Angus

Angus (Scottish Gaelic: Aonghas) is one of the 32 local government council areas of Scotland, a registration county and a lieutenancy area. The council area borders Aberdeenshire, Dundee City and Perth and Kinross. Main industries include agriculture and fishing. Global pharmaceuticals company GSK has a significant presence in Montrose in the north of the county.

Angus was historically a county, known officially as Forfarshire from the 18th century until 1928. It remains a registration county and a lieutenancy area. In 1975 its administrative functions were transferred to the council district of the Tayside Region, and in 1995 further reform resulted in the establishment of the unitary Angus Council.

History

Prehistory

The area that now comprises Angus has been occupied since at least the Neolithic period. Material taken from postholes from an enclosure at Douglasmuir, near Friockheim, about five miles north of Arbroath have been radiocarbon dated to around 3500 BC The function of the enclosure is unknown, but may have been for agriculture or for ceremonial purposes.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (/poʊ/; born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. Widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Born in Boston, Poe was the second child of two actors. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia. Although they never formally adopted him, Poe was with them well into young adulthood. Tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of secondary education for the young man. Poe attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. Poe quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name. It was at this time his publishing career began, albeit humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian". With the death of Frances Allan in 1829, Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement. Later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point and declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, Poe parted ways with John Allan.

Edgar Allen

Edgar Allen (May 2, 1892 – February 3, 1943) was an American anatomist and physiologist. He is known for the discovery of estrogen and his role in creating the field of endocrinology.

Born on Cañon (Canyon) City, Colorado, Allen was educated at Brown University. After serving in World War I he took a position at Washington University in St. Louis until, in 1923, he was appointed to the chair of anatomy at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Ten years later he was appointed to the chair at Yale University.

At Missouri, he began his studies of sex hormones. While it was commonly believed at the time that the female reproductive cycle was controlled by substance in the corpus luteum, Allen sought the answer in the follicles surrounding the ovum, leading to his discovery of estrogen, though it was identified six years later by Adolf Butenandt in 1929.

Allen died of a heart attack in 1943 while on duty with the United States Coast Guard.

References

Miranda Hill

Miranda Hill (Wisbech 1836–1910) was an English social reformer. She worked closely, from 1891, with her more famous sister Octavia Hill on major housing reform projects in England. She was the daughter of James Hill, corn merchant and banker, and Caroline Southwood Smith, the daughter of Dr Thomas Southwood Smith, the pioneer of sanitary reform. The sisters were brought up in reduced financial circumstances, and were never formally schooled. To earn her living, Miranda became a teacher at age 13.

Miranda founded the influential Kyrle Society in 1875/1876, a representative of which later sat on the first Council of the National Trust. The Society provided art, books and open spaces to the working class poor, around the slogan "Bring Beauty Home to the Poor". This involved, at first, artistic decoration of hospitals, schools and working-class clubs. It was named after philanthropist John Kyrle (1637–1724). There were numerous branches around the country, generally formed from around 1877 onwards, and one branch was supported by William Morris. Another notable supporter was the Arts and crafts architect Lady Mary Lovelace. The Society's Open Space Committee was influential in saving numerous stretches of heathland and woodland in London, that would otherwise have been built on, and which are now highly prized leisure areas for Londoners. There was also a horticultural wing aimed at children, and a branch called Invalid Children's Aid (ICA), which became independent in 1908. Membership of the Society often overlapped with that of the early women's suffrage movement.

The Cask of Amontillado

"The Cask of Amontillado" (sometimes spelled "The Casque of Amontillado") is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book.

The story is set in an unnamed Italian city at carnival time in an unspecified year, and is about a man taking fatal revenge on a friend who, he believes, has insulted him. Like several of Poe's stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around a person being buried alive—in this case, by immurement. As in "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart", Poe conveys the story from the murderer's perspective.

Plot summary

The story's narrator, Montresor, tells the story of the day that he took his revenge on Fortunato (Italian for "the fortunate one"), a fellow nobleman, to an unspecified person who knows him very well. Angry over numerous injuries and some unspecified insult, he plots to murder his friend during Carnival when the man is drunk, dizzy, and wearing a jester's motley.