Opened in October 2012, the Houdini Museum of New
York contains several hundred pieces of ephemera, most of which
belonged to magician and escape artist Harry Houdini. Of the museum's many pieces, Houdini's 1907
escape coffin (in which Houdini was sealed with six-inch nails and subsequently
escaped), the "robot" from Houdini's 1919 silent film The
Master Mystery, and Houdini's Metamorphosis
Trunk are the largest.
Other notable pieces include the original bust from Houdini's grave (on
loan to the museum from S.A.M. Parent Assembly Number One), Bess Houdini's stage outfit
and a large selection of smaller pieces such as Houdini's personal magic and
escape props. There are also many items
related to Houdini's interest in the debunking of spiritualists. It is in an unassuming and almost unheralded
location, and as such is easily missed.
The museum is owned by Houdini collector Roger Dreyer (also the owner
and CEO of Fantasma Magic) and was designed by architect and designer David Rockwell. It
features over 1,500 pieces of "Houdiniana," which portends an
"ever changing display."
Dreyer's Houdini collection is the second-largest in the world; the
first being the collection of Las Vegas illusionist David Copperfield.
Link to information on other Houdini museums at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdini_Museum_of_New_York See also https://www.houdinimuseumny.com/visit/
Quince is an ancient fruit, found in Roman cooking and
grown across Turkey and southeast Asia.
It grows on small trees and is closely related to apples and pears, but
it lacks their immediate edibility and appeal.
The fruit is knobbly and ugly, with an irregular shape and often a gray
fuzz—especially when the fruit has been picked underripe. It’s completely inedible when raw, which puts
it even above the Hachiya persimmon in unapproachable astringency. (At least the persimmon will ripen,
eventually, into edible sweetness.) The
first clue that quince hides something special is its aroma. If you leave a quince on a sunny windowsill
it will slowly release a delicate fragrance of vanilla, citrus, and apple into
your kitchen. It’s a heady, perfumed
scent that is completely at odds with its appearance. And then, if you peel a quince and hack it
up, then cook it, those scents blossom into an indescribably wonderful perfume,
and the fruit itself magically turns from yellowed white to a deep rosy
pink. When you stew quince in sugar and
a little water or wine, it becomes not just edible but delicious—sweet,
delicate, fragrant. Faith Durand Link to recipes at https://www.thekitchn.com/quince-tough-fall-fruit-with-a-secret-reward-ingredient-intelligence-73041
December 9, 2019
The current record for most expensive religious book ever sold was set
in 2017 when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints spent $35 million on
a handwritten printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon. Dating back to 1830, this volume was used to
print the earliest copies of the Book of Mormon. If you’re curious, the most expensive Bible ever is a
Gutenberg Bible sold for $5.39 million ($12.2 million) in 1987; the most
expensive Talmud went for
$9.3 million ($10.1 million) in 2015; and the most expensive Quran was a 7th century fragment that sold for $4.9
million ($5.8 million) in 2008. Action
Comics #1, featuring the debut of the world’s first superhero, Superman,
has been the world’s most expensive comic for years. The current record is $3.2
million ($3.5 million) for a copy sold in 2014.
Not bad, considering it originally sold for ten cents. Eileen Gonzalez https://bookriot.com/2019/12/09/most-expensive-books-ever-sold/
Seven
Sisters Road is a road in
north London, England which runs within the boroughs of Islington, Hackney and Haringey. It is an extension of Camden Road, running from Holloway Road (the A1 road) at the Nags
Head crossroads then on to
another crossroads with Blackstock Road and Stroud Green Road. It carries on
uphill alongside Finsbury Park to Manor
House, and from there downhill to the
junction with Tottenham
High Road (the A10
road) at Seven
Sisters Corner. The road was authorised in 1829 and
constructed in 1833 by the Metropolitan Turnpike Trust. Seven
Sisters Road is part of the A503. The stretch running past Finsbury Park is open to
the park on the west side, and on the east side are large Victorian villas now
used mainly as hotels. See references in
popular culture at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_Road See also https://londonist.com/2014/11/who-were-the-seven-sisters
“Do Good, do Bad, do Nothing.” “There is a lasting pleasure in the exercise
of the mind.” “Finnish is a very strange
language. Strange historically, strange
etymologically, strange on the page. It
clusters, it rattles and spatters.” The
Seven Sisters, a novel by Margaret Drabble
Novelist, biographer and critic Margaret Drabble was born
in Sheffield on 5 June 1939. She was
educated at the Mount School, a Quaker boarding school in York, and read
English at Newnham College, Cambridge.
