April 21: Happy Birthday, Rome!

Cristina Mazzoni, author of the very cool, very new, She-Wolf: The Story of a Roman Icon, bids happy birthday to Rome – and explains how the she-wolf became a potent symbol over the course of the past 2,763 years.

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On April 21, Rome’s birthday is celebrated; this year, it is the city’s 2763rd. Tradition tells that, on this day in 753 bce, twin brothers Romulus and Remus—descendants of the Trojan refugee Aeneas—decided to found their own city. When Romulus built his walls on the Palatine Hill, Remus mocked and jumped over them; Romulus, provoked, killed him and remained Rome’s sole founder. It is from him that the Eternal City takes its name, as we all know. (But do we? According to another legend, it was a Trojan woman, Rhome, who named the city: with the help of her women friends, she forced the refugees she traveled with—including her own husband—to settle at the bend of the Tiber River by burning their ships.)

Where’s the Poe Toaster?

Every year, on Edgar Allen Poe’s birthday, mysterious visitor leaves cognac and roses on his grave. This year it didn’t happen, for the first time in 60 years. The story >>

Happy Birthday, Sam Beckett!

Today, April 13, is Sam Beckett’s birthday (1906). What better gift to have than J. M. Coetzee’s New York Review of Books review of Letters?

Darwin at 200

200 years ago today, Charles Darwin was born. Who better to wish him a happy birthday than his own sister? There’s more family news [omitted] in the letter, but I was especially charmed by a middle-section about the only thing a certain young “Parky” remembers about uncle Charles. Oh, and here’s a drawing of Darwin [...]

If you meet Darwin by the road…

…kill him. Today’s Science Times devotes itself to all things Darwin. His 200th birthday is 2 days away! My personal favorite, Carl Safina’s essay entitled Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live takes a stab at bursting the bubble of the cult of Darwin. We don’t call astronomy Copernicism, nor gravity Newtonism. “Darwinism” implies [...]