Today in History (May 18th):
1048: Birthdays: Persian poet Omar Khayyam.
1652: Rhode Island legislators passed a measure making slavery illegal. It was the first such law in North America.
1804: Napoleon Bonaparte was declared emperor of France.
1860: The Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln for U.S. president at its convention in Chicago.
1868: Birthdays: Russian Czar Nicholas II.
1872: Birthdays: English philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell.
1883: Birthdays: German architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus.
1892: Birthdays: Italian operatic singer Ezio Pinza.
1896: The U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision that determined separate but equal racial policies are constitutional.
1897: Bram Stoker published Dracula. Birthdays: Film director Frank Capra (It Happened One Night, It’s a Wonderful Life).
1902: Birthdays: Composer Meredith Willson (The Music Man).
1911: Birthdays: Blues singer Big Joe Turner.
1912: Birthdays: Singer Perry Como; Director/screenwriter Richard Brooks (Key Largo, Elmer Gantry).
1919: Birthdays: British ballet star Margot Fonteyn.
1920: Birthdays: Pope John Paul II, born Karol Wojtyla.
1928: Birthdays: Actor Pernell Roberts.
1931: Birthdays: Actor Robert Morse; Mad magazine cartoonist Don Martin.
1933: The U.S. Congress created the Tennessee Valley Authority for flood control and rural electrification.
1937: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Brooks Robinson.
1944: Allied troops captured Monte Cassino in Italy after one of the longest and bloodiest battles of World War II.
1946: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Reggie Jackson.
1949: Birthdays: British rock keyboardist Rick Wakeman.
1952: Birthdays: Country singer George Strait.
1955: Birthdays: Actor Chow Yun-Fat.
1970: Birthdays: Actor Tina Fey.
1979: A U.S. court jury in Oklahoma City awarded $10.5 million to the estate of Karen Silkwood, a laboratory technician contaminated by radiation at a Kerr-McGee plutonium plant in 1974.
1980: Mount St. Helen’s in southwestern Washington state erupted, blowing the top off the mountain and killing at least 55 people.
1990: East and West Germany signed a treaty for economic, monetary and social union. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said the pact marked the birth of a free and unified Germany.
1991: Chemist Helen Sharman became the first Briton in space when she blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Soviet spacecraft.
1992: The 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect, banning pay raises for federal legislators until the following Congress meets. Bandleader Lawrence Welk, whose bubbly champagne dance music brought him wide popularity and made him a millionaire, died at age 89.
1994: The last Israeli soldiers pulled out of the Gaza Strip as Palestinian police officers took their place.
2004: Randy Johnson, Arizona’s 40-year-old left-hander, pitched a perfect game in a 2-0 win over Atlanta, the oldest major league pitcher to accomplish the feat.
2005: The White House confirmed that a grenade found on May 10 in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi was capable of exploding and had posed a threat to U.S. President George Bush who spoke nearby. Earlier, officials said it was a harmless training device.
2006: The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed a $2.7 trillion federal budget bill, similar to a Senate version the day before. The Senate also approved building 370 miles of heavy fencing along the Mexican border for $1 billion.
2007: Chiquita Brands International was fined $25 million for paying alleged right-wing Colombian terrorist groups $1.7 million over seven years for protection. Several other U.S. companies reputedly followed suit.
2009: The Hubble Space Telescope was returned to orbit after astronauts finished five spacewalks in a mission to repair and refurbish the 19-year-old instrument and possibly keep it running at least until 2014.
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2011: Unhappy Americans who rebuffed congressional incumbents in November still were dismayed with Capitol Hill, a new USA Today-Gallup Poll indicated. Sixty-three percent of voters said most members of Congress don’t deserve to be returned to office.
2012: Facebook Inc. had its first day of public trading.
Quotes
“A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.” – Anonymous
“The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.” – Thomas Babington Macaulay, author and statesman (1800-1859)
Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) Persian writer, mathematician:
“A hair divides what is false and true.”
“And that inverted bowl we call The Sky, where under crawling coop’t we live and die, lift not thy hands to It for help – for it rolls impotently on as thou or I.”
“Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.”
“Living Life Tomorrow’s fate, though thou be wise, Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise; Pass, therefore, not today in vain, For it will never come again.”
“Myself when young did eagerly frequent doctor and saint, and heard great argument about it and about: but evermore came out by the same door as in I went.”
“Oh, the brave Music of a distant drum!”
“The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.”
“The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.”
“There was a door to which I found no key: There was the veil through which I might not see.”
“‘Tis all a Checker-board of Nights and days where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates and slays, and one by one back in the Closet lays.”
“You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse I made a Second Marriage in my house; favored old barren reason from my bed, and took the daughter of the vine to spouse.”
banal
PRONUNCIATION: (BAY-nul; buh-NALL; buh-NAHL (British)
MEANING: (adjective), Commonplace; trivial; hackneyed; trite.
ETYMOLOGY: Banal comes from the Old French word ban, an edict, which had the adjective banal, “of or relating to compulsory feudal service,” which evolved to signify “merely obligatory,” hence “commonplace.”
USAGE: “While many critics were raving that the new work was fresh and inspiring, Jack and his friends found it banal and insipid, devoid of any redeeming qualities whatsoever.”
hey rube
PRONUNCIATION: (hay roob)
http://wordsmith.org/words/hey_rube.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. A fight between members of a circus and the general public.
2. A call to rally circus members in a fight.
ETYMOLOGY: The term originated in the 19th century when circuses were rowdy affairs and “Hey Rube” was the rallying cry to call all circus people to help ina fight with townspeople. It’s not clear whether Rube in this term was someone specific or simply a use of the informal term rube (shortened form of Reuben) for an unsophisticated person from a rural area. Earliest documented use: 1882.
USAGE:
“I said ‘Shut it, Camel! I’m dealing with a situation here.’ Walter says.
‘What kind of situation?’ says Camel.
‘Jacob’s messed up.’
‘What? How? Was there a hey rube?”
Sara Gruen; Water for Elephants; Algonquin Books; 2006.
“‘Hey, Rube,’ they would yell. Roustabouts would soon be beating on the trouble-maker.” – Bill Conlin; Phillies GM Amaro is Master of the Shell Game; The Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania); Dec 17, 2009.