A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.  Named after Italian con artist Charles Ponzi, this type of scheme misleads investors by either falsely suggesting that profits are derived from legitimate business activities (whereas the business activities are non-existent), or by exaggerating the extent and profitability of the legitimate business activities, leveraging new investments to fabricate or supplement these profits.  A Ponzi scheme can maintain the illusion of a sustainable business as long as investors continue to contribute new funds, and as long as most of the investors do not demand full repayment or lose faith in the non-existent assets they are purported to own.  Some of the first recorded incidents to meet the modern definition of the Ponzi scheme were carried out from 1869 to 1872 by Adele Spitzeder in Germany and by Sarah Howe in the United States in the 1880s through the "Ladies' Deposit".  Howe offered a solely female clientele an 8% monthly interest rate and then stole the money that the women had invested. She was eventually discovered and served three years in prison.  The Ponzi scheme was also previously described in novels; Charles Dickens's 1844 novel Martin Chuzzlewit and his 1857 novel Little Dorrit both feature such a scheme.   In the 1920s, Charles Ponzi carried out this scheme and became well known throughout the United States because of the huge amount of money that he took in.  His original scheme was purportedly based on the legitimate arbitrage of international reply coupons for postage stamps, but it proved infeasible, and he soon began diverting new investors' money to make payments to earlier investors and to himself.  Unlike earlier similar schemes, Ponzi's gained considerable press coverage both within the United States and internationally both while it was being perpetrated and after it collapsed--this notoriety eventually led to the type of scheme being named after him.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme    

The Furry Dance is a celebration of the passing of winter and the arrival of spring, and one of the oldest British customs still practised today.  Traditionally held on 8 May, it is held in Helston, Cornwall, where dancers wear lily of the valley, the town's symbolic flower.  The name probably derives from Cornish fer meaning "fair, feast".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_Dance    

Lemony Snicket is the pen name of American author Daniel Handler (born 1970) and a fictional character of his creation.  Handler has published various children's books under the name, including A Series of Unfortunate Events, which has sold over 60 million copies and spawned a 2004 film and Netflix TV series from 2017 to 2019 of the same name.  Lemony Snicket also serves as the in-universe author who investigates and re-tells the story of the Baudelaire orphans in A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Snicket is also the subject of a fictional autobiography titled Lemony Snicket:  The Unauthorized Autobiography.  Further telling of Snicket's adventures can be found in the four-part children's series All the Wrong Questions, as well as a pamphlet titled 13 Shocking Secrets You'll Wish You Never Knew About Lemony Snicket (released in promotion of The End).  Other works by Snicket include The Baby in the Manger, The Composer Is Dead, Horseradish:  Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid, The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming, The Lump of Coal, and 13 Words.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemony_Snicket   Villanelle    A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas.  These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain.  See “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,”  and Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “The House on the Hill.”  Browse more villanelles at  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/villanelle    

Lesley University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  It was founded in 1909 to educate teachers.  Originally founded as a women's college, male students were admitted beginning in 2005.  The Lesley School (also known as Lesley Normal School) was founded by Edith Lesley in 1909 at her home at 29 Everett Street, Cambridge.  The school began as a private women's institution that trained kindergarten teachers.  It espoused the work of Friedrich Froebel, who invented the concept of kindergarten as a complement to the care given to children by their mothers.  Teacher and writer Elizabeth Peabody opened Boston's first Froebel-inspired kindergarten in 1860; more kindergartens followed.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesley_University    

November 4, 2025