Today in History (May 15th):
1718: London lawyer James Puckle patented the world’s first machine gun.
1756: The Seven Years’ War began when England declared war on France.
1856: Birthdays: Author L. Frank Baum (The Wizard of Oz).
1859: Birthdays: French chemist Pierre Curie.
1886: Deaths: Emily Dickinson.
1890: Birthdays: Author Katherine Anne Porter.
1902: Birthdays: Former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.
1905: Birthdays: Actor Joseph Cotten.
1909: Birthdays: Actor James Mason.
1918: The US Post Office Department began its first regular airmail service between Washington and New York City. Birthdays: Country singer Eddy Arnold.
1923: Birthdays: Photographer Richard Avedon.
1930: Ellen Church became the first airline stewardess, flying on a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Cheyenne, Wyo. Birthdays: Jasper Johns.
1936: Birthdays: Italian actor Anna Maria Alberghetti.
1937: Birthdays: Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; Singer Trini Lopez.
1940: McDonald’s was founded. Nylon stockings went on sale in U.S. stores for the first time. Birthdays: Singer Lainie Kazan.
1941: The Gloster-Whittle E 28/39 aircraft flew over Cranwell, England, in the first successful test of an Allied aircraft using jet propulsion.
1948: Birthdays: British musician Brian Eno. Deaths: Father Edward Flanagan, Boys Town founder.
1951: Birthdays: Chazz Palminteri.
1953: Birthdays: Hall of Fame baseball player George Brett; British composer Mike Oldfield.
1956: Birthdays: Sports broadcaster Dan Patrick.
1958: The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 3.
1960: The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 4.
1962: Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper was launched into space atop an Atlas rocket and completed 22 orbits.
1967: Birthdays: Writer Laura Hillenbrand; John Smoltz.
1969: Justice Abe Fortas, under fire for a money deal with jailed financier Louis Wolfson, resigned from the U.S. Supreme Court. Birthdays: Hall of Fame football player Emmitt Smith.
1972: Alabama Gov. George Wallace was seriously wounded at a presidential campaign rally in Laurel, Md. He was partially paralyzed but still a Southern political power until his death in 1998.
1974: Birthdays: Ahmet Zappa.
1987: The Soviet Union launched the Polyus prototype orbital weapons platform (which failed to reach orbit).
1988: Soviet forces began their withdrawal from Afghanistan in compliance with the Geneva accords.
1990: Japanese millionaire Ryoei Saito bid a record $82.5 million for Van Gogh’s 1890 Portrait of Dr. Gachet. Two days later, he spent $78.1 million for Renoir’s 1876 Au Moulin De La Galette, also a record.
1991: Edith Cresson, a Socialist and former trade minister, became the first woman prime minister of France.
2002: The White House said that President George W. Bush had received a CIA briefing in August 2001, the month before the terrorist attack on New York and Washington, warning that Osama bin Laden planned to hijack airplanes but nothing was said about possibly crashing them into buildings.
2003: Deaths: June Carter Cash.
2005: Uzbek security forces were reported to have sealed off the center of Andijan where as many as 450 people were killed during anti-government protests.
2006: The U.S. State Department said it would restore diplomatic relations with Libya for the first time since 1980 and remove the country from its terrorism sponsors list.
2008: California joined Massachusetts as the only states in the union to legalize same-sex marriage. The California Supreme Court said the state constitution guaranteed marriage as a basic civil right.
2009: Two of the Big 3 U.S. automakers, bankrupt Chrysler and almost-bankrupt General Motors, sent notices terminating relationships with nearly 2,000 car dealers.
2010: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave British oil giant BP the go-ahead to use chemicals in an effort to break up a massive 26-day offshore crude oil leak spewing an estimated 70,000 barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico.
2011: Israeli forces killed 14 Palestinians as thousands of protesters tried to enter Israel-controlled territory from Lebanon and Syria.
