Today in History (April 25th):
1507: German geographer and mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller published a book in which he named the newly discovered continent of the New World America after the man he mistakenly thought had discovered it, Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.
1599: Birthdays: Oliver Cromwell, lord protector of England.
1719: Daniel Defoe’s novel “Robinson Crusoe” was published.
1792: La Marseillaise, composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, became the French national anthem.
1859: Ground was broken for the Suez Canal at Port Said, Egypt.
1862: Union forces captured New Orleans during the Civil War.
1874: Birthdays: Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the radio telegraph.
1898: The U.S. Congress formally declared war on Spain in the battle over Cuba.
1901: New York became the first state to require license plates on automobiles.
1906: Birthdays: U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan.
1908: Birthdays: Pioneer broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow.
1917: Birthdays: Singer Ella Fitzgerald.
1932: Birthdays: Former Harlem Globetrotters basketball player George Meadowlark Lemon III.
1933: Birthdays: Composer Jerry Leiber.
1939: Batman was introduced in DC Comics’ Detective Comics No. 27.
1940: Birthdays: Actor Al Pacino.
1945: Delegates of 46 countries gathered in San Francisco to organize a permanent United Nations.
1946: Birthdays: Actor Talia Shire.
1964: Birthdays: Actor Hank Azaria.
1967: The first law legalizing abortion in the United States was signed into law by Colorado Gov. John Arthur Love.
1969: Birthdays: Actor Renee Zellweger; Sports broadcaster Joe Buck.
1970: Birthdays: Actor Jason Lee.
1981: Birthdays: Champion skier Anja Parson.
1982: Israel turned over the final third of the occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt under the Camp David peace agreement.
1990: The Hubble Space Telescope was released into space by astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery. Violeta Chamorro assumed the Nicaraguan presidency, ending more than a decade of leftist Sandinista rule.
1991: The United States announced its first financial aid to Hanoi since the 1960s: $1 million to make artificial limbs for Vietnamese disabled during the war.
1993: An estimated 300,000 people took part in a gay rights march on the National Mall in Washington.
1994: The Japanese Diet elected Tsutomu Hata prime minister.
1995: Regular season play by major league baseball teams got under way, the first official action since what was then the longest strike in sports history began in August 1994.
2000: Vermont approved a measure legalizing civil unions among same-sex couples, becoming the first state in the nation to give homosexual couples the same legal status as heterosexual married couples.
2001: The Japanese Diet elected Junichiro Koizumi, a former health and welfare minister, as the country’s prime minister.
2005: The crash of a Japanese commuter train near Osaka killed more than 70 people and injured more than 300 others.
2007: The Dow Jones industrial average closed at more than 13,000 for the first time. Astronomers in Chile discovered a planet they described as the most Earth-like planet outside our solar system. Researchers said Gliese 581 C, 20.5 light-years from Earth, had temperatures similar to Earth’s and could have water.
2008: Job losses and price increases, sent U.S. consumer confidence down to a reported 26-year low in April. Experts blamed the consumer uneasiness largely on the sustained loss of jobs.
2009: With nearly 70 people dead and 1,000 ill with swine flu in Mexico, officials in the United States took extra precautions against the disease. Bea Arthur, who went from high-profile supporting roles on Broadway to stardom in groundbreaking TV sitcoms Maude and The Golden Girls, died in Los Angeles. She was 86.
2010: Iran launched missiles in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz in the closing phase of its war games. Austrian President Heinz Fischer was re-elected in a landslide for a second six-year term.
2011: Nearly 800 classified U.S. military documents leaked by WikiLeaks revealed details about the alleged terrorist activities of al-Qaida operatives held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
2012: Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, saying the system of justice is very imperfect, signed a bill making the death penalty illegal in Connecticut.
Quotes
“Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.” – Max Beerbohm, essayist, parodist, and caricaturist (1872-1956)
“When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.” – Anais Nin, writer (1903-1977)
Lord Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) English Lord Protector:
“A few honest men are better than numbers.”
