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February 17, 2025
Feb 17, 2025
Word
tenebrous
adjective
Definition
  1. shut off from the light : dark, murky
  2. hard to understand : obscure
  3. causing gloom
Example
"A zigzag line of windows … cuts up from the base of the building, bringing light into its once-tenebrous interior." (Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post, September 28, 2008)
Origin
"Tenebrous" means "obscure" or "murky," but there's nothing unclear about its history. Etymologists know that the word derives from the Latin noun "tenebrae," which means "darkness." "Tenebrous" has been used in English since the 15th century, and in the 20th century it was joined by some interesting relations. "Tenebrionid" is the name of a nocturnal beetle that is usually dark-colored and is also called a "darkling beetle." "Tenebrism" refers to a style of painting -- associated with the Italian painter Caravaggio -- in which most of the figures are engulfed in shadow but some are dramatically illuminated by concentrated light.
Webster's Dictionary
Idiom
culture vulture
An individual with a consuming or excessive interest in the arts. For example, A relentless culture vulture, she dragged her children to every museum in town. This slangy term may have been originated by Ogden Nash, who wrote: "There is a vulture Who circles above The carcass of culture" (Free Wheeling, 1931). [1940s]
The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms
Fun facts
  1. Giraffes have the same number of vertebrae as humans: 7.
  2. New York was the first state to require cars to have license plates.
Snapple's under-the-cap 'Real Facts'
Artist
Jean-Léon Gérôme
May 11, 1824 - Jan 10, 1904

Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, and other subjects, bringing the academic painting tradition to an artistic climax. He is considered one of the most important painters from this academic period. He was also a teacher with a long list of students.

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Wikipedia, Google Arts & Culture
Historical figure
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet
Apr 13, 1892 - Apr 5, 1984

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet, GCB, OBE, AFC, commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press and often within the RAF as "Butcher" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief RAF Bomber Command during the height of the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. In 1942, the British Cabinet agreed to the "area bombing" of German cities. Harris was given the task of implementing Churchill's policy and supported the development of tactics and technology to perform the task more effectively. Harris assisted British Chief of the Air Staff Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Portal in carrying out the United Kingdom's most devastating attacks against the German infrastructure and population, including the Bombing of Dresden.

Harris emigrated to Southern Rhodesia in 1910, aged 17, but returned to England in 1915 to fight in the European theatre of the First World War.

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Wikipedia, Google Arts & Culture
Historic event
The Holocaust
1941 - May 8, 1945

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the World War II genocide of the European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through work in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.

Germany implemented the persecution in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933, the regime built a network of concentration camps in Germany for political opponents and those deemed "undesirable", starting with Dachau on 22 March 1933. After the passing of the Enabling Act on 24 March, which gave Hitler plenary powers, the government began isolating Jews from civil society; this included boycotting Jewish businesses in April 1933 and enacting the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935.

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Wikipedia, Google Arts & Culture
Quote
I don't think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
Abraham Lincoln