James Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his short story collection Dubliners, and for his novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Together with Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson, he is credited with the development of the stream of consciousness technique in which the same weight is given to both the internal world of the mind and the external world of events and circumstances as factors shaping the actions and views of fictional characters. His fictional universe is firmly rooted in Dublin and reflects his family life and the events and friends and enemies from his school and college days. In this, he became both one of the most cosmopolitan and local of all the prominent English-language modernists. (Full article...)
... that Ernesius, a 12th-century archbishop of Caesarea, was once prevented from crossing the sea by such a severe storm that he refused to make a second attempt?
The hamerkop (Scopus umbretta) is a medium-sized wading bird. It is the only living species in the genus Scopus and the family Scopidae. Its closest relatives are thought to be the pelicans and the shoebill, in the order Pelecaniformes. The shape of its head with a long bill and crest at the back is reminiscent of a hammer, which has given this species its name after the Afrikaans word for hammerhead. It is a medium-sized waterbird with brown plumage. It is found in Africa and Arabia, living in a wide variety of wetlands, including estuaries, lakesides, fish ponds, riverbanks, and rocky coasts. This hamerkop was photographed at Lake Baringo in Kenya.
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