… (more)
“Only the artist, not the fool, discovers that which nature hides.”
Filippo Brunelleschi
