Spooner’s Day, is named for Rev. William Archibald Spooner, b. 1844, Dean and later Warden of New College in Oxford. This article from Reader’s Digest describes Spooner :

Spooner was an albino, small, with a pink face, poor eyesight, and a head too large for his body. His reputation was that of a genial, kindly, hospitable man. He seems also to have been something of an absent-minded professor. He once invited a faculty member to tea “to welcome our new archaeology Fellow.”
“But, sir,” the man replied, “I am our new archaeology Fellow.”
“Never mind,” Spooner said, “Come all the same.”

He was most famous, however, for getting his tang tungled. Spoonerisms are words or phrases in which sounds or syllables get swapped. Some of Spooner’s spoonerisms:
fighting a liar–lighting a fire
you hissed my mystery lecture–you missed my history lecture
cattle ships and bruisers–battle ships and cruisers
nosey little cook–cosy little nook
a blushing crow–a crushing blow
tons of soil–sons of toil
our queer old Dean–our dear old Queen
we’ll have the hags flung out–we’ll have the flags hung out

GWB’s most famous spoonerism:
“If the terriers and bariffs (barriers and tariffs) are torn down, this economy will grow.” (January 7, 2001 in Rochester, New York)

Also born on this date:
Emma Lazarus, b. 1849.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Margery Williams Bianco, b. 1881. Author of the classic children’s story of The Velveteen Rabbit. Read it here.

Stephen Vincent Benet, b. 1898 Winner of two Pulitzer prizes for poetry, one for the Civil War poem John Brown’s Body, he also wrote the short story The Devil and Daniel Webster. You can read this humorous story here. I read the story to a few of my urchins today, but they said they didn’t believe it!
Young Adventure, A Book of Poems by Stephen Vincent Benet.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, b. 1943. One of my two senators. I was looking at her website, and I found a list of books for children and adults about Texas and its history. Not a bad list, but they need to add the recent book I read about the Galveston hurricane of 1900, Galveston’s Summer of the Storm by Julie Lake.

Edited and reposted from July, 2005