Today in History (April 18th):
1480: Birthdays: Italian Duchess Lucrezia Borgia.
1506: The cornerstone of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome was placed.
1775: American patriot Paul Revere began his famed ride through the Massachusetts countryside, crying out The British are coming! to rally the Minutemen.
1831: The University of Alabama was founded.
1857: Birthdays: Lawyer Clarence Darrow.
1882: Birthdays: Conductor Leopold Stokowski.
1906: An earthquake, estimated at magnitude-7.9, struck San Francisco, collapsing buildings and igniting fires that destroyed much of what remained of the city. By the time it was over three days later, almost 500 people were dead and more than 250,000 were homeless.
1922: Birthdays: Actor Barbara Hale.
1923: Yankee Stadium opened in New York.
1924: Birthdays: Musician Clarence Gatemouth Brown.
1942: U.S. planes bombed the Japanese mainland for the first time during World War II.
1945: Journalist Ernie Pyle, America’s most popular World War II correspondent, was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire on the island of Ie Shima in the Pacific.
1946: Birthdays: Actor Hayley Mills.
1947: Birthdays: Actor James Woods.
1949: The Republic of Ireland formally declared itself independent from Britain.
1953: Birthdays: Actor Rick Moranis.
1956: Birthdays: Actor Eric Roberts.
1961: Birthdays: Actor Jane Leeves.
1963: Birthdays: Late night talk show host Conan O’Brien; Actor Eric McCormack.
1967: Birthdays: Actor Maria Bello.
1976: Birthdays: Actor Melissa Joan Hart.
1979: Birthdays: TV personality Kourtney Kardashian.
1980: Rhodesia became the independent African nation of Zimbabwe.
1983: The U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, was severely damaged by a car-bomb explosion that killed 63 people, including 17 Americans.
1992: An 11-year-old Florida boy sued to divorce his natural parents and remain with his foster parents. The boy eventually won his lawsuit.
1993: The U.N. Security Council voted to toughen sanctions against Serbia because of its support for Bosnian Serbs trying to carve an ethnically pure state out of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1996: Gunmen killed 18 people and wounded 15 in an attack on tourists at the Egyptian pyramids.
2002: Former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey, D.-Neb., revealed that at least 13 civilians were killed by his U.S. Navy unit in a Vietnamese village in 1969.
2004: In one of his first acts as Spain’s prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero issued orders withdrawing all 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq.
2007: The U.S. Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, upheld a 2003 law banning so-called partial-birth abortion, a procedure performed usually late in pregnancy. More than 125 people were killed in a suicide car-bomb explosion near a Baghdad market.
2010: European airlines grounded for a fourth day by ash from a volcanic eruption in Iceland conducted test flights through the thick plume that had stranded thousands of travelers and caused mounting economic losses. Pope Benedict XVI met in Malta with Italian victims of sexual abuse by priests and pledged the church would seek justice against abusers.
2011: U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama reported an adjusted 2010 gross income of $1.73 million and paid $453,770 in federal tax, the White House said. The Obamas reported donating $245,075 to 36 charities.
2012: U.S. Secretary of State Leon Panetta condemned the behavior of American soldiers photographed posing with corpses of Afghan insurgents in 2010.
Quotes
“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.” – Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)
“If you don’t learn to laugh at troubles, you won’t have anything to laugh at when you grow old.” – Edward W. Howe
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” – Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968)
“To have great poets, there must be great audiences.” – Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)
“One is happy as a result of one’s own efforts once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.” – George Sand [pen name of Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin], novelist (1804-1876)
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer:
“As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.”
“Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.”
“Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?”
“He’s [Calvin Coolidge] the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth, Vermont.”
“History repeats itself. That’s one of the things wrong with history.”
“I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend, than be one.”
“I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.”
“I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure – that is all that agnosticism means.”
“I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure – that is all that agnosticism means.”
As a kamagra dropshipper levitra generika ,drug store items merchant gives you solutions at convincible expense. Recent studies have shown that the extent of annular calcification is sildenafil price in india carefully noted. Men also get suffer with complications allied to ejaculation, comprising premature ejaculation, belated ejaculation, sildenafil canada pharmacy http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/abandoned-red-panda-cubs-adopted-by-a-dog/ or the powerlessness to see orgasm upon ejaculation. There are some people who tend to face in their life. cute-n-tiny.com levitra properien
“I don’t like spinach, and I’m glad I don’t, because if I liked it I’d eat it, and I just hate it.”
vanity fair
PRONUNCIATION: (VAN-i-tee fair)
http://wordsmith.org/words/vanity_fair.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A place characterized by frivolity and ostentation.
