Savant learns Icelandic in a week

 

Establisment restaurants in London

 

Petrichor

The earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil.

Image source here.

inherited diplomatic skills from his CIA father

 

"Sting didn’t write all of the Police songs - just the good ones.”
- Stewart Copeland [born 1952]

Hat Tip: DS

Not Static

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin [1706-1790] owned at least one slave and ran advertisements to sell slaves in his newspapers, but ultimately funded schools for freed slaves.

John Adams [1735-1826] was the only founder who never had slaves, which was then common in Massachusetts. Alexander Hamilton [1755-1804] is thought to have had slaves in the West Indies. James Madison [1751-1836] occasionally condemned the institution of slavery and opposed the international slave trade, but he also vehemently opposed any attempts to restrict its domestic expansion. Madison did not free his slaves during his lifetime or in his will.

George Washington [1732-1799] married into wealth and a continuing income stream derived from at least one hundred slaves. Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826] maintained slaves to his death even though he wrote that all men are created equal. 

Franklin was the truly Enlightened one as he changed his positions throughout his life like a tax accountant he recorded in ledgers his failings and his "corrections," perhaps because he was a generation older and more inclined to reflection. He gave away part of his fortune to have all religions represented in Philadelphia - 35 representatives from Islam to Judaism to various Christian sects attended his funeral. He could have been wealthier than Washington but he didn't patent many of his inventions including his stove as he wanted the masses to afford it and stay warm. But he was alienated from wife for 14 years and didn't attend her funeral, and his son William Franklin [1730-11813] who remained a staunch Loyalist and died in London.

ached for throne proximity

"He could twist a nail into a cork-screw."
- On Lord Louis Mountbatten [1900-1979]

no fomo

Conan O'Brien [born 1963] explains here that he could have been a multi-billionaire as he was approached to get in early with companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple, but he passed as he didn't "get it" despite his Magna Cum Laude Harvard education. 

So What

 

"The truth is they don't want to work. They make themselves look silly enough to remain unemployed and collect the weekly dole. Their worst nightmare is for someone to say, "Hey, we've got a job for you!'"

Stealing Van Gogh

 

Organized crime steals culturally significant art to use as "tokens" to negotiate lighter prison sentences.

admitted reluctantly to university

“If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.”

- Thomas Watson Jr [1914-1993]

playground combat

By Emily Flake

change for a dollar

 

liberté

"In the end it was not the literate and cultured minority of Frenchmen who brought down the government, as had been the case in England and America. Instead, it was the common people, who marched upon the Bastille and then upon the King and Queen in their palace at Versailles. And they threw down the work of centuries and created not only a new government but also a new society in place of the old."
- Charles van Doren [1926-2019]

I wish I had a salary

By Amy Hwang

Power restricted

Due to Oliver Cromwell[ [1599-1658] and the Glorious Revolution [1688-89], where the people and Parliament now forever reigned supreme, William [1650-1702] and Mary [1662-1694] became the first in a line extending to this day of monarchial figure heads with limited powers to rule Britannia. 

agenda

 

when insulted

 "Sorry, I don't fit into your box."

on douche-bags

 "I'd rather you hate me for who I am, rather than love me for whom I am not."

why you should study history

 

David McCllough [born 1933] here.

on toughness

“We have not journeyed all this way because we are made of sugar candy.”

- Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

cubist period

no hiding

 

father of American literature

"We ought never to do wrong when people are looking."

- Mark Twain [1835-1910], "A Double-Barrelled Detective Story"

how we got to here

 

the abode of God

.

Beatrice and Dante move up to the final zone, the Empyrean, the mind of God which exists beyond time and space – the real home of the angels, and of all the spirits in celestial heaven.

Source here.

360° 3D

 

Alex climbing in Virtual Reality here.