Today in History (April 20th):
0571: Birthdays: The founder of Islam Prophet Muhammad.
1586: Birthdays: Roman Catholic St. Rose of Lima.
1653: Oliver Cromwell — Puritan, revolutionary and lord protector of England — dissolved Parliament to rule by decree.
1808: Birthdays: French Emperor Napoleon III.
1850: Birthdays: Sculptor Daniel Chester French, creator of The Minute Man statue.
1851: Birthdays: Golf pioneer Young Tom Morris.
1871: The U.S. Congress passed the Third Force Act, popularly known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, authorizing President Ulysses S. Grant to declare martial law, impose heavy penalties against terrorist organizations and use military force to suppress the Klan.
1889: Birthdays: German dictator Adolf Hitler.
1893: Birthdays: Silent film comedian Harold Lloyd; Spanish surrealist painter Joan Miro.
1902: Marie and Pierre Curie isolated radioactive radium salts from the mineral pitchblende in their laboratory in Paris.
1908: Birthdays: Musician Lionel Hampton.
1912: First baseball games were played at Boston’s Fenway Park and Detroit’s Tiger Stadium.
1916: First baseball game was played at Chicago’s Weehhman Park, later renamed Wrigley Field.
1920: Birthdays: Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
1924: Birthdays: Actor Nina Foch.
1937: Birthdays: Actor George Takei.
1939: Billie Holiday recorded Strange Fruit.
1941: Birthdays: Actor Ryan O’Neal.
1945: Birthdays: Steve Spurrier, football coach and 1966 Heisman Trophy winner.
1949: Birthdays: Actor Jessica Lange; Actor Veronica Cartwright.
1951: Birthdays: Singer Luther Vandross.
1959: Birthdays: Actor Clint Howard.
1964: Birthdays: Actor Crispin Glover; Actor Andy Serkis.
1972: Apollo 17 landed on the moon. Birthdays: Actor Carmen Electra.
1976: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal courts could order low-cost housing for minorities in a city’s white suburbs to ease racial segregation. Birthdays: Actor Joey Lawrence.
1987: Karl Linnas, sentenced to death by the Soviets in 1962 for running a World War II concentration camp, became the first Nazi war criminal returned by the United States to the Soviet Union against his will.
1991: U.S. Marines crossed into northern Iraq to set up camps for Kurds seeking refuge from Iraqi civil strife. The United States announced plans to open an office in Hanoi to investigate unresolved cases of 2,278 U.S. military personnel listed as MIAs and POWs.
1992: Madonna signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Time Warner to form an entertainment company that would make her the world’s highest paid female pop star.
1998: A federal jury in Chicago awarded more than $85,000 in damages to two women’s health clinics that had accused abortion rights opponents of threats and extortion in an effort to shut them down.
1999: Two teenage boys killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., before turning their guns on themselves.
2001: A U.S. missionary and her infant daughter died when their plane was fired on by the crew of a Peruvian jet fighter who thought the aircraft was carrying illegal drugs.
2002: Pope John Paul II, speaking on the sex scandal that had rocked the Roman Catholic clergy, said bishops must diligently investigate accusations against priests who broke vows of celibacy.
2004: 21 Iraqi detainees were killed at Abu Ghraib prison, largest facility used by U.S. troops to detain Iraqis, by mortar rounds apparently fired by anti-coalition insurgents.
2005: More than 50 bodies, believed to be those of hostages, were found in Iraq’s Tigris River. Another 20 soldiers, shot to death, were found near Baghdad.
2008: Former Roman Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo was elected president of Paraguay with 41 percent of the vote. Danica Patrick won the Indy Japan 300 auto race, becoming the first woman to win an IndyCar event.
2009: Federal records said U.S. interrogators used the controversial waterboarding procedure 183 times against Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-admitted planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The Obama administration termed the practice illegal torture.
