Lorca

 It's the birthday of the poet Federico García Lorca, born in Granada, Spain (1898). In 1928, he published a book of poems based on gypsy folklore called The Gypsy Ballads. It made him Spain's most popular living poet. His poems appealed both to the literary critics and the common people, and many of them were set to music. García Lorca once heard a prostitute singing a song in the street, and he was shocked to realize that he had written the lyrics she was singing. In 1998, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth, the Spanish government flew a helicopter over García Lorca's home city of Granada and dropped 100,000 leaflets of his poetry. Lorca said: "To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves."