12 June: Diary Day

Today is Diary Day. 10 things you might not know about diaries:

1. The word diary comes from the Latin diarium which means "daily allowance."
2. The related word journal comes from the Old French jurnal meaning "of the day" (the modern French word for day is jour).
3. Someone who keeps a diary is called a diarist.
4. The earliest known diary is the Diary of Merer, which dates back to ancient Egypt. It was more of a logbook, really, describing the transportation of limestone from Tura to Giza, probably for the outside of the Great Pyramid.
5. Samuel Pepys was an early diarist who lived in the 17th century and was one of the first to include personal musings as well as business transactions. A lesser known diarist of the time was John Evelyn. Their diaries are of historical importance because they wrote about what day to day life was like in their time, as well as about historic events like the Great Plague of London, and the Great fire of London.
6. The Diary of a Young Girl was the diary written by Anne Frank while hiding from the Nazis in the 1940s. Her father Otto Frank the diary and had it published after the War. The original text contained some sexually explicit material, which was edited out.
7. The first portable diary was created in 1908 by the Smythson company.
8. Nowadays people publish their daily musings on the internet so they're not as private as they once were. The first online diary is thought to be Claudio Pinhanez's "Open Diary," published at the MIT Media Lab website from 14 November 1994 until 1996.
9. Writing a diary is sometimes seen as self-exploration, or as a means to work through a problem or difficult decision. Carl Jung, Aleister Crowley and Anaïs Nin all wrote diaries of this type.
10. Then there is a whole genre of fiction which consists of the diary of a central character. Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith and his brother Weedon is an early example. Bram Stoker's Dracula was written in that format. More modern examples are the radio show Mrs. Dale's Diary, The Diaries of Adrian Mole, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and of course, Bridget Jones' Diary.

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