One day Thomas Edison came home and gave a paper to his mother. He told her, “My teacher gave this paper to me and told me to only give it to my mother.”

     His mother’s eyes were tearful as she read the letter out loud to her child: Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have enough good teachers for training him. Please teach him yourself.

     After many, many years, after Edison’s mother died and he was now one of the greatest inventors of the century, one day he was looking through old family things. Suddenly he saw a folded paper in the corner of a drawer in a desk. He took it and opened it up. On the paper was written: Your son is addled [mentally ill]. We won’t let him come to school any more.

     Edison cried for hours and then he wrote in his diary: “Thomas Alva Edison was an addled child that, by a hero mother, became the genius of the century.”

 Thomas Edison – Interview

Source : www.Linkedin.com

The celebrated Italian intellectual shot to fame with his 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, a medieval detective novel set in an Italian abbey, which follows Brother William of Baskerville as he investigates a series of suspicious deaths. The novel captured imaginations globally and was turned into a film starring Sean Connery as William.

After finished his doctoral thesis, Eco lectured at his alma mater and during the same period worked at Italy’s state broadcaster, RAI, as a cultural editor. He went on to develop his interest in semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, and became a professor of the subject at the University of Bologna. His significant academic writings include On Beauty and the later On Ugliness, exploring how people’s perceptions are shaped through history.

He was “an extraordinary example of a European intellectual, combining unique intelligence of the past with a limitless capacity to anticipate the future”, said Italy’s prime minister.

Those fluffy puffs in the sky that sometimes look like UFOs, sometimes ducks but mainly whatever your imagination tells you.

Here are a couple of fun facts about them that you might find interesting:

1. It takes somewhere between a few minutes and an hour for clouds to be created.
2. Other planets in our solar system also have clouds.
3. The classic white cloud is known as “cumulus”.
4. Hindus and Buddhists believe that cumulus clouds are the spiritual cousins of elephants. 
5. There is an official international Cloud Committee. 

[button color=”grey” size=”medium” link=”http://www.kaplaninternational.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Cloud-formations.jpg” ]Source[/button]

Henry James was an American-British writer who spent most of his writing career in Britain. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism.

He is best known for a number of novels showing Americans encountering Europe and Europeans. His method of writing from the point of view of a character within a tale allowed him to explore issues related to consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting.

[box type=”shadow” align=”aligncenter” ]5 Facts about Henry James

1. Henry James was born and raised in America but loved England so much that he traveled there often and eventually died there as a British citizen.

2. Even though he died in England, his body was returned to the United States and buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

3. Henry James influences as a writer were Honoré de Balzac, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henrik Ibsen, Ivan Turgenev and George Elito.

4. He frequently wrote about character differences between people from the Old World (Europe) and people from the New World (United States).

5. For most of his life, James possessed ambitions for success as a playwright. He converted his novel The American into a play that enjoyed modest returns in the early 1890s. In all he wrote about a dozen plays, most of which went unproduced.[/box]

1.            June 16 is the day all of the events in Joyce’s Ulysses take place. Why June 16? Of all the days in the year, you have to wonder why Joyce chose that exact date for Ulysses to take place. Well, the answer is actually pretty simple: it’s that day in 1904 when he had his first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle.

2.         Joyce may have had the gift of writing, but he certainly didn’t have the gift of conversation. When he met Marcel Proust in 1922 at a dinner party, the rest of the party-goers listened anxiously to what the two literary geniuses would chat about. The eavesdroppers were likely disappointed, as Proust and Joyce spent the entire conversation talking about their ailments—Joyce had constant headaches and eye trouble; Proust’s stomach was giving him troubles. Then they both admitted neither of them had read the other’s works. As the story goes, they shared a cab on the way home and Proust scampered out of the cab without paying his half of the fare.

3.         James Joyce was born in the same year as another notable modernist writer, Virginia Woolf. But the similarities don’t end there. Both were born in 1882, but both writers also died in the same year, 1941. Both wrote landmark modernist novels, published in the 1920s, whose principal action takes place over just one day in mid-June (the novels in question are Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway). Both pioneered the stream of consciousness technique associated with modernist writing.

