On This Day
1688 – King Narai nominates Phetracha as regent, leading to the revolution of 1688 in which Phetracha becomes king of the Ayutthaya Kingdom.[7]
The Siamese revolution of 1688 was a major popular upheaval in the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom (modern Thailand) which led to the overthrow of the pro-French Siamese king Narai. The Mandarin Phetracha, previously one of Narai’s trusted military advisors, took advantage of the elderly Narai’s illness, and killed Narai’s Christian heir, along with a number of missionaries and Narai’s influential foreign minister the Greek adventurer Constantine Phaulkon. Phetracha then married Narai’s daughter, took the throne, and pursued a policy of ousting French influence and military forces from Siam. One of the most prominent battles was 1688’s Siege of Bangkok, when tens of thousands of Siamese forces spent four months besieging a French fortress within the city. As a consequence of the revolution, Siam severed significant ties with the West, with the exception of the Dutch East India Company, until the 19th century.
Born On This Day
1898 – Ariel Durant, American historian and author (d. 1981)[89]
Ariel Durant (/dəˈrænt/; May 10, 1898 – October 25, 1981)[1] was a Russian-born American researcher and writer. She was the coauthor of The Story of Civilization with her husband, Will Durant. They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
Biography
Ariel Durant was born Chaya Kaufman in Proskurov, Russian Empire (now Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine) to Jewish parents Ethel Appel Kaufman and Joseph Kaufman. Ariel later went by Ida.[2] The family emigrated in 1900, living for several months in London 1900–01 en route to the United States, where they arrived in 1901. She had three older sisters, Sarah, Mary, and Flora, and three older brothers, Harry, Maurice, and Michael.[2] Flora became Ariel’s companion and sometime assistant, and moved with the Durants to California.
She met her future husband when she was a student at Ferrer Modern School in New York City. He was then a teacher at the school, but resigned his post to marry Ariel, who was 15 at the time of the wedding, on October 31, 1913.[3] The wedding took place at New York’s City Hall, to which she roller-skated from her family’s home in Harlem. The couple had one daughter, Ethel Benvenuta Durant (1919-1986)[2] and adopted a son, CAPT Louis Richard “Lipschultz” Durant (1917-2008) who was the son of Ariel’s sister Flora Kaufman Lipschultz and her former husband, Joseph Bernard Lipschultz (divorced 1928.) Louis had lived in Will and Ariel’s home with his mother, Flora, when he was quite young (1920 Census).
Ariel Durant legally changed her first name to Ariel after the character from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which was the nickname her husband gave her because he said she was “strong and brave as a boy, and as swift and mischievous as an elf”.[1]
The Durants were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968 for Rousseau and Revolution, the tenth volume of The Story of Civilization. In 1977 they were presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Gerald Ford, and Ariel was named “Woman of the Year” by the city of Los Angeles. The Durants received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1976.[4]
The Durants wrote a 420-page joint autobiography, published by Simon & Schuster in 1978 (A Dual Autobiography; later ISBN 0-671-23078-6).
The Durants died within two weeks of each other in 1981 and are buried at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. Ariel told Ethel’s daughter, Monica Mehill, that it was their differences that made them grow.[2]
FYI
NASA: Astronomy Picture of the Day
Culture: Empathy and imagination help us to engage when we enjoy a book or an audiobook – but why do we feel so sad when we come to the end? Howard Timberlake survives the post-book blues.
Sorry about the PayWall
The Wall Street Journal: Tech Industry Warns That More Remote-Work Jobs Are Headed Out of U.S. Worker shortages, limited immigration in the U.S. may favor jobs in Canada and elsewhere
By ADI IGNATIUS, Harvard Business Review: Accenture CEO Julie Sweet on the Most Important Skill Job Seekers Need Today
Accenture CEO Julie Sweet shares the one interview question applicants are often asked to answer: What have you learned in the last six months that was not part of work? “It’s a really simple, but very effective, way of understanding whether you’re hiring someone who likes to learn,” she says.
By Zac Cadwalader, Sprudge: The Surprisingly Long History Of Instant Coffee
By Nilay Patel, The Verge: How big companies kill ideas — and how to fight back, with Tony Fadell Stories and lessons from his new book, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making
By John Timmer, ARS Technica: Corals convert sunscreen chemical into a toxin that kills them The chemical in the sunblock is fine until the coral alters it.
NPR, The Associated Press: Paris trial to open for 2009 plane crash that left 152 dead and 1 alive
The email
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May 10, 2022 Kindle Freebie:
Heroes Live Here: A Tribute to Camp Pendleton Marines Since 9/11 Kindle Edition
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Recipes
Taste of Home: 100 Recipes from the Women We Love
Just the Recipe: Paste the URL to any recipe, click submit, and it’ll return literally JUST the recipe- no ads, no life story of the writer, no nothing EXCEPT the recipe.
DamnDelicious
RecipeTinEats
- Spinach French Onion Cob Dip – Australia’s favourite dip! June 19, 2026Meet Australia’s favourite dip!!! This Spinach French Onion Cob Dip is made using a French Onion Soup mix and is served in a cob bread loaf. It is unapologetically retro, gloriously unfashionable, breaks every real-food rule I preach, and is completely addictive!! Spinach French Onion Cob Dip This dip has been a fixture at Australian... […]Nagi
- Easy Slow Cooker BBQ Shredded Beef June 16, 2026Slow Cooker BBQ Shredded Beef is what you make when you want a big batch of crowd-pleasing food with relatively little effort. The succulent pulled beef is smothered in an incredible homemade barbecue sauce, and there’s so many ways to serve it – pile into sliders, heap onto plates or stuff into baked potatoes! Easy... […]Nagi
wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for June 20 June 20, 2026Picture of the day Flower of a Geranium sanguineum, bloody crane's-bill. Focus stack of 51 photos.
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for June 19 June 19, 2026Picture of the day Alley on Escheckstraße (and part of the cuckoo clock trail), Schönwald im Schwarzwald, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
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Welcome to the Stump the Bookseller blog!
Stump the Bookseller is a service offered by Loganberry Books to reconnect people to the books they love but can’t quite remember. In brief (for more detailed information see our About page), people can post their memories here, and the hivemind goes to work. After all, the collective mind of bibliophiles, readers, parents and librarians around the world is much better than just a few of us thinking. Together with these wonderful Stumper Magicians, we have a nearly 50% success rate in finding these long lost but treasured books. The more concrete the book description, the better the success rate, of course. It is a labor of love to keep it going, and there is a modest fee. Please see the How To page to find price information and details on how to submit your Book Stumper and payment.
Thanks to everyone involved to keep this forum going: our blogging team, the well-read Stumper Magicians, the many referrals, and of course to everyone who fondly remembers the wonder of books from their childhood and wants to share or revisit that wonder. Isn’t it amazing, the magic of a book?