November 28, 2022 The Royal Society of London, Matsuo Basho, Gottlieb Haberlandt, Stefan Zweig, English Cottage by Andrew Sankey, and William Blake

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Historical Events
1660 On this day, the first meeting occurred of what would become The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.
The Royal Society's Latin motto, 'Nullius in verba,' translates to "Take nobody's word for it." The motto reminded the Society's members to verify information through experiments and not just based on authority.
 
1694 Death of Matsuo Basho ("Bash=oh"), Japanese poet.
He is remembered as the most famous poet of the Edo period and the greatest master of haiku. 
In one verse, Matsuo wrote,
The temple bell stops
But I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
 
And in another poem from his book on traveling, he wrote,
Many things of the past
Are brought to my mind,
As I stand in the garden
Staring at a cherry tree.
 
1854 Birth of Gottlieb Haberlandt, Austrian botanist.
His father was a pioneer in 'soybean' work, and his physiologist son is now regarded as the grandfather of the birth control pill.
As for Gottlieb, he grew plant cells in tissue culture and was the first scientist to point out the possibility of the culture of Isolated & Plant Tissues. In 1902 he shared his original idea called totipotentiality ("to-'ti-pe-tent-chee-al-it-tee"), which Gottlieb defined as "the theory that all plant cells can give rise to a complete plant." Today we remember Gottlieb as the father of plant tissue culture.
During the 1950s scientists proved Gottlieb's totipotentiality. Indeed, any part of a plant grown in nutrient media under sterile conditions can create a whole new plant. Today, the technique of tissue culture is a very efficient tool for propagating improved plants for food, hardiness, and beauty. 
 
1881 Birth of Stefan Zweig, Austrian writer.
During the 1920s and 1930s, at the peak of his career, Stefan was one of the most widely translated writers in the world. 
In The Post-Office Girl, Stefan wrote,
For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden in front of his subsidised flat,
books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf in multicoloured rows: he watches
over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener's delight, holds them like fragile objects in his
thin, bloodless hands.
 
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