She became an actress and worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company at
Stratford-upon-Avon before her first novel, A Summer Birdcage, the story of the relationship between
two sisters, was published in 1963. https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/margaret-drabble See also Margaret Drabble, The Art of Fiction
No. 70, an interview by Barbara Milton at
Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) is one of the greatest twentieth century sculptors and
arguably the most significant female artist of the period. Along with her contemporaries Ben Nicholson (1894-1982), Naum Gabo
(1890-1977), and Henry Moore (1898-1986), Hepworth was a huge influence on the
development of modern art in general and abstract sculpture in
particular--especially biomorphic abstraction. In her celebrated 1931 work Pierced
Form, she introduced the 'hole' to Modern British sculpture (1930-70). Its form
impressed Henry Moore so much that the following year he started carving holes
in his works. Read much more and see
list of selected sculptures at http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/sculpture/barbara-hepworth.htm
India is home to several hundred languages. Most Indians
speak a language belonging to the families of the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European (c. 77%), the Dravidian (c. 20.61%), the Austroasiatic (Munda) (c. 1.2%), or the Sino-Tibetan (c. 0.8%), with some languages of the Himalayas still unclassified. The SIL Ethnologue lists 415 living languages for India. India's central government has
23 constitutionally recognized official
languages. Hindi and English are typically used as an
official language by the central government. State
governments use their respective official languages. Hindi is the most
widely spoken language in the northern parts of India. The Indian census takes the widest possible
definition of "Hindi" as a broad variety of the "Hindi Belt". According to 2001 Census,
53.6% of the Indian population declared that they speak Hindi as either their
first or second language, in which 41% of them have declared it as their native
language or mother tongue. 12% of Indians declared that they can
speak English as
a second language. Thirteen languages
account for more than 1% of Indian population each, and between themselves for
over 95%; all of them are "scheduled
languages of the constitution".
Of the Indian population in 1991, 19.4% exhibited bilingualism and 7.2% exhibited trilingualism. India has a Greenberg's
diversity index of 0.914—i.e. two people selected at random
from the country will have different native languages in 91.4% of cases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers_in_India
The Tolkien family is an English family of German descent whose best-known
member is J. R. R. Tolkien, Oxford academic
and author of the fantasy books The
Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The
Silmarillion. See list of
family members at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_family
January 16, 2020 Christopher Tolkien, the son of Lord Of The Rings author JRR Tolkien, has died aged
95. Tolkien, who was born in Leeds in
1924, was the third and youngest son of the revered fantasy author and his wife
Edith. He grew up listening to his
father’s tales of Bilbo Baggins, which later became the children’s fantasy
novel, The Hobbit. He drew many of the original maps detailing the world of Middle-earth for his
father’s The Lord of the Rings when the series was first published between 1954
and 55. He also edited much of his
father’s posthumously published work following his death in 1973. Nicola Slawson https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/16/jrr-tolkiens-son-christopher-dies-aged-95
Marion Gibbons (née Chesney; 10 June 1936–30
December 2019) was a Scottish writer of romance and mystery novels since
1979. She wrote numerous successful
historical romance novels under a form of her maiden name, Marion Chesney, including the
Travelling Matchmaker and Daughters of Mannerling series. Using the pseudonym M. C. Beaton, she also wrote many
popular mystery
novels, most notably the Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth mystery
series. Both of these book series have
been adapted for TV. She also wrote
romance novels under the pseudonyms Ann Fairfax, Jennie
Tremaine, Helen Crampton, Charlotte Ward, and Sarah Chester. See bibliography at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Chesney
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