“He who stops being better stops being good.”
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”
“I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else.”
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“It is not fit that you should sit here any longer!”
“Necessity has no law.”
“No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going. Not only strike while the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking. Do not trust the cheering, for those persons would shout as much if you or I were going to be hanged.”
“Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will.”
“What is all our histories, but God showing himself, shaking and trampling on everything that he has not planted.”
“You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”
blatherskite
PRONUNCIATION: (BLATH-uhr-skyt
MEANING: (noun)
1. A person who babbles about inane matters.
2. Nonsense; foolish talk.
ETYMOLOGY: From Old Norse blathra (to chatter) + Scots dialect skate (a contemptible person).
USAGE: “Chris wished to clarify that he didn’t prefer lawmaking by politicians to lawmaking by judges because he had some unhealthy fondness for the blatherskites who every four years knocked on his front door and wanted to put up a sign on the lawn.”
brouhaha
PRONUNCIATION: (BROO-ha-ha, broo-ha-HA, broo-HA-ha)
http://wordsmith.org/words/brouhaha.mp3
MEANING: (noun), Noise, confusion, and excitement, especially over something insignificant.
ETYMOLOGY: From French, of imitative origin. It has been also suggested it’s an alteration of the Hebrew term barukh habba (welcome, literally, “blessed be the one who comes”). It was also used in French drama for a devil’s cry as: brou, ha, ha! Earliest documented use: 1890.
USAGE: “The brouhaha threatened to create a political firestorm in Ottawa.” Paul Koring; Key Democrat Pelosi Voices Doubts on Keystone; – The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada); Mar 14, 2013.
Explore “brouhaha” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=brouhaha
turncoat
PRONUNCIATION: (TUHRN-koht)
http://wordsmith.org/words/turncoat.mp3
MEANING: (noun), Someone who changes allegiance and joins the opposite side.
ETYMOLOGY: The color, and especially the color of clothing, has long symbolized association with a particular cause. For example, soldiers in an army or players in a sports team don a designated color. The idea behind the word turncoat is someone switching allegiances and turning his coat inside out to hide his earlier colors. Earliest documented use: 1567.
USAGE: “You could almost imagine the little turncoats from the last poster creeping off and taking up residence in another series of photographs downstairs.” – Julius Purcell; Faces That Cannot be Argued Away; Financial Times (London, UK); Jul 18, 2006.
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http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=turncoat
riposte or ripost
PRONUNCIATION: (ri-POST)
http://wordsmith.org/words/riposte.mp3
MEANING:
(noun)
1. A quick, clever reply.
2. In fencing, a quick return thrust.
(verb tr.), To make a quick, clever reply.
(verb intr.), In fencing, to make a quick return thrust.
ETYMOLOGY: From obsolete French risposte (response), from Italian risposta (response), from Latin respondere (to respond), from re- (back) + spondere (to pledge). Ultimately from the Indo-European root spend- (to make an offering or perform a rite), which is also the source of sponsor, spouse, espouse, and respond. Earliest documented use: 1707.
USAGE: “Asked about the situation, Rodriguez delivered a particularly pointed riposte that embodied his mature response to the entire situation.” – Sam Borden; Kansas State Sets Up Melting Pot; The New York Times; Mar 16, 2012.
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http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=riposte
cathect
PRONUNCIATION: (kuh-THEKT)
http://wordsmith.org/words/cathect.mp3
MEANING: (verb tr.), To invest mental or emotional energy in an idea, object, or person.
ETYMOLOGY: Back-formation from Greek kathexis (the investment of emotional energy in something). Ultimately from the Indo-European root segh- (to hold) that is also the source of words such as victory (to hold in a battle), hectic, scheme, and scholar.
USAGE: “Mortimer divorced Jane Goodall’s mother, Vanne, in 1950, consigning Jane to the fate of so many children who cathect with the animal kingdom to compensate for missing parents.” – Judith Lewis; Observing the Observer: Jane Goodall, The Woman Who Redefined Man; Los Angeles Times; Nov 19, 2006.
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