ETYMOLOGY: After Vanity Fair, a fair that lasted all year long in the town of Vanity, in the novel Pilgrim’s Progress by writer and preacher John Bunyan (1628-1688). In the fair were traded houses, honors, titles, kingdoms, pleasures, and much more — sounds like an early version of eBay.
USAGE:
“[The Millionaire Fair] was a vanity fair of thin beautiful women sporting mink fur coats and low necklines decorated with glittering jewelry and dark-suited, elegant men shadowed by beefy bodyguards.” – Maria Danilova; In Moscow, A Nouveau Riche Showcase; The Associated Press; Nov 3, 2006.
“In one corner was Karl Rove, presidential adviser and global-warming denier. In the opposite corner was the An Inconvenient Truth tag team of singer Sheryl Crow and documentary producer Laurie David. Their encounter took place Saturday night in Washington at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, a vanity fair for journalists, politicos, and celebrities.” – The Lightning Round; The Philadelphia Inquirer; Apr 24, 2007.
Explore “vanity fair” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=vanity+fair
solecism
PRONUNCIATION: (SOL-uh-siz-uhm)
MEANING: (noun)
1. A nonstandard usage or grammatical construction; also, a minor blunder in speech.
2. A breach of good manners or etiquette.
3. Any inconsistency, mistake, or impropriety.
ETYMOLOGY: Solecism comes from Latin soloecismus, from Greek soloikizein, “to speak incorrectly,” from soloikos, “speaking incorrectly,” literally, “an inhabitant of Soloi,” a city in ancient Cilicia where a dialect regarded as substandard was spoken.
USAGE: “In the grammar of their life the honeymoon was an embarrassing solecism, a misplaced modifier or dangling participle remembered forever with a raised eyebrown and a comical shudder.” – Ward S. Just, “The Translator”
lazy Susan
PRONUNCIATION: (LAY-zee SOO-zuhn)
http://wordsmith.org/words/lazy_Susan.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A revolving tray used for serving food, or a similar structure used to keep objects within easy reach.
ETYMOLOGY: It’s not clear who the eponymous Susan in this term was. Earliest documented use: 1917.
USAGE: “Lang Lang ate more than anyone, spinning the lazy Susan at the center of the table and scooping off.” – David Remnick; The Olympian; The New Yorker; Aug 4, 2008.
Explore “lazy susan” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=lazy%20susan
pariah
PRONUNCIATION: (puh-RY-uh)
http://wordsmith.org/words/pariah.mp3
MEANING: (noun), An outcast.
ETYMOLOGY: From Tamil paraiyar, plural of paraiyan (drummer), from parai (drum, to tell). Because the drum players were considered among the lowest in the former caste system of India, the word took on the general meaning of an outcast. Earliest documented use: 1613.
USAGE:
“Gaddafi’s rule has seen him go from revolutionary hero to international pariah, to valued strategic partner, and back to pariah again.” – Martin Asser; The Muammar Gaddafi Story; BBC News (London, UK); Mar 25, 2011.
“Sugar has replaced fat as our society’s food pariah.” – Randy Shore; Sugar: The New Pariah; Vancouver Sun (Canada); Mar 12, 2011.
Explore “pariah” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=pariah
tarry
PRONUNCIATION: (TAIR-ee, TAHR*-ee) * for adjective
http://wordsmith.org/words/tarry.mp3
MEANING:
(verb intr.),To delay, stay, or wait.
(verb tr.),To wait for.
(noun),A short stay; a sojourn.
(adjective),Of, like, or smeared with tar.
ETYMOLOGY:
For verb, noun: From Middle English tarien/taryen (to delay). Earliest documented use: 1451.
For adjective: From Old English teru. Earliest documented use: 1552.
USAGE:
“Although they’ve been criticized for tarrying, county officials say work is progressing.” – Amy Schatz; Hospital Talks Continue; St. Petersburg Times (Florida); Apr 3, 1998.
“The story of Jesus’s three-day-long tarry with the elders of the temple becomes, in Ms. Rice’s hands, a fever dream.” – Benjamin Lytal; The Gospel According to the Goth; The Sun (New York); Oct 31, 2005.
“Otters are mainly detected by their characteristic spraints*, which have a tarry smell.” – Michael McCarthy; The Incredible Journey of an Intrepid Otter; The Independent (London, UK); Nov 21, 2008. * otter’s dung
Explore “tarry” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=tarry