FYI May 20, 2018

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On This Day

1631 – The city of Magdeburg in Germany is seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years’ War.

Magdeburg (German pronunciation: [ˈmakdəbʊɐ̯k] (About this sound listen); Low Saxon: Meideborg, [ˈmaˑɪdebɔɐ̯x]) is the capital city and the second largest city of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Magdeburg is situated on the Elbe River.

Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the archbishopric of Magdeburg, was buried in the town’s cathedral after his death. Magdeburg’s version of German town law, known as Magdeburg rights, spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The city is also well known for the Sack of Magdeburg, which sparked outrage across the Protestant world and became the worst massacre of the Thirty Years’ War. Prior to it, Magdeburg was one of the largest and most prosperous German cities, and a notable member of the Hanseatic League. Magdeburg was destroyed twice in its history. Though aerial bombing by the Allies destroyed much of the city in 1945, it suffered a much greater damage at the hands of Catholics in 1631.

Magdeburg is the site of two universities, the Otto-von-Guericke University and the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences.[2]

Nowadays Magdeburg is a traffic junction as well as an industrial and trading centre. The production of chemical products, steel, paper and textiles are of particular economic significance, along with mechanical engineering and plant engineering, ecotechnology and life-cycle management, health management and logistics.

In 2005 Magdeburg celebrated its 1200th anniversary. In June 2013 Magdeburg was hit by record breaking flooding.[3]

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Born On This Day

1882 – Sigrid Undset, Danish-Norwegian novelist, essayist, and translator, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1949)

Sigrid Undset (20 May 1882 – 10 June 1949) was a Norwegian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.[2]

Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, but her family moved to Norway when she was two years old. In 1924, she converted to Catholicism. She fled Norway for the United States in 1940 because of her opposition to Nazi Germany and the German invasion and occupation of Norway, but returned after World War II ended in 1945.

Her best-known work is Kristin Lavransdatter, a trilogy about life in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages, portrayed through the experiences of a woman from birth until death. Its three volumes were published between 1920 and 1922.

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FYI

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Ideas

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