Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri (born July 11, 1967) is a British-American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English and, more recently, in Italian.   Her debut collection of short-stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name.  The Namesake was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and was made into a major motion picture.  Unaccustomed Earth (2008) won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, while her second novel, The Lowland (2013) was a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhumpa_Lahiri

Milk Duds are a brand of candies made with chocolate, created in 1928 by Hoffman and Company of Chicago and now produced and marketed by The Hershey Company, under license from owners of the Highlander Partners, a Dallas-based global private equity firm.  The candy, sold in a golden-yellow theatre-style box, is an irregularly shaped caramel disk with a confectionery chocolate coating of cocoa and vegetable oil.  At its original naming, according to Hershey, "milk" referred to the product's initial milk ingredient, and "dud" referred to failed attempts to create a spherical shape.  In 1928, Hoffman and Company of Chicago tried to manufacture a spherical, chocolate-covered caramel candy.  Because they were unsuccessful in achieving the spherical shape, the candies were called "duds".  This inspired the candy's name, "Milk Duds".  In the same year, Holloway took over Hoffman and Company and the production of Milk Duds.  In 1960 Holloway sold Hoffman and Co. to Beatrice Foods.   In 1986, Leaf purchased the Milk Duds business.  In 1992, production of Milk Duds candy was moved to Leaf Candy Company's Robinson, Illinois, plant.   In 1996, Leaf's North American confectionery operation was acquired by Hershey Foods Corporation of Hershey, Pennsylvania.   In 2018, Huhtamäki Oyj, a Finland-based food and beverage packaging company, sold ownership of Milk Duds to Highlander Partners, who licenses the candy to Hershey.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_Duds#    

In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Apollo is one of the Olympian deities.  His numerous functions include healing, prophecy, music, poetry, and archery.  He is the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt.  He is considered to be the most beautiful god and is represented as the ideal of the kouros (ephebe, or a beardless, athletic youth).  In the 5th century BC, his worship was imported to Rome.  As the patron deity of Delphi (Apollo Pythios), Apollo is an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle and the deity of ritual purification.  His oracles were often consulted for guidance in various matters.  He was in general seen as the god who affords help and wards off evil, and is referred to as Alexicacus, the "averter of evil".  Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius.  Apollo delivered people from epidemics, yet he is also a god who could bring ill health and deadly plague with his arrows.  The invention of archery itself is credited to Apollo and his sister Artemis.  Apollo is usually described as carrying a silver or golden bow and a quiver of arrows.  As the god of mousike, Apollo presides over all music, songs, dance, and poetry.  He is the inventor of string-music and the frequent companion of the Muses, functioning as their chorus leader in celebrations.  The lyre is a common attribute of Apollo.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo   

Jelly beans are small bean-shaped sugar candies with soft candy shells and thick gel interiors (see gelatin and jelly).  The confection is primarily made of sugar and sold in a wide variety of colors.  It has been claimed that jelly beans were first sold in 1861, when Boston confectioner William Schrafft urged people to buy them as gifts for soldiers in the American Civil War.   A more definite reference appears in food testing records of the United States Department of Agriculture published in 1887.   Most historians suggest that jelly beans were first associated with celebrations of Easter in the United States sometime during the 1930s due to their egg-like shape.   The basic ingredients of jelly beans include sugar, tapioca, corn syrup, and pectin or starch.  Relatively minor amounts of the emulsifying agent lecithin, anti-foaming agents, an edible wax such as carnauba wax or beeswax, salt, and confectioner's glaze are also included.   The ingredients that give each bean its character are also relatively small in proportion and may vary depending on the flavor.  In United States slang during the 1910s and early 1920s, a "jellybean" or "jelly-bean" was a young man who dressed stylishly but had little else to recommend him, similar to the older terms dandy and fop.  F. Scott Fitzgerald published a story, The Jelly-Bean, about such a character in 1920. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelly_bean    

April 24, 2026

 

