Disguising the real issue, etc.

August 19, 1902: Poet Ogden Nash was born. Here's a verse:

They take a paper and they read the headlines,
So they've heard of unemployment and they've heard of breadlines,
And they philanthropically cure them all
By getting up a costume charity ball.



August 20, 1980: The first solo ascent of Mt. Everest was made on this date.

"Keep you down, and have breakfast while the asinine hunters after the picturesque go braying up the hill." -- Willam Makepeace Thackeray.



August 21, 1878: The American Bar Association was formed.

"Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished." -- Jeremy Bentham.

Bless the beasts, the children

July 17: Art Linkletter, TV host of Kids Say the Darndest Things, was born July 17, 1912.

"I must have been an insufferable child; all children are." -- George Bernard Shaw.



July 18: English author William Makepeace Thackeray was born July 18, 1811.

"Thackeray," said fellow writer John Ruskin, "settled like a meat-fly on whatever one had got for dinner, and made one sick of it."