Uncommon Knowledge

Uncommon Knowledge: Why was the first Valentine difficult to deliver?

February 8, 2014

Diamond Arrow Necklace | UncommonGoodsYou might think you went through a lot elbowing fellow shoppers for the last box of chocolates and finagling a cozy table for two by the window, but sending the first known written Valentine had some challenges of its own. Charles, Duke of Orleans sent his wife a sweet two line poem calling her his “very gentle Valentine” while being held in the Tower of London. Taken as a prisoner of war after the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, he stayed there for twenty-four years, writing a multitude of poems during his captivity. We doubt the Tower of London offered express shipping, so Cupid definitely had his work cut out for him.

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Nathan is a copywriter and award-winning musical theater writer, whose work includes an adaptation of Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver. He has also been a classical violinist, tutored Kazakhstani jewelers in entrepreneurship, created large-scale games played across entire city blocks, served as a missionary in South Korea, conducted experiments in sonoluminescence, co-founded an exotic fruit-growing business, was a theater critic for Tucson Weekly, and as a teenager composed a women’s jazz quartet that is currently performed around the world.

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