19 June 2019

jamais vu

being unfamiliar with something that is actually familiar

He knew, for example, that it was called paramnesia, and he was interested as well in such corollary optical phenomena as *jamais vu*, never seen, and *presque vu*, almost seen

Today’s quote

A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.

– Alfred Lord Tennyson

On this day

19 June 1623 – birth of Blaise Pascal, controversial French mathematician, physicist, inventor and writer. Formulated ‘Pascal’s Triangle’, a tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, challenged Aristotle’s followers who claimed that ‘nature abhors a vacuum’. The computer programming language, ‘Pascal’, is named in his honour. Died 19 August 1662.

19 June 1861 – Birth of Jose Rizal in Calamba, Laguna, Philippines. Filipino national hero. Rizal was an ophthalmologist by profession. He campaigned for reforms of the Spanish rule of the Philippines, writing numerous works critical of the Spanish government, which helped inspire the Philippine revolution. Following this Rizal was excecuted in Manila by the Spanish colonial government on 30 December 1896.

19 June 1945 – birthday of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese politician, activist and Nobel Peace Prize Recipient.

19 June 1978 – The original Grumpy Cat, Garfield, first appears in newspaper comic strips in the USA.