2012: Socialist Francois Hollande was inaugurated as president of France.
Quotes
“Do you ever read any of the books you burn?” “That’s against the law!” “Oh. Of course.” – Ray Bradbury, science-fiction writer (1920-2012)
“The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you but he will make a fool of himself, too.” – Samuel Butler
“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers
“What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.” – Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)
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Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980) U.S. writer:
“Experience is what really happens to you in the long run; the truth that finally overtakes you.”
“Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.”
“I have not much interest in anyone’s personal history after the tenth year, not even my own. Whatever one was going to be was all prepared before that.”
“I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.”
“It’s a man’s world, and you men can have it.”
“Our being is subject to all the chances of life. There are so many things we are capable of, that we could be or do. The potentialities are so great that we never, any of us, are more than one-fourth fulfilled.”
“Physical infidelity is the signal, the notice given, that all fidelities are undermined.”
“They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.”
solace
PRONUNCIATION: (SOL-is)
MEANING:
(noun)
1. Comfort in time of grief; alleviation of grief or anxiety.
2. That which relieves in distress; that which cheers or consoles; a source of relief.
(transitive verb)
1. To comfort or cheer in grief or affliction; to console.
2. To allay; to soothe; as, “to solace grief.”
ETYMOLOGY: Solace comes from Latin solacium, from solari, “to comfort; to console.”
USAGE: “After her mother had died, all of Crystal’s friends made it a point to visit her to offer her solace in her time of need.”
impute
PRONUNCIATION: (im-PYOOT)
http://wordsmith.org/words/impute.mp3
MEANING: (verb tr.), To attribute, ascribe, or credit, often unfairly.
ETYMOLOGY: From Old French imputer, from Latin imputare, from in- (in) + putare (to assess, reckon). Ultimately from the Indo-European root pau- (to cut, stroke, or stamp), which is also the source of amputate, compute, dispute, count, pavid, puerile, and catchpole. Earliest documented use: 1480.
USAGE: “‘There’s a tendency to impute much greater skill on the part of somebody like Jamie Dimon, who is very smooth,’ Bill Miller says.” – Hugh Son; Bank of America Chief’s Tumbles Turn Into Strides; The Washington Post; Mar 10, 2013.
Explore “impute” in the Visual Thesaurus.
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three-ring circus
PRONUNCIATION: (THREE-ring SUHR-kuhs)
http://wordsmith.org/words/three-ring_circus.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A situation marked by confusing, amusing, or tumultuous activity.
ETYMOLOGY: After a circus with three separate rings in which performances take place simultaneously. Earliest documented use: 1898.
USAGE: “Guy Ritchie told friends recently: ‘Our marriage was a three-ring circus in the end. We started as a normal family and tried to live a normal family life, but Madonna wanted something else.'” – Marriage Had Become Three-Ring Circus; Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland); Oct 16, 2008.
Explore “three-ring circus” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=three-ring+circus
trapeze
PRONUNCIATION: (tra-PEEZ, truh-)
http://wordsmith.org/words/trapeze.mp3
MEANING: (noun), An apparatus consisting of a short horizontal bar suspended by two ropes, used in gymnastics and acrobatics.
ETYMOLOGY: Probably from the trapezoid shape made by the ropes, the bar, and the roof. From French trapèze (trapezoid/trapezium), from Latin trapezium, from Greek trapezion (small table), from trapeza (table), from tetra-(four) + peza (foot). Earliest documented use: 1830.
USAGE:
“In my last year at the university, I felt like I had finally mastered walking the trapeze of my life, work, and academics.” – Students in Rural Schools; The Centre Daily Times (Pennsylvania); Feb 6, 2005.
“Prime Minister and his advisers were hanging themselves in a trapeze of stale and false intelligence.” – Peter Newman; Harper’s Election to Lose; Maclean’s (Canada); Jun 21, 2004.
Explore “trapeze” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=trapeze