Today in History (May 3rd):
1469: Birthdays: Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli.
1802: Washington, D.C., was incorporated.
1827: Birthdays: British explorer John Speke, who discovered the source of the Nile.
1849: Birthdays: Journalist Jacob August Riis.
1874: Birthdays: French perfume maker Francois Coty.
1898: Birthdays: Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
1903: Birthdays: Singer/actor Bing Crosby.
1906: Birthdays: Actor Mary Astor.
1907: Birthdays: Broadway gossip columnist Earl Wilson.
1913: Birthdays: Playwright William Inge.
1919: U.S. airplane passenger service began when pilot Robert Hewitt flew two women from New York to Atlantic City, N.J. Birthdays: Folk singer Pete Seeger.
1921: Birthdays: Boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, born Walker Smith Jr.
1926: Birthdays: Actor Ann B. Davis.
1933: Birthdays: Singer James Brown.
1934: Birthdays: Singer Frankie Valli.
1937: Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
1946: The International Military Tribunals for the Far East began hearing the case in Tokyo against 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II. Birthdays: TV personality Greg Gumbel.
1947: Birthdays: Magician Doug Henning.
1948: The CBS Evening News premiered, with Douglas Edwards as anchor.
1951: Birthdays: Singer/songwriter Christopher Cross.
1952: A ski-modified U.S. Air Force C-47 piloted by Lt. Col. Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma and Lt. Col. William P. Benedict of California became the first aircraft to land at the North Pole.
1956: The first judo world championships were held.
1960: The Fantasticks opened off-Broadway. It would become the longest-running musical of all time.
1968: The United States and North Vietnam agreed to open peace talks in Paris.
1975: Birthdays: Actor Dule Hill.
1979: Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party won the British general election, making her the first woman prime minister of a major European nation.
1989: Chinese leaders rejected students’ demands for democratic reforms as some 100,000 students and workers marched in Beijing. Former national security aide Oliver North was found guilty on three charges but innocent of nine others in the Iran-Contra scandal.
1990: U.S. President George H.W. Bush canceled the modernization of NATO short-range nuclear missiles and artillery, accelerating the pace of the removal of U.S. and Soviet ground-based nuclear weapons from the transformed Europe of the 1990s.
1994: A U.S. district judge in Seattle struck down Washington state’s assisted-suicide law.
1999: 76 tornadoes tore across the U.S. Plains states, killing about 50 people and injuring more than 700.
2003: Noted New Hampshire landmark Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
2004: The U.S. military commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, reprimanded six commissioned and non-commissioned officers who supervised Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, where many reported abuses occurred.
2006: An Armenian A-320 aircraft plunged into the Black Sea off Russia’s southern coast, killing all 113 people aboard. Officials said bad weather was the probable cause.
2007: Queen Elizabeth II opened a U.S. visit by meeting with survivors and relatives of the victims of a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech. She also addressed Virginia lawmakers on the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States.
2008: Envoys of China and the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, met to smooth out their rocky relationship. It was their first session since March pro-independence protests erupted into violence.
2009: Jack Kemp, whose long career ranged from pro football quarterback (he led the Buffalo Bills in pre-Super Bowl days to AFL championships in 1964 and 1965) to nine-term U.S. congressman from New York, housing secretary and Republican nominee for vice president in 1996, died of cancer. He was 65. Businessman Ricardo Martinelli, running as a centrist independent, won the Panama presidential election with 60 percent of the vote.
2010: New York City police arrested Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old Pakistani-American who had boarded a plane scheduled to fly to Dubai after an attempted Times Square bombing. He later pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to life in prison.
2011: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives won a parliamentary majority as Liberals were unseated for the first time as the official opposition in the country’s fourth election in seven years.
2012: The Combating Terrorism Center in New York released a declassified letter from late al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden that said he had wanted U.S. President Barack Obama dead so an utterly unprepared Vice President Joe Biden would become president.
Quotes
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“Every man possesses three characters: that which he exhibits, that which he really has, and that which he believes he has.” – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, novelist and journalist (1808-1890)
James Monroe (1758-1831) American president:
“Preparation for war is a constant stimulus to suspicion and ill will.”
