Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
 
Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.
 
Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.—a section of Oscar Wilde’s poem, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

Oscar Wilde was born on this date in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland.

* * * *
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a fantasy novel by C. S. Lewis, was published on this date in 1950 by Geoffrey Bles of London.

* * * *
The Red Army of the Communist Party of China began the “Long March,” a 370-day, 5600-mile retreat through difficult terrain on this date in 1934. By the end, the army was under the command of Mao Zedong.

* * * *
Moshe Dayan died 35 years ago on this date. Dan Wheldon died five years ago today.

* * * *
Noah Webster was born on this date in 1758. David Ben-Gurion was born on this date in 1886. Eugene O’Neill was born in 1888 on this date. Michael Collins was born on this date in 1890. Justice William O. Douglas was born on this date in 1898. Günter Grass was born in 1927 on this date. Nico was born in 1938 on this date.

* * * *
Dame Angela Lansbury is 91 today. Tim McCarver is 75 today. Suzanne Somers is 70. Bob Weir is 69. Tim Robbins is 58. Bob Mould is 56. Flea is 54.

____________________________________________
Follow The Gad About Town on Facebook! Subscribe today for daily facts (well, trivia) about literature and history, plus links to other writers on Facebook.

Follow The Gad About Town on Instagram!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.