Happy Birthday, indigoskynet!

[the_gneech]

For your present, here's today's Forgotten English!

thrang
Busy, crowded with work or occupation; from the English throng, to crowd, and the German drang, pressure, drängen, to press, and the Flemish dringen, to press, to squeeze.

--Charles Mackay's Dictionary of Lowland Scotch, 1888

Speakers' Corner Begins
On this date in 1855, a crowd gathered in a part of London now known as Marble Arch to voice opposition to a law called the Sunday Trading Bill. But for nearly a century before that, speeches had been delivered here protesting such injustices as the steady stream of public hangings at nearby Tyburn Scaffold. These clamorings were sometimes interspersed with the pathetic final words of the condemned until 1783, when the executions were moved to Newgate prison. This now-fashionable corner of Hyde Park remains a bastion of free speech by would-be reformers, tub-thumpers, lunatics, and others. The sole restrictions on Speakers' Corner pulpiteers are that they avoid slander, obscenities, incitement of riots, and above all, blasphemy.

And for a bonus present, have some hard-hitting questions!

-The Gneech

Comments

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

Many thanks! ♥