The often-overlooked history of female coders who defined early computing during WWII seems finally to be gaining some mainstream recognition.  Presumably inspired by Walter Isaacson's latest book, The Innovators:  How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, the forgotten names of tech trailblazers like Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper are making their rounds in news media.  Grace Hopper worked on the first automated computers ever, invented the terminology “debugging,” headed the creation of one of the most influential programming languages in computing history, and remained an active duty Admiral of the US Navy until the tender age of 79—when she involuntarily retired (before continuing to work until the day she died in 1992 as a highly sought-after consultant elsewhere.)  Read more and link to a video of Grace Hopper on Dave Letterman.  10 min.  http://killscreendaily.com/articles/watch-queen-code-grace-hopper-kick-ass/   See also http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-queen-of-code/  Thank you, Muse reader!

Lucius (Titus) Quinctius Cincinnatus (b. c.519 BC)   In 458 BCE (according to tradition), Cincinnatus, who had been consul in 460 BCE, was plowing his fields when messengers arrived to tell him he had been named dictator to defend the city against the Aequi and the Volscians.  He took up the supreme command, defeated Rome's enemies, freed the beseiged consul Minucius, and returned to his farm, all within 16 days.  Further, he refused the honors that came with his military victories.  George Washington was sometimes called an American Cincinnatus because he too held his command only until the defeat of the British and, at a time when he could have chosen to exercise great political power, instead returned as soon as he could to cultivating his lands.  After the end of the Revolutionary War, a group of former officers in the (now) American army formed The Society of the Cincinnati, taking the name from the Roman general.  http://www.dl.ket.org/latin1/historia/people/cincinnatus01.htm

The Society of the Cincinnati, Inc. is a patriotic-hereditary society with branches in the United States and France, founded in 1783, to preserve the ideals and fellowship of officers of the Continental Army who served in the Revolutionary War.  The members of the Cincinnati were among those developing many of America's first and largest cities to the west of the Appalachians, most notably Cincinnati, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  The first governor of the Northwest Territory, Arthur St. Clair, was a member of the Society.  He renamed a small settlement "Cincinnati" to honor the Society and to encourage settlement by Society members.  Among them were Captain Jacob Piatt, who settled across the river from Cincinnati in northern Kentucky on land granted to him for his service during the War.  Captain David Ziegler was the first Mayor of Cincinnati. Richard Varick was a Mayor of New York City. Lt. Ebenezer Denny (1761–1822), an original Pennsylvanian Cincinnatus, was elected the first mayor of the incorporated city of Pittsburgh in 1816.  Pittsburgh developed from Fort Pitt, which had been commanded since 1777-1783 by four men who were founding members of the Society.  Anderson House, also known as Larz Anderson House, located at 2118 Massachusetts Avenue, NW in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., houses the Society's national headquarters, historic house museum, and research library.  Anderson House was built between 1902 and 1905 as the winter residence of Larz Anderson, an American diplomat, and his wife, Isabel Weld Perkins, an author and American Red Cross volunteer.  The architects Arthur Little and Herbert Browne of Boston designed Anderson House in the Beaux-Arts style.  Anderson House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and was further designated a National Historic Landmark in 1996.  Today, Anderson House serves its members and the public as a headquarters, museum, and library. The Society's museum collections include portraits, armaments, and personal artifacts of Revolutionary War soldiers; commemorative objects; objects associated with the history of the Society and its members, including Society of the Cincinnati china and insignia; portraits and personal artifacts of members of the Anderson family; and artifacts related to the history of the house, including the U.S. Navy's occupation of it during World War II.  The library of the Society of the Cincinnati collects, preserves, and makes available for research printed and manuscript materials relating to the military and naval history of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, with a particular concentration on the people and events of the American Revolution and the War of 1812.  The collection includes a variety of modern and rare materials including official military documents, contemporary accounts and discourses, manuscripts, maps, graphic arts, literature, and many works on naval art and science.  In addition, the library is the home to the archives of the Society of the Cincinnati as well as a collection of material relating to Larz and Isabel Anderson.  The library is open to researchers by appointment.  The Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Hampshire owns and operates through a board of governors the American Independence Museum in Exeter, New Hampshire.  The American Independence Museum is a private, not-for-profit institution whose mission is to provide a place for the study, research, education and interpretation of the American Revolution and of the role that New Hampshire, Exeter, and the Gilman family played in the founding of the new republic.  Museum collections include two rare drafts of the U.S. Constitution, an original Dunlap Broadside of the United States Declaration of Independence, as well as an originalBadge of Military Merit, awarded by George Washington to soldiers demonstrating extraordinary bravery.  Exhibits highlight the Society of the Cincinnati, the nation’s oldest veterans’ society, and its first president, George Washington.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Cincinnati

