11 February 2018

cullion

[kuhl-yuh n]

noun, Archaic.

1. a base or vile fellow.
Example: He was a cullion whom no-one trusted.

Origin of cullion

Middle English, Middle French, Latin

1350-1400; Middle English culyon, coil(i)on < Anglo-French, Middle French coillon worthless fellow, literally, testicle < Vulgar Latin *cōleōnem, accusative of *cōleō, for Latin cōleī (plural) testicles, scrotum

Dictionary.com

Anagram

I cull no

Today’s quote

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

– Robert Frost

On this day

11 February 1847 – birth of Thomas Edison, U.S. inventor. Died 18 October 1931.

11 February 1916 – Emma Goldman arrested for campaigning for birth control in New York.

11 February 1934 – birth of Mary Quant, Welsh fashion designer and instrumental figure in the 1960s London Mod movement, inventor of the mini-skirt. Quant once stated, ‘I designed the miniskirt that caused so much havoc in the Sixties – the miniskirt that was such fun but has travelled well to today’.

11 February 1945 – The Yalta Agreement is signed by Josef Stalin (USSR), Winston Churchill (UK), Franklin D. Roosevelt (USA), regarding the control of Germany once World War II finishes.

11 February 1963 – death of Sylvia Plath, American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Boston, she travelled to the UK and studied at Cambridge University. It was there that she met British poet, Ted Hughes. In 1957 they married. For a while they lived in Boston, before returning to England and living in London and later Devon. Plath often wrote about her experiences, particularly with depression. She advanced the genre of ‘confessional poetry’. Plath struggled with the loneliness of Devon and returned to London, renting a unit in the house that the poet, William Butler Yeats once lived. The unit was owned by Assia and David Wevill. Plath’s husband, Ted Hughes, was captivated by Assia’s beauty. In September 1962, Plath left Hughes after discovering he’d been having an affair with Assia. Plath suffered bipolar disorder and had made numerous suicide attempts throughout her life. In February 1963, she suicided by turning the gas on in her oven and placing her head in it. She had sealed her children’s rooms with wet towels to avoid poisoning them. Plath had published a number of poetry collections and some were published post-humously. In 1982, she was awarded a post-humous Pulitzer Prize for her poetry. She is considered one of the great poets of the 20th century. Born 27 October 1932.

11 February 1979 – the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, is overthrown by the Iranian Revolution, and replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini.