Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Spotlight
Irish playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw was born on this date in 1856. Known for his caustic wit, Shaw is the only person to have won both a Nobel Prize (for literature in 1925) and an Oscar (for Best Screenplay, Pygmalion, in 1938). A democratic socialist, he was a leader of the Fabian Society. Some of his other famous plays were Arms and the Man (1898), Major Barbara (1905), and Saint Joan (1923).

Quote
"The only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew every time he sees me, while all the rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them." – G.B. Shaw

Word of the day
Shavian alphabet: phonetic alphabet with a 1:1 ratio of symbols to sounds; it was posthumously named for G.B. Shaw, who called for the creation of such an alphabet in his will. (© )

Today's News

• pensions: if you're a young employee, you may be out of luck (story)
• genetics: why kitty doesn't like sweets (story)
• Japan: plans to outpace Blue Gene, the world's fastest supercomputer, by building a model that can operate at 10 petaflops (story)

Today's History

• Liberia: colony of freed US slaves declared its independence and became the first republic in Africa (1847)
• Esperanto: world's most popular artificial language was introduced by Dr. Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, aka Dr. Esperanto (Hopeful) (1887)
• the FBI: was created as a group of investigators reporting to Chief Examiner Stanley Finch (1908)

Today's Birthdays

• Carl Jung: founder of analytical psychology (1875-1961)
• Mick Jagger: the Rolling Stones singer/songwriter (62)
• actors: Kevin Spacey (46), Sandra Bullock (41), Kate Beckinsale (32)