The Little Leather Library Collection consists of 101 books, 3-1/4” x 4,” published by the Little Leather Library Corporation of New York.  The miniature books are bound in imitation leather and characteristic of the Redcroft edition published between 1920-1924.  The Little Leather Library Corporation of New York was the first company to mass-market inexpensive books in the United States.  The corporation, founded in 1916 by Albert Boni, Harry Scherman and Maxwell Sackheim, made available a wide variety of classics by authors including Rudyard Kipling, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Morris, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry James, Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde and William Butler Yeats in miniature editions.  Only the first two editions were bound in real leather.  When first published, the little books were sold at the Woolworth’s chain.  By the early 1920s, the books were advertised in popular magazines, selling in National Geographic from 1922 to 1924. Sometimes a miniature classic might appear in a cereal box as a promotion.  Robert K. Hass, Inc., Publishers took control of the Little Leather Library Corporation in 1924.  Boni later established Modern Library Publishing Company, of which Random House Publishers would become a subsidiary company. Scherman and Sackheim as well as Hass were later involved in the establishment of the Book of the Month Club.  https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c86d604k/    

Jurassic Park, later referred to as Jurassic World, is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton, centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs.  It began in 1990 when Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment bought the rights to Crichton's novel Jurassic Park before it was published.  The book was successful, as was Steven Spielberg's 1993 film adaptation.  The film received a theatrical 3D re-release in 2013, and was selected in 2018 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".  Crichton's 1995 sequel novel, The Lost World, was followed by a 1997 film adaptation, also directed by Spielberg.  Crichton did not write any further sequels in the series, although Spielberg would return as executive producer for each subsequent film, starting with Jurassic Park III (2001).  In 2015, a second trilogy of films began with the fourth film in the series, Jurassic World.  The film was financially successful, and was followed by Jurassic World:  Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Jurassic World Dominion (2022).  The Jurassic World films were co-written by Colin Trevorrow, who also directed the first and third installments in the trilogy.  Jurassic World Rebirth, a new film set after the preceding trilogy, was theatrically released on July 2, 2025, without Trevorrow's involvement.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_(franchise)   

John Michael Crichton (1942–2008) was an American author, screenwriter and filmmaker.  His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films.  His literary works heavily feature technology and are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction genres.  Crichton's novels often explore human technological advancement and attempted dominance over nature, both with frequently catastrophic results; many of his works are cautionary tales, especially regarding themes of biotechnology.  Several of his stories center on themes of genetic modification, hybridization, paleontology and/or zoology.  Many feature medical or scientific underpinnings, reflective of his own medical background.  Crichton received an MD from Harvard Medical School in 1969 but did not practice medicine, choosing to focus on his writing instead.  Initially writing under a pseudonym, he eventually published 25 novels in his lifetime, including:  The Andromeda Strain (1969), The Terminal Man (1972), The Great Train Robbery (1975), Congo (1980), Sphere (1987), Jurassic Park (1990), Rising Sun (1992), Disclosure (1994), The Lost World (1995), Airframe (1996), Timeline (1999), Prey (2002), State of Fear (2004), and Next (2006).  Four more novels, in various states of completion, were published after his death in 2008.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton   Surname is pronounced "cry-ton”.  https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/crichton-michael-1942-2008    

Johann Zinn and the Cinderella Flower: From Eyesore to Beloved Zinnia 
April 6 is the anniversary of the death of Johann Zinn, who died young at the age of 32.  Johann accomplished much in his short life, and he focused on two seemingly disconnected areas of science:  human anatomy and botany.  From an anatomy standpoint, Johann focused on the eye.  He wrote an eye anatomy book and became the first person to describe the Iris.  Today, several parts of the eye are named in Johann’s honor, including the Zinn zonule, the Zinn membrane, and the Zinn artery.  As a young man, Johann was appointed the University Botanic Garden director in Göttingen (pronounced "Gert-ing-en").  He initially thought the University wanted him to teach anatomy, but that job was filled, so he took the botany job instead.   One day, Johann received an envelope of seeds from the German Ambassador to Mexico.  After growing the plants, Johann wrote about them, drew the blossoms, and shared the seed with other botanists throughout Europe.  Like most botanists in the 1700s, Johann corresponded with Linnaeus.  Johann’s reputation as a bright, young garden director--and the fact that he tragically died young from tuberculosis--spurred Linnaeus to name the flower Zinnia in his honor.  https://thedailygardener.org/ota20210406/    