“The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.”
“The American continents … are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. (From the Monroe Doctrine)”
“If America wants concessions, she must fight for them. We must purchase our power with our blood.”
“It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.”
“Never did a government commence under auspices so favorable, nor ever was success so complete. If we look to the history of other nations, ancient or modern, we find no example of a growth so rapid, so gigantic, of a people so prosperous and happy.”
“In this great nation there is but one order, that of the people, whose power, by a peculiarly happy improvement of the representative principle, is transferred from them, without impairing in the slightest degree their sovereignty, to bodies of their own creation, and to persons elected by themselves, in the full extent necessary for the purposes of free, enlightened, and efficient government.”
jehu
PRONUNCIATION: (JEE-hyoo, -hoo)
http://wordsmith.org/words/jehu.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. A fast driver.
2. A driver of a cab.
ETYMOLOGY: After King Jehu in the Old Testament, known for driving his chariot furiously. He had Jezebel killed. Earliest documented use: 1682.
USAGE: “The jehu cabby was charged with street betting.” – Robert Hale; Undercover Cop Nabs Gamblers; Malvern Gazette (UK); May 8, 2008.
satyr
PRONUNCIATION: (SAY-tuhr, SAT-uhr)
http://wordsmith.org/words/satyr.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. A lecherous man.
2. A man who has satyriasis: excessive and uncontrollable sexual desire. The female equivalent is nymphomania.
3. Any of several butterflies of the family Satyridae, having eyelike spots.
ETYMOLOGY: After Satyr, a woodland creature in Greek mythology shown as having features of a goat and a horse (pointed ears, horns, tail, etc.) and known for lasciviousness. Earliest documented use: around 1374.
USAGE: “Presiding like a twinkly satyr over this parade of sauciness and silicone is Antoine de Caunes, the afore mentioned Frenchman.” – James Rampton; Sauciness and Silicone; The Independent (London, UK); Sep 19, 1998.
‘Overstate’ Creates State of Confusion
Have you noticed that pundits and politicians sometimes use “understate” when they mean “overstate”?
Derel Schrock of Colorado Springs, Colo., sent me this example from comments by Congressman Allen West on Fox News: “I can’t understate the seriousness of cuts in the defense budget.” Technically, of course, this means that the cuts are completely inconsequential.
West meant to say “overstate,” meaning that the budget cuts are very serious. So it wouldn’t be overstating the matter to say, for instance, that the budget cuts are more momentous than God’s decision to cut two planets from the solar system. Neptune and Jupiter, you’re fired!
But the logic behind the “overstate” trope is just complex enough to confuse us. And sometimes people say “understate” when they mean “underscore,” which has the opposite meaning. Because of all this confusion, use “overstate” with care.
Pundits also relish these two trendy usages …
–Concerning “concerning” — The use of “concerning” to mean “causing concern, disturbing” continues to proliferate. During an interview on the “PBS Newshour,” for instance, Congressman Douglas Collins said, “That was concerning to me.”
The problem here is that “concerning” can also mean “regarding.” So when we hear “That was concerning,” we think the speaker might be about to say, “That was concerning last year’s budget.” We’re confused, if only for a millisecond.
Likewise, the increasingly common use of “worrying” to mean “causing worry, troubling” (as in “This trend is very worrying”) creates misdirection because “worrying” usually describes a person or mental state (“a worrying aunt”). This problem is easily solved by replacing “worrying” with “worrisome,” which means “causing anxiety.”
–“Gran”diloquence — When I hear “granular,” I think of salt, pebbles and, well, granola. But now people are using “granular” to mean “detailed, piece-by-piece.” A TV pundit, for instance, recently called for “an extended and granular look” at the troubled finances of Detroit. Was he calling for a study of sandboxes in city playgrounds?
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language includes this meaning of “granular” in its latest edition, providing this phrase as an example: “granular sales at the corner store.” Presumably, this refers to sales of assorted small items, rather than bulk sales of salt and granola.
Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254
Copyright 2013 Creators Syndicate Inc.