Today in History (April 21st):
753 B.C.: The traditional date observed for the founding of Rome. Roman historian Varro lists this date as Romulus founding the city of Rome.
1509: Henry VIII became king of England when his father, Henry VII, died.
1836: With the battle cry Remember the Alamo! Texas forces under Sam Houston defeated the army of Mexican Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at San Jacinto, Texas, opening the path to Texas independence.
1918: Manfred von Richthofen, German World War I flying ace known as The Red Baron, was killed by Allied fire over Vaux-sur-Somme, France.
1954: U.S. Air Force planes began flying French troops to Indochina to reinforce Dien Bien Phu. The city later fell to communist Viet Minh forces.
1960: Brasilia was inaugurated as Brazil’s capital, moving the seat of government from Rio de Janeiro.
1967: A Greek army coup in Athens sent King Constantine into exile in Italy.
1975: Nguyen Van Thieu resigned as president of South Vietnam after denouncing the United States as untrustworthy. His replacement, Tran Van Huong, prepared for peace talks with North Vietnam as communist forces advanced on Saigon.
1987: The bombing of a bus terminal in Colombo, Sri Lanka, killed 127 people and wounded 288.
1992: Gas explosions ripped through the historic center of Guadalajara, Mexico, killing more than 200 people and injuring hundreds more.
1993: An 11-day siege at a prison near Lucasville, Ohio, ended. Ten people died.
1995: Timothy McVeigh, 27, was arrested 90 minutes after an Oklahoma City federal building explosion because he was driving without license plates. He was subsequently linked to the bombing in which 168 people died, was convicted and executed.
2004: A series of coordinated car bombings at police buildings in Basra, Iraq, killed more than 50 people, including about 20 schoolchildren.
2005: The U.S. Senate approved the nomination of John Negroponte to be the nation’s first national intelligence director. Insurgents shot down a civilian helicopter north of Baghdad, killing all 11 people aboard, including six U.S. contractors. Brazil granted asylum to former Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez after he was ousted from office.
2006: U.S. oil prices hit a record, topping $75 a barrel and the cost of regular gasoline at the pump soared to more than $3 a gallon in some parts of the United States. King Gyanendra, Nepal’s embattled monarch, agreed to restore a democratic government to his country.
2007: An aircraft of the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels precision flight team crashed during an air show in Beaufort, S.C., killing the pilot and injuring eight people on the ground.
2008: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a link had been found between contaminated drug thinners from China and 81 deaths in the United States.
2009: U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, increasing the number of AmeriCorps community service volunteers from 75,000 to 275,000 by 2017.
2011: John Ensign, R-Nev., resigned his U.S. Senate seat amid a budding ethics scandal. Ensign admitted an affair with his former campaign treasurer earlier and had been under Republican pressure to step down. Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed tough anti-abortion legislation that bans most abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, shortening the current restriction by four weeks.
2012: Author, evangelical leader and Prison Fellowship founder Charles Chuck Colson, who had been involved in the Watergate scandal and served time in prison, died in Virginia three weeks after brain surgery. He was 80.
Quotes
“Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface; he, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.” – Washington Irving, writer (1783-1859)
“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” – Marshall McLuhan
“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.” – Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, painter, architect, and poet (1475-1564)
“To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.” – Bernadette Devlin
“A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” – Terry Pratchett
“Punishment is the last and least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.” – John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)
“When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it.” – Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
mendacious
PRONUNCIATION: (men-DAY-shuhs)
MEANING: (adjective)
1. Given to deception or falsehood; lying; untruthful; as, a mendacious person.
2. False; untrue; as, a mendacious statement.
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MEANING: Mendacious is from Latin mendax, mendac-, “lying.”
USAGE: “While Jason’s writings, speeches, and decisions supplied crucial evidence they also contained mendacious elements, gaps, and camouflage.”
bombilate
PRONUNCIATION: (BOM-bi-layt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/bombilate.mp3
MEANING: (verb intr.), To make a humming or buzzing noise.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin bombilare to (hum, buzz). Earliest documented use: 1600s.
USAGE: “The entire building was bombilating like a cicada.” – Matt Cantor; Some Cures for Noisy Neighbors; The Berkeley Daily Planet (California); Oct 9, 2008.
Explore “bombilate” in the Visual Thesaurus.
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highfalutin
PRONUNCIATION: (hy-fuh-LOOT-n) Also spelled as hifalutin or highfalutin’ or hifalutin’ or highfaluting.
http://wordsmith.org/words/highfalutin.mp3
MEANING: adjective: Pompous; bombastic.
ETYMOLOGY: Of uncertain origin, perhaps from high-fluting, from flute. Earliest documented use: 1839.
NOTES: Highfalutin may or may not be high flute, but the flute’s cousin, oboe, is high wood. It’s a corruption of French haut (high) + bois (wood). The musical instrument is named owing to its having the highest register among woodwinds. An orchestra typically tunes to an oboe.
USAGE: “The document talks very highfalutin’ and lofty language, which sounds great and is hard to disagree with, but at the end of the day businesses just want to get the basics right.” – Hamish Fletcher; Push for More Innovative Auckland; New Zealand Herald (Auckland); Mar 29, 2011.
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Sisyphean
PRONUNCIATION: (sis-ee-FEE-uhn)
http://wordsmith.org/words/Sisyphean.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Endlessly laborious and fruitless.
ETYMOLOGY: After Sisyphus, a king in Greek mythology who was cursed to push a huge boulder to the top of a hill, only to watch it roll back down and to repeat this forever. Roll, rinse, repeat.
USAGE: “Even making the bed together in the morning, an act that had hitherto struck me as Sisyphean, took on meaning.” – Tim Page; Parallel Play; The New Yorker; Aug 20, 2007.
Explore “sisyphean” in the Visual Thesaurus.
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prosopagnosia
PRONUNCIATION: (pros-uh-pag-NO-see-uh)
http://wordsmith.org/words/prosopagnosia.mp3
MEANING: (noun), Inability to recognize familiar faces.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek prosopon (face, mask), from pros- (near) + opon (face), from ops (eye) + agnosia (ignorance). Ultimately from the Indo-European root gno- (to know) that is also the source of know, recognize, acquaint, ignore, diagnosis, notice, and normal.
NOTES: Prosopagnosia is also known as face blindness, usually a result of brain injury. People suffering from it cannot recognize familiar faces, even their own. A book on this and related topics is neurologist Oliver Sacks’s “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Prosopagnosiacs’ motto: We don’t take people at face value.
USAGE: “Rob Cross, 25, acquired prosopagnosia four years ago when a virus attacked his brain. For years, he has hidden his condition by avoiding calling his co-workers at a Burnaby manufacturing company by name, or acting slightly aloof. ‘Every morning people say, “Hi Rob,” and the majority of the time I don’t know who it is,’ said Mr. Cross.” – Hayley Mick; We Know Each Other, But Who Are You?; Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada); Jan 10, 2008.