Month: November 2022

First Serving Female British MP Elected (1919)

American-born Nancy Witcher Astor, or Viscountess Astor, was the second woman elected to the British Parliament’s House of Commons and the first to actually serve. She concentrated on women’s issues, temperance, and child welfare and was reelected many times, serving until 1945. Astor attracted a great deal of attention, much of it for her caustic and witty comments. She reportedly once said to Winston Churchill, “If you were my husband, I’d poison your tea!” What was his alleged response? Discuss

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908)

Claude Lévi-Strauss—not to be confused with jeans manufacturer Levi Strauss—was a French anthropologist and leading exponent of structuralism, an anthropological theory that holds that cultures, like languages, can be viewed as systems of signs and analyzed in terms of the structural relations among their elements. Borrowing heavily from contemporary linguistics, his theory was a major departure from earlier “functionalist” theories. Why was Lévi-Strauss investigated by the FBI? Discuss

La Brea Tar Pits

This famous fossil field is located in Los Angeles, California. Once used by local Native Americans as a source of tar for waterproofing, the tar pits are now a protected archeological site, as they contain a vast quantity of fossils from the last ice age. Indeed, more than one million prehistoric specimens have already been exhumed from the pits, among them mammoth, mastodon, and saber-toothed cat fossils, and are on display at the Page Museum there. What is a tar pit, and how does it form? Discuss

Scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon (1942)

When Nazi Germany occupied northern and western France in 1940, the coastal city of Toulon fell under Vichy jurisdiction in the so-called unoccupied zone in the south. The center of French naval power since the 19th century, Toulon housed much of the French fleet. When, in 1942, Germany finally occupied all of France and Toulon’s capture appeared imminent, the French scuttled much of the fleet rather than allow the vessels to fall into German hands. What was the German mission in Toulon called? Discuss

James Agee (1909)

Agee was an American novelist, screenwriter, journalist, poet, and film critic who wrote for several magazines, including Fortune, Time, and The Nation. His first major book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a commentary on the lives of Southern tenant farmers in the 1930s with accompanying photographs by Walker Evans, was a commercial flop at the time of its original publication but has won high praise over the years. Which book earned Agee a posthumous Pulitzer Prize? Discuss

Aphasia

Aphasia is a language disturbance caused by a lesion of the brain that partially or totally impairs the affected individual’s ability to speak, write, or comprehend the meaning of spoken or written words. Often caused by head trauma, tumor, stroke, or infection, aphasia is distinguished from functional disorders—such as stammering or stuttering—and from impaired speech due to physical defects of the speech organs. What is the difference between Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia? Discuss