FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon” (or simply “the Bard”). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later known as the King’s Men. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare’s private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of Shakespeare’s plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare’s, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare’s dramatic works that included all but two of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: “not of an age, but for all time”.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

Question of the Day

Can you tell me the difference between a sweet potato and a yam?

Literally and botanically speaking, the two are not related. Both the yam and the sweet potato grow underground and have yellowish-orange flesh, but there the similarity ends. Yams are large, starchy, edible tuberous roots that can grow two to three feet long and weigh as much as 80 pounds. They grow in tropical/subtropical countries and need eight to ten months of warm weather to mature. The two words became entwined in our household vernacular partly through a publicity campaign. Early in this century, sweet-potato promoters attached the word yam to the deep orange, moist-fleshed varieties and left the words sweet potato to the smaller, yellowish, dry-fleshed varieties. Today it is common to find either or both words used in supermarkets, but whichever is used, what’s on sale is the sweet potato.

Advice of the Day

Repel raccoons with dog hair, human hair, or mothballs.

Home Hint of the Day

Want to examine the condition of the paint on the bottom of a hanging door without taking it off its hinges? Simply slide a small mirror under the door and examine the paint job in the reflection.

Word of the Day

SOS

The letters signified by the signal ( … – … ) prescribed by the International Radiotelegraphic Convention of 1908 for use by ships in distress. SOS was chosen as the universal distress signal because this combination of three dots followed by three dashes followed by three dots (…–…), was easy to send and easily recognized, especially since they were usually sent as a nine-character signal, which stood out against the background of three-character Morse Code letters. The letters themselves are meaningless. SOS does not stand for Save Our Souls, Save Our Ship, Stop Other Signals, or Sure Of Sinking.

Puzzle of the Day

What did they wear at the Boston Tea Party?

T-shirts!

Born

• John James Audubon (naturalist) – 1785
• Frederick Law Olmsted (landscape architect) – 1822
• Ma Rainey (blues singer) – 1886
• Charles Richter (seismologist) – 1900
• Carol Burnett (actress) – 1933
• Duane Eddy (musician) – 1938
• Jet Li (actor and martial artist) – 1963
• Kevin James (actor) – 1965
• Tom Welling (actor) – 1977

Died

• John Wilkes Booth (assassin of President Lincoln, was shot by federal troops at a farmhouse near Washington, D.C.) – 1865
• Eduard Suess (geologist) – 1914
• Count Basie (jazz orchestra leader) – 1984
• Lucille Ball (actress) – 1989
• Mason Adams (actor) – 2005
• Phoebe Snow (singer ) – 2011
• George Jones (country music singer) – 2013

Events

• William Shakespeare baptized– 1564
• Meteorites fell on the town of L’Aigle, France– 1803
• First U.S. weather report broadcast, by WEW in St. Louis, Missouri– 1921
• America’s first guide dog for the blind, a German Shepherd named Buddy, was teamed up with its owner, Morris S. Frank– 1928
• The first international satellite, Ariel 1, was launched from Cape Canaveral– 1962
• A herd of buffalo got loose and wandered around an upscale neighborhood in Maryland, disrupting traffic and alarming homeowners before police officers managed to corral them in a tennis court– 2005
• Five explorers reached the North Pole, setting a world record by coming in several hours earlier than a 37-day trek by American explorer Robert Peary for the same journey in 1909– 2005
• Boston Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury stole home. This was the first straight-steal of home plate by a Red Sox player since Billy Hatcher in April of 1994.– 2009

Weather

• Severe frost, Huntsville, Alabama– 1834
• Boston and the surrounding communities experienced a severe snowstorm– 1860
• Twelve inches of snow, Hanover, NH– 1874
• An F5 tornado hit Andover, Kansas, killing more than 15 people– 1991

COURTESY www.almanac.com