The learning is in the journey:  That could be the motto for Road Scholar, the nonprofit travel and education program for adults 50 and older that is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2015.  In 1975, the organization—originally known as Elderhostel—had 220 people sign up for programs based on the then-novel idea of lifelong learning.  Today, Road Scholar offers about 4,600 trips that accommodate approximately 100,000 people annually as they travel throughout North America and around the world.  http://www.wsj.com/articles/where-road-scholar-has-been-and-where-its-headed-now-1426475058  

James Findlay (1770–1835) was a soldier, political official, and merchant who for decades was one of the leading citizens of Cincinnati, Ohio.  Findlay was born in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, to Samuel Findlay and Jane Smith.  After his father suffered financial setbacks, Findlay moved to the Northwest Territory in 1793 with his wife Jane Irwin (1769–1851).  There, in partnership with John Smith, he soon became one of the leading merchants and most influential men in the young city of Cincinnati.  He was elected to the legislature of the Northwest Territory in 1798, and in 1802 he became the United States Marshal for the Ohio Territory.  In 1800 Findlay received his most influential appointment, that of receiver of public money at the Cincinnati Public Land Office, which made him the region's most visible official of the federal government and a central figure in the business and politics of Cincinnati.  In 1805 and 1806, he served as mayor of Cincinnati, a position he would return to in 1810 and 1811.  Findlay also played an active role in the Ohio militia, attaining the rank of brigadier general.  In 1806 and 1807 Findlay helped to quash the Burr conspiracy, though that meant turning on his partner Smith, an alleged conspirator.  In the War of 1812, Findlay was commissioned a colonel in the United States Army, and commanded the 2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry.  He marched north with General William Hull, and opposed Hull's disastrous decision to surrender Detroit.  Afterwards, Findlay was promoted to major general in the Ohio militia, and built Fort Findlay at the site of present-day Findlay, Ohio.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Findlay_(Cincinnati_mayor)

Findlay is a city in Hancock County, Ohio, United States.  Findlay serves as the county seat.  Located in northwestern Ohio, Findlay lies approximately 40 miles (64 km) south of Toledo.  The population was 41,202 at the 2010 census.  It is home to the University of Findlay.  The city's official nickname is "Flag City, USA".  In the War of 1812, Colonel James Findlay of Cincinnati built a road and a stockade to transport and shelter troops in the Great Black Swamp region.  This stockade was named Fort Findlay in his honor.  At the conclusion of the war, the community of Findlay was born.  The first town lots were laid out in 1821 by the future Ohio Governor Joseph Vance and Elnathan Corry.  Early in its history, prior to the Civil War, Findlay was a stop for slaves of African descent along the Underground Railroad.  Findlay hosted the highly competitive Ohio State Music Festival in 1884.   young cornet player, Warren G. Harding, and his Citizens' Cornet Band of Marion placed third in the competition.  Harding would go on to be elected the 29th President of the United States.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Findlay,_Ohio

The many uses of ’nduja by Rose Prince  Link to articles and recipes for this fiery pork paste from Calabria at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/8761003/The-many-uses-of-nduja.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1335 August 10, 2015  On this date in 1793, the Musée du Louvre was officially opened in Paris.  On this date in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was chartered by the United States Congress after James Smithson donated $500,000.