2010: An explosion and fire on a BP oil rig off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and unleashed a massive oil spill sending thousands of barrels of crude oil a day gushing offshore and later on beaches from Texas to Florida until stopped June 15. Officials termed it the largest U.S. marine oil spill ever, stretching out over almost three months and releasing about 4.9 million barrels or nearly 206 million gallons of crude.
2011: Michel Martelly, an entertainer who performed under the name Sweet Micky, was elected president of Haiti in a runoff with former first lady Mirlande Manigat. British-born documentary filmmaker Tim Hetherington and U.S. photographer Chris Hondros were killed while covering the fighting in Libya.
2012: A Pakistani Bhoja Air jetliner on a flight from Karachi crashed 5 miles from Islamabad, killing all 127 people aboard.
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“Don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.” – Richard L. Evans
“One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underpriviliged.” – Richard Hofstadter, historian (1916-1970)
“Oh, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.” – William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)
Adolph Hitler (1889-1945) German dictator:
“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.”
“I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.”
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
“This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief.”
“This year will go down in history for the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future.”
“I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.”
“Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the ‘remaking’ of the Reich as they call it.”
Pygmalionism
PRONUNCIATION: (pig-MAY-lee-uh-niz-uhm)
http://wordsmith.org/words/Pygmalionism.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. The state of being in love with an object of one’s own making.
2. The condition of loving an inanimate object such as a statue or image.
ETYMOLOGY: In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was the king of Cyprus who carved a female figure in ivory so realistic and beautiful that he fell in love with her. The goddess Aphrodite took pity on him and responded by bringing the statue to life as Galatea. Pygmalion married her.
USAGE:
“Sarah Palin has been an exercise in Pygmalionism gone wrong. The most famous female politician in the world today is a vain and sanctimonious woman of boundless ambition and no vision.” – Janet Bagnall; Setback for Women; The Gazette (Montreal, Canada); Feb 12, 2010.
“The aim was to show the reverse Pygmalionism of cinema, which takes live bodies and makes cool, untouchable idols of them.” – Hold On to Your Popcorn; The Observer (London, UK); May 20, 2007.
Explore “pygmalion” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=pygmalion
cormorant
PRONUNCIATION: (KOR-mur-unt; -muh-rant)
MEANING: (noun)
1. Any species of Phalacrocorax, a genus of sea birds having a sac under the beak; the shag. Cormorants devour fish voraciously, and have become the emblem of gluttony. They are generally black, and hence are called sea ravens, and coalgeese.
2. A gluttonous, greedy, or rapacious person.
ETYMOLOGY: Cormorant comes from Old French cormareng, “raven of the sea,” from corb, “raven” (from Latin corvus) + marenc, “of the sea” (from Latin marinus, from mare, “sea”).
USAGE: “Characterizing himself as ‘a library cormorant,’ Bud’s appetite for books and other forms of reading material knew no bounds”
moirologist
PRONUNCIATION: (moy-ROL-uh-jist)
http://wordsmith.org/words/moirologist.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A hired mourner.
NOTES: There are some things in life money can’t buy, for everything else, there’s Mastercard. With the right credit card you could even hire mourners for your funeral or find the right sentiment. While researching this word, I came across websites that offer “eulogy packs”. One such site lists a “Mother’s Eulogy pack” that includes “9 speeches, 3 poems, 3 free bonus”. Only $25.95 — have your credit card ready. Fathers go cheaper: $19.97.
Let’s not be too smug and look down upon those who buy these packs. When we go to the neighborhood card store to buy a greeting card or a sympathy card, we’re also hiring someone to package words to help us convey our feelings.
Professional mourners are not a new thing either — there’s a long tradition going back to ancient Greece and beyond. As late as 1908 a New York Times article reported on a professional mourners’ strike in Paris.
Then there is claque, a group of people hired to applaud a performer at a show.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek moira (fate, death) + logos (word).
USAGE: “There may be found traces, too, of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness in the death ballads sung by the hired mourners… The moirologists will sing of the loneliness of the living, of the horrors of death.” – George Walter Prothero; The Quarterly Review; John Murray (London, UK); 1886.