Pope Gregory the Great intended to make London, as the largest southern Anglo-Saxon city, the metropolitan see of southern England, but Christianity got a foothold first in the minor kingdom of Kent, whose heathen ruler Ethelbert had married a Frankish Christian princess. London was in the Kingdom of Essex and out of reach of the missionaries at first. Therefore, in part perhaps to flatter Ethelbert, his capital was made the cathedral city. Related: Canterburian. The shrine of Thomas à Becket, murdered there 1170, was a favorite pilgrimage destination.
Roman town buried by volcanic eruption 79 C.E., excavated beginning in 1755; the name is from Oscan pompe "five" (from PIE root *penkwe- "five"), in reference to its five districts. Related: Pompeian, which also can refer to the Roman consul Pompey or his followers.
isles off Cornwall, a name of unknown origin. Pliny has Silumnus, Silimnis. Perhaps it is connected with the Roman god Sulis (compare Aquae sulis "Bath," literally "waters of Sulis"). The -y might be Old Norse ey "island." The -c- was added 16c.-17c. "[A]bout the only certain thing that can be said is that the c of the modern spelling is not original but was added for distinction from ModE silly as this word developed in meaning from 'happy, blissful' to 'foolish.'" ["Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names"].
1981, named for the sake of Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger (1906-1980), who described it in 1944 (and called it autistic psychopathy; German autistischen psychopathen). A standard diagnosis since 1992; recognition of Asperger's work was delayed, perhaps, because his school and much of his early research were destroyed by Allied bombing in 1944.
The example of autism shows particularly well how even abnormal personalities can be capable of development and adjustment. Possibilities of social integration which one would never have dremt of may arise in the course of development. [Hans Asperger, "Autistic psychopathy in Childhood," 1944]
