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Greek fragment of the Apocalypse of Peter

The Apocalypse of Peter is an apocryphal text of the 2nd century. It is the earliest-written extant work depicting a Christian account of heaven and of hell in detail. The work describes a divine vision experienced by Peter through Jesus Christ. It delves into a vision of the afterlife (katabasis), and details both heavenly bliss for the righteous and infernal punishments for the damned. The punishments are graphically described and loosely correspond to "an eye for an eye": blasphemers are hung by their tongues; liars have their lips cut off; callous rich people are pierced by stones and are dressed in filthy rags; and so on. While the Apocalypse of Peter influenced other early Christian works, it eventually came to be considered inauthentic and was not included in the standard canon of the New Testament. It influenced later works in which the protagonist takes a tour of the realms of the afterlife, including the Apocalypse of Paul, and the Divine Comedy of Dante. (Full article...)

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Seunghan

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... that Amrita Sher-Gil painted a portrait of Helen Chaman Lall without expecting a fee?
... that SZA's "Snooze" happens to be a sleeper hit?

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On this day

December 16: Day of Reconciliation in South Africa

Boston Tea Party

1598 – Led by Admiral Yi Sun-sin, the Korean navy were victorious at Battle of Noryang, ending the Japanese invasions of Korea.
1773 – American Revolution: A group of colonists threw chests of tea into Boston Harbor (pictured) to protest British taxation without representation.
1938 – Adolf Hitler instituted the Cross of Honour of the German Mother, an order of merit for German mothers with at least four children.
1997 – Amid an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the British government banned the sale of beef on the bone for human consumption.
2012 – A woman was gang-raped and fatally assaulted on a bus in Delhi, generating protests across India against inadequate security for women.

Elizabeth Carter (b. 1717)
James Murrell (d. 1860)
Camille Saint-Saëns (d. 1921)
Taliep Petersen (d. 2006)

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Victoria, British Columbia

British Columbia has 53 cities out of its 161 municipalities. According to the 2021 Canadian census, British Columbia is the third-most populous province in Canada, with 5,000,879 inhabitants, and the fourth-largest province by land area, covering 920,686.55 square kilometres (355,479.06 square miles). For a municipality in British Columbia to be categorized as a city, it must have a population of at least 5,000. The largest city by population in British Columbia is Vancouver, with 662,248 residents, and the smallest is Greenwood, with 702 residents. The largest city by land area is Abbotsford, which spans 375.55 square kilometres (145.00 square miles), while the smallest is Duncan, at 2.07 square kilometres (0.80 square miles). Victoria (pictured) is the capital city of British Columbia. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Caroline Hill (1845 – c. 1926) was an English actress. She began acting as a child in the company of Samuel Phelps and soon joined the company of J. B. Buckstone at the Haymarket Theatre. There she created roles in several new plays, including some by W. S. Gilbert, in whose plays she continued to act later in her career. She played at various London and provincial theatres in the 1870s. In 1883, Hill married the actor Herbert Kelcey, with whom she had begun to appear on stage. The couple played mostly in New York City in the 1880s, and Hill continued to act through the 1890s, mostly in England. This 1870 photograph shows Hill as Mirza in a production of Gilbert's The Palace of Truth.

Photograph credit: London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company; restored by Adam Cuerden

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