Chicago-North RWA--Fire & Ice Contest--Chicago-North RWA is pleased to announce its Fire & Ice contest. Send your first chapter where the hero and heroine meet. Enter one of four categories--Contemporary, Historical, Paranormal or Inspirational. There's a $50 prize for each category, and editors will judge the final round. Check out the contest rules at the chapter web site: http//www.literary-liaisons.com/cnindex.html The winners will be announced at the RWA National Conference in Chicago this year.

RWA Favorite Book of the Year--Did you vote for 1998 Favorite Book of the Year? If so, check out the results on the RWA National web site. Click Here.

Service Award--Michelle J. Hoppe, President of Literary Liaisons, is honored to have received the first annual Service Award from her local RWA chapter this past December. The award is given to recognize those who offer outstanding service to the chapter. She is currently the webmaster for Chicago-North, and is coordinating their 1999 Fire & Ice contest.

There are many new additions to Literary Liaisons. After reading about them below, check them out on the web site.

Non-fiction:
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
Queen Victoria's Secrets by Adrienne Munich
The Right to Write by Julia Cameron
Slow Down...And Get More Done by Marshall Cook
Time Management for the Creative Person by Lee Silber
Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold M. Packard 

Fiction:

Various titles by Sir Walter Scott

To Marry an English Lord, or How Anglomania Really Got Started by Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace

Georgia Romance Writers
Greater Vancouver Chapter 

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
Queen Victoria's Secrets by Adrienne Munich
The Right to Write by Julia Cameron
Slow Down...And Get More Done by Marshall Cook
Time Management for the Creative Person by Lee Silber
Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold M. Packard 

Camelot International--varied contest, including medieval history, European royalty, Camelot overview, peerages and a searchable index
For Writers Only--a wealth of links for the writer
Sharpwriter.com--free quick references for writers-a handy virtual desktop
SYMBOLS.com--find the meaning of a symbol or create you own. You can search by symbol type or word.
Wacky Writer's World--links and tips related to writing-the craft of writing, the business of writing and other topics of interest to writers

Feature Article 

• The Chinese invented the toothbrush in 1498. So why did it take Beecham's until 1892 to market the first toothpaste in a tube?
• Chocolate was imported to Spain from Mexico in 1520, then to Italy in 1606, and France in 1660. The English had been drinking chocolate since 1657.
• Sulphur matches were first mentioned in England in 1530. Is it any wonder Life Insurance policies followed in 1583?
• The first graphite pencils were made in 1584. No mention is made as to whether they were No. 2 Pencils.
• The first jeans were made by Levi Strauss in 1850. Rivets were added in 1874 so the pockets carrying all those rock specimens could hold up better.
• The first regular manufacture of perambulators began in London in 1850.
• D.M. Smith of Springfield Vermont patented the spring clothespin in 1853.
• Heinrich Goebel invented the first form of the electric light bulb in 1854. And parents have been after their children ever since then to turn them off when leaving a room.

• The first Life Insurance policy was taken out on June 18, 1583 by London Alderman Richard Martin.
• The first deaf mute to learn to read lips was Luis de Velasco in 1615.
• The first submarine was built in London by the Dutch physicist Cornelius Drebbel in 1624. So if the sandwich was invented in 1762, when was the first submarine sandwich made?
• Ice cream was a popular dessert in Paris by 1677. Do you suppose mint chocolate-chip was available back then?
• The first weather forecasts appeared in the May 14, 1692 issue of A Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade. Based on previous year's records, they were neither scientific nor accurate. Has much changed over the years?
• Joseph Merlin, a musical-instrument maker, wore the first roller skates to a masquerade in 1760. Too bad violins and roller-skates don't mix. Especially with mirrors.
• The first reference to a jigsaw puzzle was in London in 1763, by John Spilsbury.
• The first Traveler's Checks were issued by the London Exchange Banking Co. on January 1, 1772. I wonder if they were used to pay for holiday expenses?
• A dry-cleaning process was discovered by M. Jolly-Bellin of Paris in 1849. Leave it to a woman to devise an easy way to clean clothes.
• The first literary agency was founded in London by A.P. Watt in 1875. Do you think they represented romance?
• Mrs. W.A. Cockran perfected the first dishwashing machine in 1889. Again, a woman had to think of this.

• Tea was first drunk in England in 1650. Yet, the first tea shop didn't open there until 1884. Can you imagine an England without tea?
• The rolltop desk was devised by Abner Cutler of Buffalo, New York in 1850. Somebody had to devise a way to hide all that clutter when company came calling.
• The Teddy Bear, named after President Theodore Roosevelt, was created in 1902.
• Nabisco introduced Oreo cookies in 1911. What is life without Oreo cookies?
• Zipper fastenings were first used on women's dresses in 1930. How long do you suppose it took a man to learn how to unzip the fastening?
• Tamper-proof (and often impossible to open) packaging for non-prescription drugs began in 1982.

This newsletter, as the first of the last year of this millenium, offers an eclectic collection of articles and resources. For the time-challenged, we offer books on organizing your life. For the serious researcher, try one of the Queen Victoria references. And for the creative spirits, we feature Julia Cameron's works. Finally, when you just want to have fun, take a look at our "First Things First" article. You might just be amazed. So whatever your goals are for this year, you should find something here to satisfy your needs. And we look forward to sharing another year with you.

Q: A reader recently asked about educating women in the Victorian Era.

A: In order to answer that question correctly, the writer must be familiar with her character's goals. Women in late Victorian England were mostly educated at home, while American women sometimes attended universities. One's social status also played a part in woman's education. The poor weren't educated. They had to work. Middle class families couldn't afford higher education. Upper class women were raised with one goal in mind--to marry and to marry well. That isn't to say there was an occasional rebel who applied to Oxford or Cambridge. But it was the exception, rather than the rule. So, know your character's needs first, then start creating their background accordingly.