Cincinnati is the third-largest city in Ohio and the 65th-largest city in the United States.  It had a population of 296,945 at the 2010 census.  According to the census, the population of the metropolitan area was 2,214,954--the 28th-largest Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in the United States and the largest centered in Ohio.  Settled in 1788, the city is located on the north side of the confluence of the Licking with the Ohio River.  The latter forms the border between the states of Ohio and Kentucky.  Because it is the first major American city founded after the American Revolution as well as the first major inland city in the country, Cincinnati is sometimes thought of as the first purely "American" city.  Cincinnati is home to two major sports teams, the Cincinnati Reds, the oldest franchise in Major League Baseball, and the Cincinnati Bengals of the National Football League.  The University of Cincinnati, founded in 1819, is one of the 50 largest in the United States.  In the late 1800s, Cincinnati was commonly referred to as "Paris of America", due mainly to such ambitious architectural projects as the Music Hall, Cincinnatian Hotel, and Shillito Department Store.  The original surveyor, John Filson, named it "Losantiville".  Read more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati

John Aldrich Ruthven (born November 12, 1924 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American artist best known for his paintings of wildlife.  After serving in the U.S. military in World War II, Ruthven opened a commercial art studio in Cincinnati.  His work for clients included the Play-Doh Boy, used in that product's original 1950s advertising.  Ruthven's focus, however, was on wildlife painting in the style of John James Audubon.  In 1960, his painting "Redhead Ducks" won the Federal Duck Stamp competition.  Ruthven's wildlife paintings are on display at many museums including the Smithsonian Institution, and his work was featured in a 1994 retrospective at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History.  He designed two pigs for Cincinnati's Big Pig Gig in 2000.  Other artwork include a passenger pigeon mural on the wall of a six-story building in Cincinnati which can be seen in the 2014 documentary From Billions To None by David Mrazek and Joel Greenberg.  Ruthven was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2004.  He now lives on a farm near Georgetown, Ohio.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruthven_(artist)

See also http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2014/11/14/years-woods-john-ruthvens-wonderful-life/19068813/ and http://www.ruthven.com/

Find a list of flatbreads and their substitutes from arepa (a Venezuelan bread that's round and flat and usually made of cornmeal) to taco shells at http://www.foodsubs.com/Flatbread.html

A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained.  The name is derived from the sixteenth-century terms withdrawing room and withdrawing chamber, which remained in use through the seventeenth century, and made their first written appearance in 1642.  In a large sixteenth- to early eighteenth-century English house, a withdrawing room was a room to which the owner of the house, his wife, or a distinguished guest who was occupying one of the main apartments in the house could "withdraw" for more privacy. It was often off the great chamber (or the great chamber's descendant, the state room or salon) and usually led to a formal, or "state" bedroom.  The term drawing room was historically also applied to certain passenger train accommodations, designating some of the most spacious and expensive private accommodations available on board a sleeping car or private railroad car.  In North America, it meant a room which slept three or more persons, with a private washroom.  Although Amtrak has retired its sleeping cars that were built with drawing rooms, they are still used by Via Rail Canada; the traditional nomenclature is seen as archaic, so they are officially marketed as "triple bedrooms".  The drawing room, being a room in the house to entertain visitors, gave its name to drawing room plays, a genre of theatrical productions and motion pictures.  Beginning with the early forms of drama, the drawing room play has evolved to encompass comedy as well as to include the forms of the dramatic monologue.  While the drawing room itself has fallen out of favor, the play format has continued to provide a source of entertainment.  Drawing room comedy typically features wit and verbal banter among wealthy, leisured, genteel, upper class characters.  Drawing room comedy is also sometimes called the "comedy of manners." Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and several of the plays of Noël Coward are typical works of the genre.  George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House adds an undercurrent of social criticism to the genre.  Cary Grant appeared in a number of filmed drawing-room comedies.  Ernst Lubitsch was especially known as a director of drawing-room comedies.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing_room

On-line Calculators Plus Unit Converters at http://coolconversion.com/  For Roman numerals see http://www.math-magic.com/basic_memorization/roman.htm and http://coolconversion.com/math/roman-to-arabic/