4.         James Joyce was scared of thunder and lightning. Joyce’s fear of thunder and lightning – the technical name for which is astraphobia – stems from his childhood, when his fervently Catholic governess told him that thunderstorms were God manifesting his anger. This fear stayed with Joyce into adulthood. It even probably helped to inspire a 100-letter word which Joyce coined in his final novel, Finnegans Wake (1939), Bababadalgharaghtakamminapronnkonnbronntonnepronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordeenenthurnuk, which appears on the first page and is meant to designate the symbolic thunderclap that accompanied the Fall of Adam and Eve.

5.         He gave us the word ‘quark’. This word for a subatomic particle was taken from Finnegans Wake, where three seabirds give the cheer to King Mark: ‘Three quarks for Muster Mark!’ Physicist Murray Gell-Mann liked the word, and so proposed it for the particle in the 1960s.

Below you can listen to James Joyce read a passage from his book, Ulysses.

 On the fourth Thursday in November, families across the U.S. gather to feast on turkey. Below are some facts about this American holiday.

The first Thanksgiving was held in the autumn of 1621 and included 50 Pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag Indians and lasted three days. Many historians believe that only five women were present at that first Thanksgiving, as many women settlers didn’t survive that difficult first year in the U.S.

Thanksgiving didn’t become a national holiday until over 200 years later! Sarah Josepha Hale, the woman who actually wrote the classic song “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” convinced President Lincoln in 1863 to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, after writing letters for 17 years campaigning for this to happen.

No turkey was on the menu at the first Thanksgiving: Historians say that no turkey was served at the first Thanksgiving! What was on the menu? Deer, ducks, geese, oysters, lobster, eel and fish. They probably ate pumpkins, but no pumpkin pies. They also didn’t eat mashed potatoes or cranberry relish, but they probably ate cranberries.

No forks were at the first Thanksgiving! The first Thanksgiving was eaten with spoons and knives — but no forks! That’s right, forks weren’t even introduced to the Pilgrims until 10 years later and weren’t a popular utensil until the 18th century.

Why is Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November? President Abe Lincoln said Thanksgiving would be the fourth Thursday in November, but in 1939 President Roosevelt moved it up a week hoping it would help the shopping season during the Depression era. It never caught on and it was changed back two years later.

Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird, not the eagle.

Americans eat 46 million turkeys each Thanksgiving.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s first meal in space after walking on the moon was foil bags with roasted turkey.

The heaviest turkey on record, according to the Guinness Book of Records, weighs 39 kilograms (86 pounds).

Californians consume the most turkey in the U.S. on Thanksgiving Day!

Female turkeys (called hens) do not gobble. Only male turkeys gobble.

The average turkey for Thanksgiving weighs 6.8 kilograms (15 pounds).

2. Fitzgerald was quite close to choosing one of the Trimalchio titles until someone persuaded him that the reference was too  obscure. The original Trimalchio was a character in a first century work of fiction called Satyricon. The story had other famous fans, too; you can find mentions of Trimalchio in Les Miserables, Pompeii, and works by H.P. Lovecraft, Henry Miller and Octavio Paz, among others.

3. The Great Gatsby was partly inspired by a French novel called Le Grand Meaulnes, written in 1913. It has since been translated into English with the titles The Wanderer and The Lost Estate.

4. The famous cover of the book was designed by Francis Cugat, who later went on to become a designer for  actor/director/producer Douglas Fairbanks. Fitzgerald so loved Cugat’s art that he rewrote parts of the book to better  incorporate it.

5. The poet who “wrote” the novel’s epigraph never actually existed. He was a character in Fitzgerald’s previous book, This  Side of Paradise. Fitzgerald also occasionally used it as his pen name. Here’s the epigraph:

“Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry, “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!”

6. At the time of its publication in 1925, the novel cost just $2.

7. Unlike Fitzgerald’s previous two novels, Gatsby was not a commercial success. It sold just 20,000 copies in its entire first  year of publication.

8.Fitzgerald was convinced that the reason the book wasn’t a rousing success was because Gatsby didn’t have a single admirable female character—and, at the time, the majority of people reading novels were women. He also thought that the title, which was only “fair,” resulted in poor sales.