April 20, 2026

 

Felix Arndt (1889–1918) was an American pianist and composer of popular music.  His mother was the Countess Fevrier, who was related to Napoleon III. His father, Hugo Arndt, was Swiss-born.  Educated in New York (his music teachers included Carl Lachmund), Arndt composed songs for the famous vaudeville team of Jack Norworth and Nora Bayes, and recorded over 3000 piano rolls for Duo-Art and QRS Records.  Arndt is interred at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Tarrytown, NY.   Arndt is best remembered for his 1915 composition "Nola," written as an engagement gift to his fiancée (and later wife), Nola Locke.   It is sometimes considered to be the first example of the novelty piano or "novelty ragtime" genre, published by Sam Fox Publishing Company.  It was the signature theme of the Vincent Lopez orchestra, and a top ten hit for Les Paul in 1950.  A vocal recording by Billy Williams, featuring lyrics by Sunny Skylar, became a minor hit in 1959.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Arndt 

Frances Taft Grimes (1869-1963) was an American sculptor, best remembered for her bas-relief portraits and busts.  Grimes was born in Braceville Township, Ohio, the daughter of two physicians, and grew up in Decatur, Illinois.  After attending local schools, she operated a sculpture studio in Decatur for about two years, before moving to Brooklyn, New York City to study at the Pratt Institute.  Following graduation from Pratt, she worked from 1894 to 1900 as the assistant to her former teacher, sculptor Herbert Adams, who called her "the best marble-cutter in America".   During the summers, she joined Adams and his wife, Adeline, at the Cornish, New Hampshire art colony.  It was there that she met sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens, who persuaded her to join him as his full-time studio assistant.  Grimes worked with the terminally-ill Saint Gaudens from 1900 to his death in 1907.  She stayed on at Saint Gauden's studio to finish several of his commissions, including the Phillips Brooks Memorial at Trinity Church in Boston, Massachusetts (dedicated 1910);  and eight larger-than-life caryatids for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, which she executed from his sketch models.  She recorded her experiences at Cornish in her unpublished "Reminiscences" (Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library).  Following six months in France, Italy and Greece, she moved to New York City in 1908, taking a studio on Macdougal Alley in Greenwich Village.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Grimes    

Forest Hills is a neighborhood in the central portion of the borough of Queens in New York City.  It is adjacent to Corona to the north, Rego Park and Glendale to the west, Forest Park to the south, Kew Gardens to the southeast, and Flushing Meadows–Corona Park and Kew Gardens Hills to the east.   The area was originally referred to as "Whitepot". The current name comes from the Cord Meyer Development Company, which bought 660 acres (270 ha) in central Queens in 1906 and renamed it after Forest Park.  Further development came in the 1920s and 1930s with the widening of Queens Boulevard through the neighborhood, as well as the opening of the New York City Subway's Queens Boulevard Line.  Forest Hills has a longstanding association with tennis:  the Forest Hills Stadium hosted the U.S. Open from 1915 through 1977 and the West Side Tennis Club offers grass courts for its members.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Hills,_Queens    

A zine is a magazine that is a "noncommercial often homemade or online publication usually devoted to specialized and often unconventional subject matter".  Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group, and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation. A fanzine (blend of fan and magazine) is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) for the pleasure of others who share their interest.  Zines are popularly defined within a circulation of 1,000 or fewer copies; in practice, however, many are produced in editions of fewer than 100.  Among the various intentions for creation and publication are developing one's identity, sharing a niche skill or art, or developing a story, as opposed to seeking profit.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zine   

April 17, 2026