Births
Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor
Alexander Graham Bell, American inventor, born in Scotland.
Millicent Garrett Fawcett, British suffrgist
Paul von Hindenburg, future President of German Weimar Republic
Max Liebermann, German impressionist painter

Deaths
Mendelssohn, composer

Politics
July 26--Liberia is proclaimed an independent republic under the presidency of Virginia octoroon Joseph Jenkins Roberts. It is the first African colony to gain independence.
September 13--U.S. forces capture Mexico City when The Battle of Chapultepec ends in victory for Gen. Scott whose men have scaled a fortified hill on the outskirts of Mexico City. Gen. Santa Anna flees Mexico City.
The Sonderbund War begins in Switzerland.
Economic depression engulfs England, provincial banks fail, and the 153-year-old Bank of England comes under pressure.
Escaped slave Frederick Douglass, begins publication at Rochester, N.Y., of an abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.
"The Communist Manifesto" is published. The work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, they have been retained to write it by the newly formed Communist League at London. The League adopts its principles December 8.
Oliver Wendell Holmes becomes dean of the Harvard Medical School.
The American Medical Association is founded under the leadership of upstate New York doctor Nathan Smith Davis.
More than 200,000 emigrants leave Ireland, up from 60,000 in 1842, and many come to America. The poor pay a fare of between £3 and £5 ($15 to $25) per head and passengers provide their own food, which is often inadequate when poor winds make the passage a long one.
A great migration from the Netherlands begins to the U.S. Middle West.
The New York Commissioners of Emigration begin to keep accurate records for the first time.
July 10--New York's first Chinese immigrants arrive aboard the seagoing junk Kee Ying out of Guangzhou (Canton) with 35 Cantonese whose voyage has taken 212 sailing days.

The Arts
Charlotte Bronte publishes Jane Eyre.
Emily Bronte publishes Wuthering Heights.
William Makepeace Thackeray publishes Vanity Fair.
Captain Frederick Marryat publishes The Children of the New Forest.
Herman Melville publishes Omoo.
Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is a long poem about the expulsions of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755 and 1784.
March 14--Verdi's opera "Macbeth," opens in Florence.

Daily Life
July 24--The Mormons found Salt Lake City. Brigham Young organizes the "State of Deseret," an independent nation with himself as president.
Minneapolis is founded across from St. Anthony's Falls on the west bank of the upper Mississippi. The town takes its name from the Falls of Minnehaha combined with the Greek word for city.
Evaporated milk is made for the first time.
The first ring doughnuts are introduced by Camden, Maine, baker's apprentice Hanson Crockett Gregory, 15, who knocks the soggy center out of a fried doughnut.
June 8--The British Factory Act restricts the working day for women and children between 13 and 18 to ten hours.
Charitable Cookery, or the Poor Man's Regenerator, is published in London. Its author is Reform Club chef Alexis Soyer, who establishes a soup kitchen for starving Londoners as the economic depression creates widespread unemployment.
July 1--The first U.S. adhesive postage stamps go on sale in the form of Benjamin Franklin 5¢ stamps and George Washington 10¢ stamps, but use of adhesive stamps will not be obligatory until January 1, 1856.
The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin begins publication April 12.
June 10--The Chicago Tribune begins publication as the Chicago Daily Tribune.
New York, with a population of 400,000, has 16 daily newspapers including the Evening Post, Sun, Herald, and Tribune.
Paris jeweler Louis François Cartier opens a small shop that will grow to have branches worldwide.
Europe's first covered shopping arcade, the glass-enclosed Royal Galleries of St. Hubert, opens in Brussels.
A new British Museum opens in London's Great Russell Street to replace the Montague House museum opened in 1759. The great circular reading room will be completed in 1857.
Iowa State University is founded at Iowa City.
London has an influenza epidemic that will take 15,000 lives in the next 2 years.

Technology
I.T. Semmelweis, Hungarian physician, discovers the connection between childbed fever and puerperal infection.
Cyrus McCormick forms a partnership with C. M. Gray and builds a three-story brick reaper factory on the north bank of the Chicago River near Lake Michigan.
John Deere builds a factory at Moline, Ill., to produce his self-polishing steel plows.
Arunah S. Abell's Philadelphia Public Ledger installs Richard Hoe's 1846 rotary press, prints 8,000 papers per hour, and becomes the first newspaper able to publish large daily editions.
Steam powers a U.S. cotton mill for the first time at Salem, Mass., where the Maumkoag Steam Cotton Mill begins production.
The "Mormon battalion" under Lieut. Col. Philip St. George Cooke opens a wagon road from Santa Fe to San Diego. Cooke arrived at the San Diego mission January 29, having left Santa Fe 100 days earlier. Traveling through desert, mountains, and hostile Apache country, he and his 400 men have dug wells along the way to establish the Santa Fe Trail that thousands of California-bound émigrés will soon follow.
London physician John Snow, introduces ether into British surgery. Elsewhere, ether is used as an anaesthetic in obstetrics by Scottish physician James Young Simpson, who discovers the anaesthetic properties of chloroform and introduces it into obstetric practice
Nitroglycerin is discovered by Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero, whose highly explosive liquid will be used chiefly in dynamite.
Nitroglycerin proves useful in relieving symptoms of angina pectoris.
Butterick Patterns have their beginnings in a technique invented by U.S. tailor-shirtmaker Ebenezer Butterick, for printing and cutting paper dressmaking patterns that can be used with sewing machines.

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