July 11 is Bowdler's Day, the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Bowdler. He was a physician, but in the late 18th century he gave up medicine and obtained an introduction to Elizabeth Montagu, 'Queen of the Blues' (and you thought it was Bessie Smith) through whom he became part of a literary and philanthropic circle. This literary interest led him, in 1818, to produce the work for which he is most widely known: The Family Shakspeare [sic]. The subtitle of the book explains its purpose: to omit those words and expressions "which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family." He also cleaned up Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, although how a decline and fall can be told with bunnies and kitties is beyond us. And that, children, is how we got the word bowdlerize.