9.Gatsby wasn’t a critical success with everyone, either. Here’s a few of the not-so-rave reviews:

“Why [Fitzgerald] should be called an author, or why any of us should behave as if he were, has never been satisfactorily  explained to me.” —The Brooklyn Daily Eagle

“We are quite convinced after reading The Great Gatsby that Mr. Fitzgerald is not one of the great writers of to-day.” —The New York Evening World

“Scott Fitzgerald’s new novel, The Great Gatsby, is in form no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that.” —The Baltimore Evening Sun

1. He is named after Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Key was a distant relative of Fitzgerald’s.

2. While in the U.S. Army, Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan outside of Montgomery, Alabama and that is where he fell in love with Zelda Sayre. A southern belle and daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Justice, it took two marriage proposals, and his first book deal, before she agreed to marry the author.

3. Ernest Hemingway became close friends with Scott, although he frequently criticized Zelda. Hemingway thought she was absolutely “insane” and claimed that she “encouraged her husband to drink so as to distract him from his writing.”

4. Fitzgerald was hired by MGM in the late 1930s and relocated to Hollywood. Despite befriending the crème of the crop in the Hollywood circuit like Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, and Errol Flynn, he hated the place. He is quoted as saying, “Hollywood is a dump – in the human sense of the word. A hideous town, pointed up by the insulating gardens of its rich; full of the human spirit at a new low of debasement.”

5. Between tears at Fitzgerald’s funeral, Dorothy Parker quoted the famous line from The Great Gatsby, “the poor son of a bitch,” in mournful sorrow over the early passing of her dear friend.

1. Doyle was one of the earliest motorists in Britain

He reportedly bought a car without ever having driven one before. In 1911, he took part in the Prince Henry Tour, an international road competition organized by Prince Henry of Prussia to pit British cars against German ones. Doyle paired up with his second wife, Jean, as one of the British driving teams.

2. Conan is not part of his surname

It is, in fact, only one of his two middle names. He is Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle. Shortly after he graduated from high school he began using Conan as part of his surname.

3. Doyle was on the same cricket team as ‘Peter Pan’ writer J.M. Barrie

They also worked together on a comic opera, Jane Annie, which Barrie begged his friend to revise and finish for him.

4. He could have discussed Dracula and Treasure Island with their authors

Doyle was also friends with Bram Stoker, and Robert Louis Stevenson was a fellow classmate at the University of Edinburgh.

5. He helped to popularize skiing

He not only liked cricket and football, but Doyle helped to popularize the winter sport. Following a move to Davros, Switzerland in 1893 (the mountain air was prescribe to aid his wife’s health), he mastered the basics with the help of the Brangger brothers, two locals who had taken to practising the sport after dark to avoid being teased by the townsfolk. Together, they were the first people to make the 8,000ft pass through the Maienfelder Furka, which separated Davos from the neighbouring town of Arosa. Doyle was also the first Englishman to document the thrill of skiing: “You let yourself go,” he said. “Getting as near to flying as any earthbound man can. In that glorious air it is a delightful experience.” Doyle correctly predicted that in the future hundreds of Englishmen would come to Switzerland for the “skiing season”.

Conan Doyle was the first to bring skiing from Scandinavia to Switzerland.

 6. He was a goalie

Under the pseudonym AC Smith, the writer played as a goalkeeper for amateur side Portsmouth Association Football Club, a precursor of the modern Portsmouth FC.

7. Doyle ran for parliament… twice!

Doyle ran for parliament (representing the Unionist Party) once in Edinburgh (in 1900) and once in the Border Burghs (in 1906). Although he received a respectable vote both times he was not elected. In the 1900 general election, Doyle was defeated by CM Brown of the Liberal Party, who received 3,028 votes against 2,459 cast for Doyle.

8. Ophthalmology’s loss was literature’s gain

Arthur Conan Doyle set up an ophthalmology practice in London. Doyle wrote in his autobiography that not a single patient ever crossed his door. Although, the silver lining was that he could dedicate his time to writing.

9. He believed in fairies

Sherlock might have been a skeptic but Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies. Well, he was convinced by the Cuttingly Fairy photographs, the famous 1917 hoax. He even spent a million dollars promoting them and wrote a book, The Coming of the Fairies (1921), on their authenticity.