Sarah Baker and her boyfriend wanted to have a natural lawn, to cultivate plants instead of mowing.  She lost that fight with St. Albans Township trustees, who called the yard a nuisance and wanted it mowed.  Her story has been picked up in major newspapers, on message boards and all over social media.  Turns out, Baker says, it might have been a good thing that the trustees didn’t buy Baker’s plea and instead ordered her to mow her seven-eighths-of-an-acre yard outside of Alexandria in rural Licking County, Ohio.  The Dispatch wrote about her fight with the township on July 20, 2015.  More than 62,000 people read the story online that day, and more than 100,000 people shared it with friends on social media.  Then The Washington Post took notice.  An editor called Baker at her work, Baker’s Acres, a greenhouse and garden center owned by her parents in Licking County, and asked her to write an op-ed piece for their web feature, “ PostEverything”  Baker’s own authored piece appeared on the Washington Post website August 3, 2015, and by day’s end, it was the most-read piece on the site, drawing more than 1,500 comments from Post readers.  On August 4, Post columnist Christopher Ingraham followed Baker’s attention-getting piece with a second editorial, headlined, ”Lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them.”  Eric Lyttle  http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/08/05/lawn-fight.html

A Rarity Reclaimed:  Stolen Stradivarius Recovered After 35 Years by Nina Totenberg   My father, virtuoso violinist Roman Totenberg played his beloved Stradivarius violin all over the world.  And then one day, he turned around and it was gone.  Stolen.  While he was greeting well-wishers after a concert, it was snatched from his office at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass.  It was a crushing loss for my father.  As he put it, he had lost his "musical partner of 38 years."  And when he would ultimately buy a Guarneri violin from the same period as the Stradivarius, he'd have to rework the fingering of his entire repertoire for the new instrument.  My father would dream of opening his violin case and seeing the Strad there again, but he never laid eyes on it again. He died in 2012, but the Stradivarius lived on — somewhere.  Then, on the last day in June 2015, I got a call from FBI Special Agent Christopher McKeogh.  "We believe that the FBI has recovered your father's stolen violin," he said.  On August 6, 2015, at the U.S. attorney's office in New York, there is a formal ceremony turning the violin over to the Totenberg sisters—Nina, Jill and Amy—under an agreement filed in federal court. (This story will be updated.)   "It's nice to return something of great value to a family or a country or an institution," says U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, adding that these "are moments of celebration that we don't have that often here."  Of course, Stradivarius owners are really just guardians of these great artistic instruments.  We will sell the Ames Strad—now perhaps the Ames-Totenberg Stradivarius.  We will make sure it is in the hands of another virtuoso violinist.  And once again, the beautiful, brilliant and throaty voice of that long-stilled violin will thrill audiences in concert halls around the world.  Stolen with my father's violin was a bow made by the Stradivarius of bow makers, Francois Tourte.  Special Agent McKeogh is "hopeful" that in light of this story, someone with information about the bow will come forward.  In addition, there is another stolen Stradivarius out there, the Davidoff-Morini Strad, taken from the apartment of violinist Erica Morini in 1995.  Anyone with information about either the bow or the violin is asked to contact the New York office of the FBI at 212-384-5000 and to ask for agent McKeogh.  Read more and see many pictures at http://www.npr.org/2015/08/06/427718240/a-rarity-reclaimed-stolen-stradivarius-recovered-after-35-years

Republican Party presidential debates, 2016  Find a table listing all 12 debates (plus the "forum" broadcast shortly before the officially sanctioned televised debates—which because candidates will speak one at a time is technically not an RNC-sanctioned "debate" and thus is not considered a violation of RNC prohibitions against any candidate participating in non-sanctioned "debate" events), their locations, their broadcasters, and all candidates who will participate in each debate at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_presidential_debates,_2016

Democratic Party presidential debates, 2016  Find a table listing all 6 debates (with venues to be determined) and the dates for the first 4 debates at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_debates,_2016

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1334  August 7, 2015  On this date in 1794, President George Washington invoked the Militia Acts of 1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion (also known as the Whiskey Insurrection) in western Pennsylvnia.  This tax protest began in 1791.  The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product.  On this date in 1927, the Peace Bridge opened between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.

