On this day in ...... 1689 (320 years ago today), "the first professional woman writer in English," Aphra Behn (right), died and was buried in London's Westminster Abbey. She'd been born 39 years earlier outside of Canterbury, England. At some point in her 20s she married, but her husband soon died, and thereafter, in Antwerp, she served as a spy for King Charles II of Britain. She is believed to have visited Surinam, then a Dutch slaveholding colony -- a visit that provided source material for her 1688 novel Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave. A True History. A writer of fiction poetry, and plays, she's considered the author of the 1st epistolary novel, and a shaper of the female narrative voice. (credit for portrait of Behn by Mary Beale)
... 2003, at a ceremony in Athens, Greece, the 15 states then
members of the European Union joined 10 states seeking to become members in signing the Treaty of Accession, which set out conditions for joinder. Today the EU has 27 member states; the 2 most recent additions, on January 1, 2007, were Bulgaria and Romania.(Prior April 16 posts are here and here.)