One of the Cottingley Fairies photographs, taken by Elsie Wright (15) and her cousin Frances Griffiths, which caused a storm in 1917.

10. And also believed in a number of mediums

But this came at the cost of his friendship with Harry Houdini, who at the same time was trying to disprove the claims of the Spiritualist movement.

11. Why he killed off his most famous creation?

Sherlock Holmes was far from being Doyle’s own favorite character and was killed off in 1893, only to be resurrected 10 years later after public demand and monetary persuasion. He had earlier told a friend: “I couldn’t revive him if I would, at least not for years, for I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards pâté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day.” However, there may have been other reasons for the writer killing off his famous creation, as it happened in the same year that Doyle’s alcoholic father died in an asylum.

12. Doyle and George Bernard Shaw had a spat about the Titanic

After the Titanic sank in 1912, Doyle and George Bernard Shaw had a very public disagreement about the disaster. Doyle was outraged by the dismissive and bitter comments made by the playwright regarding the many acts of heroics that took place aboard the ship as it went down.

13. There’s a square in Switzerland named after him

The town of Meiringen in Switzerland was the location of The Adventure of the Final Problem, the novel in which the author killed the detective off. In 1988, a statue of Sherlock Holmes was placed in the village square, now named Conan Doyle Place.

14. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t just write mysteries, he actually solved a few

One of particular interest to him was The Curious Case of Oscar Slater – for the murder of Marion Gilchrist, a wealthy 82-year-old woman from Glasgow. Doyle applied the “Holmes method”, in which he uncovered new evidence, recalled witnesses and questioned the prosecution’s evidence. His findings were published as a plea for Slater’s pardon. It caused a sensation and there were calls for a retrial, but all this was promptly ignored by the Scottish authorities. The desperate and incarcerated Slater later smuggled messages out of prison and Doyle’s interest in the case was reignited. He wrote to politicians and used his own money to fund Slater’s legal fees. One politician, Ramsay McDonald – Britain’s first Labour prime minister – informed the Scottish Secretary that the police and the legal authorities had colluded to withhold evidence and influence witnesses. Slater was subsequently released from prison with £6,000 compensation but never shared it with Doyle.

15. Doyle died holding a flower

Doyle died on July 7, 1930. He collapsed in his garden, clutching his heart with one hand and holding a flower in the other. His last words were to his wife. He whispered to her: “You are wonderful.”

16. A séance was organized for him to make an appearance from beyond the grave

Following his death, a séance was conducted at the Royal Albert Hall. Thousands attended, including his wife and children. A row of chairs were arranged on the stage for the family, with one left empty for Sir Arthur. Even though he did not appear, there were many people in the audience who claimed they had felt his presence among them.

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in 1564. Very little is known about his life, but by 1592 he was in London working as an actor and a dramatist. Between about 1590 and 1613, Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and collaborated on several more. Many of these plays were very successful both at court and in the public playhouses. In 1613, Shakespeare retired from the theatre and returned to Stratford-upon-Avon. He died and was buried there in 1616.

What did he write?

Shakespeare wrote plays and poems. His plays were comedies, histories and tragedies. His 17 comedies include A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Among his 10 history plays are Henry V and Richard III. The most famous among his 10 tragedies are Hamlet, Othello, andKing Lear. Shakespeare’s best-known poems are The Sonnets, first published in 1609.

What are the quartos?

Shakespeare’s plays began to be printed in 1594, probably with his tragedy Titus Andronicus. This appeared as a small, cheap pamphlet called a quarto because of the way it was printed. Eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays had appeared in quarto editions by the time of his death in 1616. Another three plays were printed in quarto before 1642. In 1623 an expensive folio volume of 36 plays by Shakespeare was printed, which included most of those printed in quarto.

Why are the quartos important?

None of Shakespeare’s manuscripts survives, so the printed texts of his plays are our only source for what he originally wrote. The quarto editions are the texts closest to Shakespeare’s time. Some are thought to preserve either his working drafts (his foul papers) or his fair copies. Others are thought to record versions remembered by actors who performed the plays, providing information about staging practices in Shakespeare’s day.