Pronunciation guide to some difficult authors' names   Robert Crais (rhymes with "grace")  Michael Chabon (SHAY-bon)   John Donne (dun)   Erica Jong (zhong)   Carl Jung (yoong, with the vowel as in "book")   Jodi Picoult (pee KO)   J. K. Rowling (like "rolling") Find more names at http://www.pegasusbookexchange.com/2009/11/pronunciation-guide-to-some-difficult.html

June 24, 2015  If you’ve been drinking Beck’s beer thinking that you were consuming an authentic German pilsner, Law Blog suggests that you might want to sit down for this:  Beck’s is produced in St. Louis, brewed with water from Missouri.  The good news is that you may qualify for a refund—up to $50 if you or your family downed hundreds of Beck’s bottles since 2011 and had the foresight to save the receipts.  The compensation is thanks to a class-action settlement of a lawsuit claiming that Beck’s maker Anheuser-Busch InBev tricked consumers into thinking Beck’s was a German beer.  The agreement struck by plaintiffs and the world’s largest brewer received a preliminary approval this week from a federal magistrate judge in Miami.  A final approval hearing is expected to take place in the fall.  On top of the refunds, it awards up to $3.5 million in attorneys’ fees and costs split among Florida firm Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton, LLP and three other law firms representing the plaintiffs.  Beck’s used to be brewed in Germany, owned by local German families until 2002 when it was sold to Belgium’s Interbrew, which then merged with Brazil’s AmBev, to become InBev, which in turn acquired Anheuser-Busch. Production of Beck’s moved to St. Louis in 2012, according to the lawsuit.  The lawsuit claimed that phrases featured in Beck’s packaging, such as “German Quality” beer and “Originated in Bremen, Germany,” gave consumers the wrong impression about where the beer is made in violation of state consumer protection laws.  “Beck’s consumers in the United States knew that the only way to get German beer of such high quality, as boasted about on Beck’s packaging, was to import the beer from Germany,” the lawsuit said.  Settlement class members include consumers who purchased Beck’s beer, including Beck’s Dark and Beck’s Light, since May 2011.  Once it’s finalized, they’ll be able to fill out an online form to claim a refund. Beck’s drinkers can get 10 cents back for every individual bottle purchased; 50 cents for a six-pack or $1.75 per 20-pack.  Refunds, though, are capped at $50 for claims backed by a valid proof of purchase.  Consumers who didn’t keep receipts are entitled to no more than $12.  You can still get a refund even if you Googled Beck’s and knew all along that it’s no longer made in Germany.  Jacob Gershman  http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/06/24/becks-beer-fans-can-get-refunds-in-class-action-settlement/

A Robinsonade is a plot about characters being stranded in the wilderness far away from civilization, and forced to live off the land in order to survive.  Robinsonade takes its name from the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, which spawned enough imitations that its name was used to define a genre.  The term was coined in 1731 by the German writer Johann Gottfried Schnabel in the Preface of his work Die Insel Felsenburg.  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Robinsonade  See also 34 UNFORGETTABLE ISLAND SETTINGS at http://thewhynot100.blogspot.com/2014/09/34-unforgettable-island-settings.html

Making risotto involves stirring hot chicken stock into uncooked arborio rice (which is a starchy variety of short-grain rice) a ladleful at a time, and cooking slowly so that the stock is absorbed into the rice.  This technique releases the rice's starches, making a creamy, velvety dish.  Danilo Alfaro   Find recipe at http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/ricegrains/r/risotto.htm  Find a recipe for broken spaghetti cooked like risotto at http://www.cearaskitchen.com/vegetarian-broken-spaghetti-risotto/ 

