Clisson et Eugénie, also known in English as Clisson and Eugénie, is a romantic novella, written by Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon wrote Clisson et Eugénie in 1795, and it is widely acknowledged as being a fictionalised account of the doomed romance of a soldier and his lover, which paralleled Bonaparte’s own relationship with Eugénie Désirée Clary. Clisson, a heroic revolutionary French soldier, but tired of war, meets and falls for Eugénie at a public bath. Retiring from the military, Clisson and Eugénie marry and raise several children within an idyllic countryside retreat, but war returns and Clisson feels compelled to serve his country. Unfortunately, Clisson is injured in battle and Berville, a comrade sent to reassure Eugénie, seduces her instead, and she stops sending Clisson letters. Heartbroken at the end of his marriage, Clisson then sends off one final letter to his unfaithful wife and her new lover before deliberately engineering his death at the front of an armed charge toward the enemy. (via Wikipedia)
Crocodiles in Florida are thriving in the water around a nuclear generating station
Back in the 1970s, the future was not looking bright for the American crocodile, a hulking but shy reptile that once made its home throughout the mangrove and estuarine regions of South Florida. Due to over-hunting and habitat destruction, the species’ numbers had dwindled to fewer than 300 individuals in the state. In 1975, Florida’s American crocodiles were listed as endangered. But just two years later, something unexpected happened. Employees at the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station, located around 25 miles south of Miami, spotted a crocodile nest among the plant’s man-made network of cooling canals. Florida Power & Light Co. (FPL), the company that operates the plant, set up a program to monitor and protect the crocodiles that had settled in this unusual habitat. And ever since, the plant’s resident croc population has been booming. According to Marcus Lim of the Associated Press, FPL wildlife specialists collected 73 crocodile hatchlings just last week, and are expecting dozens more to emerge into the world over the remainder of the summer. (via the Smithsonian)
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Giving a toast got its name because the Romans used to add crumbs of toast to their wine
Ancient Greeks drank to each other’s health and welfare. In The Odyssey, Ulysses drank to the health of Achilles. The idea of poison—which was a potent weapon in the sixth century B.C.—also came into play. According to David Fulmer’s book A Gentleman’s Guide to Toasting, toasting was “a good faith gesture to assure the drink wasn’t spiked with poison.” The best way to prove a drink was safe for sipping was to take the first sip. Just as a handshake assured others that nothing was hidden up one’s sleeve, drinking a shared libation in front of others signified to all its worthiness for consumption. The Romans built upon this Greek custom of drinking to others’ health and well-being: They added toasted bread crumbs to their goblets, reducing the acidity of the often bitter wine. Thus came the appellation “to toast”— referring to the drink itself—from the Latin term “tostus,” meaning “to dry up” or “scorch.” (via Toastmasters)
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Actor Jack Black overcame a cocaine addiction when he was still a teenager
Jack Black was barely in his teens when he became addicted to cocaine at age 14, but the Goosebumps actor says that he found the path to sobriety with special support from a non-judgmental school therapist. Black, now 46, fell into addiction about four years after his parents, aerospace engineers Judith Love and Thomas Black, divorced when he was 10. “I remember just lots of turmoil from that time period,” he said. “I was having a lot of troubles with cocaine … I was hanging out with some pretty rough characters. I was scared to go to school [because] one of them wanted to kill me. I wanted to get out of there.” His parents helped make that happen, enrolling him in Poseidon, a well-regarded school for “troubled youth” in the Los Angeles area. Black later left Poseidon for Crossroads, a private school in Santa Monica whose fellow alums include Kate Hudson, Liv Tyler and Zooey Deschanel, and he discovered his love of acting. (via People)
Namibia has a pride of maritime lions who live by the ocean and eat only seafood
In Namibia, a group of desert lions have left their traditional hunting grounds for the Atlantic coast, to become the world’s only maritime lions. There are just 12 desert lions living along the Skeleton Coast, out of a total population of around 80. They have moved from the arid Namib Desert to the Atlantic Ocean in search of food, drastically changing their diet and behaviour in 2017 to adapt to this new habitat – and appearing to thrive from the change. Van Malderen has watched Gamma grow up, first encountering the lioness when she was three months old. She is now three-and-a-half years, “almost an adult,” she says, adding that the lioness has become a fearsome hunter capable of killing 40 seals in a single night. Namibia’s desert lions used to live along the Skeleton Coast in the 1980s but retreated to the desert after a drought and conflict with farmers wiped out most of the population, says Stander. More than 30 years later, the animals “have found their way back to the coast”, he says. (via the BBC)
