October 15 is the birthday of the great Roman poet, VIRGIL (70 BCE - 19 CE).

To learn why Virgil’s “Aenead” is still relevant today, CLICK HERE.

October 15 is the birthday of French philosopher PAUL-MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926-1984). Foucault's theories primarily addressed the relationships between power versus knowledge and liberty, and he analyzed how they are used as a form of social control through multiple institutions. To find out what Foucault would have thought of fake news and social media, CLICK HERE.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: On October 15, 1888, a letter was posted along with half a human kidney by a person who claimed to be the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated at least five women in the Whitechapel area of London over a period of several months.

"Mr Lusk,
Sir
I send you half the Kidney I took from one women preserved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nice. I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wate a while longer
signed
Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk"

October 15 is the birthday of French painter, illustrator, and caricaturist JAMES TISSOT (1836-1902). He is best known for a variety of genre paintings of contemporary European high society produced during the peak of his career, which focused on the people and women's fashion of the Belle Époque and Victorian England, but he would also explore many medieval, biblical, and Japoniste subjects throughout his life. His career included work as a caricaturist for Vanity Fair under the pseudonym of Coïdé. To see samples of his work, CLICK HERE.

October 15 is the birthday of the eminently quotable German philosopher FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland in 1869, at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.

To read some of Nietsche’s most memorable quotes, CLICK HERE.

Happy Birthday, EMERIL LAGASSE!! The American chef is 65 years old today. Woo Hoo!!! 🥳 🎂 🍾 🥂

"BAM!!"

To see Emeril’s recipe for Pineapple Upside Down Cake, CLICK HERE.