Google Hotel Finder makes it easier to compare and book hotels that are found across the web.  Try it out at google.com/hotels.  Here’s what you can do with Google Hotel Finder:  Find hotels according to what is important to you, such as price, location, amenities, and user ratings. Review accurate and detailed information about those hotels, including photos and amenities.  View location information to help you decide where to stay.  Keep track of your top choices with the Save button.  Connect with hotels and vendors to reserve a room or ask for more information.”  See also Hotel Finder Help.  http://www.bespacific.com/google-hotel-finder/

Songs of a Sourdough is a book of poetry published in 1907 by Robert W. Service.  In the United States, the book was published under the title The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses.  The book is well known for its verse about the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon a decade earlier, particularly the long, humorous ballads, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee."  Songs of a Sourdough has sold more than three million copies.  Service, an employee of the Imperial Bank of Canada, was posted to Whitehorse, Yukon, in 1904.   He "took part in the extremely active Whitehorse social life.  As was popular at the time he recited at concerts – things like "Casey at the Bat" and "Gunga Din", but they were getting stale."  Out on a walk one Saturday night, Service heard the sounds of revelry coming from a saloon, and the phrase "A bunch of the boys were whooping it up" popped into his head.  Inspired, he ran to the bank to write it down (almost being shot as a burglar), and by the next morning "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" was complete.  "A month or so later he heard a gold rush yarn from a Dawson mining man about a fellow who cremated his pal."  He spent the night walking in the woods composing "The Cremation of Sam McGee," and wrote it down from memory the next day.  After having collected enough poems for a book, Service "sent the poems to his father, who had emigrated to Toronto, and asked him to find a printing house so they could make it into a booklet.  He enclosed a cheque to cover the costs and intended to give these booklets away to his friends in Whitehorse" for Christmas.  His father took the manuscript to William Briggs in Toronto, whose employees loved the book.  "The foreman and printers recited the ballads while they worked.  A salesman read the proofs out loud as they came off the typesetting machines."  An "enterprising salesman sold 1700 copies in advance orders from galley proofs."  The publisher "sent Robert's cheque back to him and offered a ten percent royalty contract for the book."  Service's book, Songs of a Sourdough, was "an immediate success."  It went through seven printings even before its official release date. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_a_Sourdough

THE SPELL OF THE YUKON AND OTHER VERSES by Robert W. Service  [British-born Canadian Poet — 1874-1958.]  [This text was also published (in Britain) under the title, "Songs of a Sourdough".]  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/207/207-h/207-h.htm#link2H_4_0007

August 5, 2015  A recent study has found that people who eat spicy food three times a week cut their risk of dying by 14 per cent compared with people who abstained.  The research was undertaken at Harvard University and studied nearly 500,000 Chinese people for over seven years.  Link to spicy recipes at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/11784486/Delicious-spicy-recipes.html

Republican candidates Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and John Kasich will all appear on the dais August 6, 2016 for the first presidential debate in Cleveland.  That leaves Rick Perry and the six other major declared candidates--Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore--to appear together during a debate earlier that evening.  Theodore Schliefer   http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/04/politics/fox-debate-cleveland-announcement/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1333  August 5, 2015  On this date in 1620, the Mayflower departed from Southampton, England on its first attempt to reach North America.  On this date in 1935, New York Weekly Journal writer John Peter Zenger was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, on the basis that what he had published was true.

Q:  Why do we call it “soccer” and the rest of the world calls it “football”?  A:  Since the 1800s, soccer has been known as socca, socker, association football, and football.  When introduced here in the early 1900s, we already were playing our football, so soccer stuck.  Italians call it calcio, from calciare, meaning “to kick.”  South Africans call it soccer or sokker, and the Japanese call it sakka and futtoboru.  Malaysia and Indonesia break it down to just foot and ball, and call it bola sepak and sepak bola, respectively. — dictionary.com.
Q:  What happened to the Venus de Milo’s arms?  A:  No one knows.  They were not with the rest of her when French naval officer Olivier Voutier, on shore leave on the Aegean island of Melos in 1820, came upon peasants digging her up.  The French bought the statue cheaply.  King Louis XVIII gave her to the Louvre, where she stands, her halves joined at the hips.  She is believed to come from about 100 B.C.  She depicts Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, who was Venus to the Romans. — history.com.  http://thecourier.com/opinion/columns/2015/07/13/why-do-i-75-barriers-only-extend-to-cygnet/

