- ATRIA (Alpha Trianguli Australis). Among the easiest constellations to invent are simple triangles. There are two of them, one north (Triangulum) and one far south (Triangulum Australe). Of the two, the latter is the larger and brighter, its Alpha star (from which we get the modern proper name, “Atria”) a nice bright second magnitude (1.92), ranking 41st.
- Frederick the Great of Prussia’s Eulogy on Julien Offray de la Mettrie (marxists.org)
Julien Offray de la Mettrie was born in Saint Malo, on the twenty-fifth of December, 1709, to Julien Offray de la Mettrie and Marie Gaudron, who were living by a trade large enough to provide a good education for their son. They sent him to the college of Coutance to study the humanities; he went from there to Paris, to the college of Plessis; he studied his rhetoric at Caen, and since he had much genius and imagination, he won all the prizes for eloquence. He was a born orator and was passionately fond of poetry and belles-lettres, but his father thought he would earn more as an ecclesiastic than as a poet, and destined him for the church. He sent him, the following year, to the college of Plessis where he studied logic under M. Cordier, who was more a Jansenist than a logician.