Word of the day
- putative March 16, 2026Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 16, 2026 is: putative • \PYOO-tuh-tiv\ • adjective Putative is a formal word used to describe something that is generally believed, supposed, or assumed to be something specified. It is always used before a noun. // The group's putative leader was conspicuously absent from the meeting. See the […]Merriam-Webster
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On This Day
1815 – Joachim Murat issues the Rimini Proclamation which would later inspire Italian unification.
The Rimini Proclamation was a proclamation on 30 March 1815 by Joachim Murat, who had been made king of Naples by Napoleon I. Murat had just declared war on Austria and used the proclamation to call on Italians to revolt against their Austrian occupiers and to show himself as a backer of Italian independence, in an attempt to find allies in his desperate battle to hang onto his throne. It began:
“ Italians! The hour has come to engage in your highest destiny. ”
The proclamation impressed Alessandro Manzoni, who wrote a poem later that year entitled Il proclama di Rimini, but he left it unfinished after Murat’s military campaign failed.
Born On This Day
1863 – Mary Calkins, American philosopher and psychologist (d. 1930)
Mary Whiton Calkins (/ˈkɔːlkɪnz, ˈkæl-/; 30 March 1863 – 26 February 1930[1]) was an American philosopher and psychologist. Calkins was also the first woman to become president of the American Psychological Association and the American Philosophical Association.
Background
Mary Whiton Calkins was born on March 30, 1863 in Hartford, Connecticut;[2] she was the eldest of five children.[3] Her parents were Wolcott and Charlotte Whiton Calkins; Mary came from a very close-knit family and it is said that her personal life revolved around them.[2] She moved to Newton, Massachusetts in 1880 with her family to live for the rest of her life; this is also where she began her education.[3] Her family moved from New York to Massachusetts because her father, who was a Presbyterian minister, got a new job there.[4] Mary’s father took an active role in overseeing his children’s education, and when she graduated high school, he had planned her studies so that she was able to enroll in college.[2] In 1882, Calkins entered into Smith College as a sophomore.[3] She studied for the year, but in 1883 with the death of her sister she took the year off from college and studied on her own.[3] While taking time off from school, Calkins received private tutoring lessons in Greek.[2] During this year, she also tutored two of her brothers and studied Greek.[5] She then returned to Smith College in 1884 to graduate with a concentration in classics and philosophy.[3]
Upon graduation, Calkins and her family took an eighteen-month trip to Europe and Calkins was able to explore Leipzig, Italy and Greece. As a major in Classics, Calkins took advantage of the opportunities and spent several months traveling and studying modern Greek and classics.[2] When she returned to Massachusetts, her father set up an interview with the President of Wellesley College, an all women’s college, for a tutoring job in the Greek department.[3] She worked as a tutor and eventually as a teacher[2] in the Greek department for three years. A professor in the philosophy department took notice of Calkins’ excellent teaching and offered her a position to teach the subject of psychology, which was new to the philosophy department’s curriculum.[2] Calkins accepted the offer on the contingency that she would be able to study psychology for one year.[6]
Calkins was born in a time when women were being given more opportunities, such as the opportunity to attend college and teach at those colleges. However, she still faced some opposition and inequality in her career. There were not many options for women looking to earn a degree in psychology. Calkins contemplated psychology programs at the University of Michigan (with John Dewey), Yale (with G.T. Ladd), Clark (with Granville Stanley Hall), and Harvard (with William James).[2] Calkins expressed interest in studying in a laboratory setting, and the only schools with that specification at the time were Clark and Harvard.[2] Likely due to its proximity to her home in Newton, Calkins sought admission to Harvard.[2] Harvard did not permit women to study at their institution. Her father and the president of Wellesley sent letters to Harvard requesting that she be admitted to the school. Though Harvard did not admit Calkins as a student, the school did allow her to sit in on lectures. Calkins decided to take classes at Harvard Annex (predecessor of Radcliffe College), taught by Josiah Royce.[7] Royce influenced Calkins to take regular classes through Harvard, taught by William James, with males as her peers. Harvard president Charles William Eliot was opposed to this idea of a woman learning in the same room as a man.[7] With pressure from James and Royce, along with a petition from Mary’s father, Eliot allowed Calkins to study in the regular classes, with the stipulation that she was not to be a registered student.[7]
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wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for March 16 March 16, 2026Picture of the day A pair of white storks mating in Nové Veselí, Czech Republic.
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for March 15 March 15, 2026Picture of the day Common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis), Arrábida National Park, Portugal. The common cuttlefish is one of the largest and best-known cuttlefish species. They are a migratory species that spend the summer and spring inshore for spawning and then move to depths of 100 to 200m during autumn and winter. They only have a […]
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