Semolina is the coarse, purified wheat middlings of durum wheat used in making pasta, breakfast cereals, puddings, and couscous.  The term semolina is also used to designate coarse middlings from other varieties of wheat, and from other grains, such as rice and maize.  Semolina is derived from the Italian word semola, meaning 'bran'.  This is derived from the ancient Latin simila, meaning 'flour', itself a borrowing from Greek (semidalis), "groats".  Semolina made from durum wheat is yellow in color.  Broadly speaking, meal produced from grains other than wheat may also be referred to as semolina: rice semolina, or corn semolina (more commonly known as grits in the U.S.)  When semolina comes from softer types of wheats, it is white in color.  In this case, the correct name is flour, not semolina.  In the United States, coarser meal coming from softer types of wheats is known also as farina.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semolina

Cramming is the illegal act of placing unauthorized charges on your wireline, wireless, or bundled services telephone bill.  The FCC has estimated that cramming has harmed tens of millions of American households.  Crammers often rely on confusing telephone bills to trick consumers into paying for services they did not authorize or receive, or that cost more than the consumer was led to believe.  Wireless consumers should be particularly vigilant.  The more your mobile phone bill begins to resemble a credit card bill, the more difficult it may become to spot unauthorized charges.  Cramming most often occurs when telephone companies allow other providers of goods or services to place charges on their customers' telephone bills, enabling a telephone number to be used like a credit or debit card account number for vendors.  Crammers may attempt to place a charge on a consumer's phone bill having nothing other than an active telephone number, which can be obtained from a telephone directory.  Read more at https://www.fcc.gov/guides/cramming-unauthorized-misleading-or-deceptive-charges-placed-your-telephone-bill

What poem contains these phrases:  The paths of glory lead but to the grave . . . storied urn or animated bust . . . Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife . . .  Find the answer and the poem at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173564

Q.  Johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grow in the Radley yard.  Why does Harper Lee make a point telling us that?  A.  These two plants are considered to be scrub or weeds.  A properly kept Southern yard in town would not have "weeds" of this nature in it.  The Radley place has fallen into a type of decline or neglect.  During this time period a Southern yard in town was swept...no grass only soft dirt that was literally swept with a broom each day...under the shade of live oak trees or magnolia trees was considered a proper yard.  You may have seen Johnson grass.  It's tall about 3 feet high and has a big tassel on top sort of like corn.  This is the grass that you may see farmers stick in their mouths on television commercials.  Rabbit tobacco is a type of weed in the lobelia family.  Youngsters would chew this or even smoke it during the 1930s or 1940s to pretend to be "big" like the grown-ups.  It did not get one high.  http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/1-johnson-grass-rabbit-tobacco-grow-radley-yard-74883

Live oak or evergreen oak is a general term for a number of unrelated oaks in several different sections of the genus Quercus that share the characteristic of evergreen foliage.  Link to information on the southern live oak (common live oak) in the southern United States at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_oak

