The Benjamin Franklin Parkway is the spine of Philadelphia's Museum District.  Some of the city's most famous sights are here:  Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul; Swann Memorial Fountain; Parkway Central Library, the Family Court Building, the Franklin Institute, Moore College of Art and Design, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Rodin Museum, Eakins Oval, the Barnes Foundation and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  From its northern end, the Parkway provides access to Fairmount Park through Kelly Drive (formerly East River Drive), Martin Luther King Drive (formerly West River Drive), the Schuylkill River Trail, and the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76).  The Parkway also is an outdoor sculpture garden.  Works include:  The Thinker by Auguste Rodin; Gates of Hell also by Rodin; LOVE by Robert Indiana; The Ideal Scout by Robert Tait McKenzie; Three-Way Piece by Henry Moore; the three River figures in the Swann Memorial Fountain by Alexander Stirling Calder; Shakespeare Memorial also by Calder; The Monument to Six Million Jewish Martyrs by Nathan Rapoport at the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza; Joseph Leidy by Samuel Murray; Aero Memorial by Paul Manship; General Galusha Pennypacker by Charles Grafly and Albert Laessle; Jesus Breaking Bread by Walter Erlebacher, All Wars Colored Soldiers and Sailors Memorial by J. Otto Schweizer; Thaddeus Kosciuszko by Robert Aitken; Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Memorial by Hermon Atkins MacNeil; Kopernik by Dudley Vaill Talcott; Joan of Arc by Emmanuel Fremiet; Washington Monument by Rudolf Siemering; and the Rocky statue by A. Thomas Schomberg.  See also: National Register of Historic Places listings in Center City, Philadelphia  In a city famous for its urban planning, the Parkway represents one of the earliest examples of urban renewal in the United States.  The road was constructed to ease heavy industrial congestion in Center City and to restore Philadelphia's natural and artistic beauty, as part of the City Beautiful movement.  The vision for a grand parkway came from retail pioneer John Wanamaker.  Preliminary proposals for the Parkway had been produced and added to the City Plan by 1906, but the first comprehensive plan for the Parkway was commissioned in 1907 by the Fairmount Park Art Association (now the Association for Public Art).  The Association commissioned architects Horace Trumbauer, Clarence Zantzinger, and Paul Philippe Cret, who created a detailed parkway design that was formally added to the City Plan in 1909.  Construction on the Parkway did not begin until 1917, when French landscape architect Jacques Gréber submitted a revised plan to the Commissioners of Fairmount Park.  Gréber designed the Parkway in 1917 to emulate the Champs-Élysées in Paris, France.  The route was determined by an axis drawn from City Hall Tower to a fixed point on the hill that William Penn called "Fairmount", now the site of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  The Parkway contains flags of countries from around the world.  The traffic rotary on the western end of the Parkway, at the foot of the Art Museum's Rocky Steps, is named Eakins Oval after Philadelphia painter Thomas Eakins.  The traffic lanes around Eakins Oval originally formed a regular oval; this pattern was modified in the early 1960s to its present elongated circular shape, with the truncated lanes serving as staging areas for various events.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin_Parkway#  See also https://www.planning.org/greatplaces/streets/2013/benjaminfranklin.htm   

Behemoth noun  late 14c., huge biblical beast (Job xl.15), from Latin behemoth, from Hebrew b'hemoth, usually taken as plural of intensity of b'hemah "beast."  But the Hebrew word is perhaps a folk etymology of Egyptian pehemau, literally "water-ox," the name for the hippopotamus.  Used in modern English for any huge beast.  https://www.etymonline.com/word/behemoth   

Behemoth: Or the Game of God is a 2020 Mosotho action–mystery short film directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese and co-produced by Hannah Stockmann. The film stars Tseko Monaheng as 'Preacher' in the lead role.  The film received critical reviews from critics and screened at several international film festivals.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behemoth:_Or_the_Game_of_God   

A fire sale is the sale of goods at extremely discounted prices.  The term originated in reference to the sale of goods at a heavy discount due to fire damage.  It may or may not be defined as a closeout, the final sale of goods to zero inventory.  They are said to occur in the financial markets when bidders who value assets highly are prevented from bidding on them, depressing the average selling price below what it otherwise would be.  This lowering of the price can cause even further issues because it may be inaccurately perceived as signalling negative information.  The term is adapted from reference to the sale of fire-damaged goods at reduced prices.  In Proceedings of the Fitchburg [Mass.] Historical Society and Papers Relating to the History of the Town Read by Some of the Members the following entry is found:  In December, 1856, the account of an extensive fire in the American House mentions the following occupants:  E. B. Gee, clothing; T. B. Choate, drugs; J. C. Tenney, boots and shoes; Maraton Upton, dry goods; and M. W. Hayward, groceries.  Maraton Upton removed his stock to No. 9 Rollstone block, and advertised "Extraordinary fire sale; customers are invited to call and examine goods which are still warm."  In professional sports, a fire sale occurs when a team trades many of its veteran players, especially expensive star players, to other teams for less expensive and usually younger players.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_sale   

Astor Library and Lenox Library merge to form the New York Public Library (May 24, 1895) • Thomas Mann begins writing Dr. Faustus (May 23, 1943) • Sarah Josepha Hale’s Poems for Our Children, which includes the origins of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” is published (May 24, 1830) • Edith Wharton’s first published story, “Mrs. Manstey’s View” (which has serious quarantine vibes) is accepted by Scribner’s magazine (May 26, 1891) • F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is published in Collier’s (May 27, 1922) • The first draft of Of Mice and Men is eaten by John Steinbeck’s dog (May 27, 1936)  Literary Hub   

The Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted on May 22, 1992.   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2673  May 22, 2023