July 30, 2015  One morning this week, five members of Spread Love, a New Orleans-style street band, gathered at one of Washington’s busiest intersections, pulled out four trombones, a drum set and a tips bucket and began playing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”  The band’s brassy riffs at 15th Street and New York Avenue NW always delight the hordes of tourists heading toward the White House.  But the very spot that’s proved so profitable for Spread Love to pull in tips has also earned it the enmity of employees at two major Washington institutions:  the Treasury Department and the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.  The conflict, which began this spring and was first chronicled by the Above the Law blog, pits two very different slices of Washington against each other:  the super-educated strivers working at the upper echelons of government and law against a group of exuberant street buskers who make a living off Mall-bound tourists.  “We have to relocate our conference calls.  We can’t have meetings in that corner of the building anymore.  It’s like they’re playing music in the building,” said one Treasury Department employee, who, true to Washington form, would speak only on the condition of anonymity and be identified only as an “employee.”  Over at Skadden Arps, Mitchell S. Ettinger, who leads the Washington office, wrote an e-mail in late May to the staff apologizing for the “inconvenience” of the band, which was “making it difficult for people . . . to work.”  The firm reached out to the Secret Service and D.C. police, he wrote, but the agencies said the musicians’ performances were legal and that “there was nothing that could be done to have them removed.”  Ettinger added that Skadden Arps tried negotiating with Spread Love to relocate but failed.  Ian Shapira  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-street-bands-brassy-riffs-earn-it-tips-from-tourists--and-enmity-from-the-high-powered/2015/07/30/7fde663a-349a-11e5-8e66-07b4603ec92a_story.html

Anne Bradstreet (born Anne Dudley 1612–1672) was the most prominent of early English poets of North America and first female writer in the British North American colonies to be published.  Anne was born in Northampton, England, 1612, the daughter of Thomas Dudley, a steward of the Earl of Lincoln, and Dorothy Yorke.  At the age of sixteen she married Simon Bradstreet.  Both Anne's father and husband were later to serve as governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Anne and Simon, along with Anne's parents, emigrated to America aboard the Arbella as part of the Winthrop Fleet of Puritan emigrants in 1630.  She first touched American soil on June 14, 1630 at what is now Pioneer Village (Salem, Massachusetts) with Simon, her parents and other voyagers as part of the Puritan migration to New England (1620–1640).  Due to the illness and starvation of Gov. John Endecott and other residents of the village, their stay was very brief.  Most moved immediately south along the coast to Charlestown, Massachusetts for another short stay before moving south along the Charles River to found "the City on the Hill," Boston, Massachusetts.  The Bradstreet family soon moved again, this time to what is now Cambridge, Massachusetts.  In the early 1640s, Simon once again pressed his wife, pregnant with her sixth child, to move for the sixth time, from Ipswich, Massachusetts to Andover Parish.  North Andover is that original town founded in 1646 by the Stevens, Osgood, Johnson, Farnum, Barker and Bradstreet families among others.  Anne and her family resided in the Old Center of North Andover, Massachusetts.  They never lived in what is now known as "Andover" to the south.  Both Anne's father and her husband were instrumental in the founding of Harvard in 1636.  In 1650, Rev. John Woodbridge had The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America composed by "A Gentlewoman from Those Parts" published in London, making Anne the first female poet ever published in both England and the New World.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Bradstreet

August 3, 2015  Temperature, a cinematic ‘tale of high comedy’ written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1939, has been discovered in the archives of Princeton University and finally been published, 75 years after the author of The Great Gatsby died of a heart attack, aged 44.  Andrew Gulli, who runs the Strand magazine, came across Fitzgerald’s 8,000-word story Temperature while digging through his papers at Princeton.  He published it for the first time in the new issue of the Strand, alongside works by Ian Rankin and T Jefferson Parker.  Temperature is set in Los Angeles. Fitzgerald had moved to Hollywood in 1937 with a contract with MGM.  When this was dropped in 1938, he worked as a freelance script writer and wrote short stories for Esquire, as well as starting on the uncompleted novel The Love of the Last Tycoon in 1939.  Alison Flood   http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/03/unreleased-f-scott-fitzgerald-great-gatsby-story-published

Although it may not technically be a “blue moon” per se, the second full moon of July was a sight to see for many on July 31, 2015, as photographers, and even NASA itself, snapped images of the unusual milestone.  2018 will actually see two blue moons, the first on January 31 and the second on March 31.  Melissa Taylor  See picture at http://www.modernreaders.com/blue-moon-fallout-sky-watchers-take-photos-of-julys-second-full-moon/29519/melissa-taylor

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1332  August 3, 2015  On this date in 1527, the first known letter from North America was sent by John Rut while at St. John's, Newfoundland.  On this date in 1803, Joseph Paxton, English gardener and architect, designed The Crystal Palace