Today in History (May 25th):
1787: The first regular session of the Constitutional Convention convened at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
1803: Birthdays: Ralph Waldo Emerson.
1865: Birthdays: YMCA leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate John Mott.
1878: H.M.S. Pinafore, an operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan, opened in London. Birthdays: Dancer Bill (Bojangles) Robinson.
1889: Birthdays: Aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky.
1892: Birthdays: Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito.
1897: Birthdays: Heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney.
1898: Birthdays: Humorist and publisher Bennett Cerf.
1921: Birthdays: Songwriter Hal David.
1925: John Scopes was indicted for teaching the theory of evolution in a Tennessee high school.
1926: Birthdays: Actor Claude Akins.
1927: Birthdays: Spy novelist Robert Ludlum.
1929: Birthdays: Opera singer Beverly Sills (born Belle Miriam Silverman).
1932: Birthdays: Basketball Hall of Fame member K.C. Jones.
1935: Winding up his legendary career with the Boston Braves, Babe Ruth hit his 714th and last home run in his final game. The home run record stood for 39 years until Hank Aaron, also with the Braves (although in Atlanta), broke it in 1974. Birthdays: Canadian writer W.P. Kinsella.
1939: Birthdays: Actor Dixie Carter; Actor Ian McKellen.
1940: The Battle of Dunkirk began.
1943: Birthdays: Singer/actor Leslie Uggams; Singer Jessi Colter.
1944: Birthdays: Frank Oz (born Richard Frank Oznowicz) director, actor, puppeteer (Miss Piggy of The Muppets).
1947: Birthdays: Actor Karen Valentine.
1949: Chinese communist forces entered Shanghai as Nationalist troops abandoned the city and prepared to move to the island of Formosa, now called Taiwan.
1953: At the Nevada Test Site, the U.S. conducted its first and only nuclear artillery test.
1955: Birthdays: Actor Connie Sellecca.
1961: U.S. President John F. Kennedy told a joint session of Congress of the plan to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
1963: Birthdays: Actor Mike Myers.
1969: Birthdays: Actor Anne Heche.
1970: Birthdays: Jamie Kennedy.
1975: Birthdays: Lauryn Hill.
1976: Birthdays: Actor Cillian Murphy.
1977: The first installment of George Lucas’ Star Wars film series was released.
1978: Birthdays: Professional football player Brian Urlacher.
1979: The crash of an American Airlines DC-10 on takeoff from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport killed 275 people.
1986: 5 million people formed a broken 4,000-mile human chain from Los Angeles to New York in Hands Across America, to benefit the nation’s homeless. The event raised $24.5 million.
1991: Cuban soldiers withdrew from Angola after 16 years of fighting South Africa and U.S.-backed rebels.
1993: The U.N. Security Council voted to establish a war-crimes tribunal to deal with atrocities in the civil war in Bosnia.
1994: After living 20 years in exile, mostly in the United States, Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to his homeland. He had been expelled after The Gulag Archipelago, an expose of the Soviet prison camp system, was published in the West in 1974.
1997: Mutinous soldiers seized power in Sierra Leone.
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2001: Sherman Bull and Erik Weihenmayer summitted Mount Everest, respectively becoming the oldest and first blind person to do so.
2003: The Israeli Cabinet officially accepted the Palestinian claim to eventual statehood.
2006: Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, former officers of Enron Corp., were convicted in Houston federal court of conspiracy and securities fraud.
2007: The United States sent supplies to Lebanon to help government troops fighting al-Qaida-backed militants at a Palestinian refugee camp. At least 58 combatants were killed in what was described as the worst fighting since the country’s 1975-90 civil war.
2008: NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft made a smooth landing on Mars, completing a nine-month, 422-million-mile journey, setting down in the planet’s frigid polar region where scientists hoped to find water. Gen. Michel Suleiman, top man in the Lebanese military, was elected president, first move in a shared-power program approved by the government and the Hezbollah Shiite militant group and ending an 18-month political stalemate.
2009: Despite international warnings, North Korea reported it had launched a second nuclear missile test. Officials insisted they were only boosting self-defense capabilities.
2010: U.S. President Barack Obama said he would send up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border and increase law enforcement spending to reduce drug smuggling.
2011: The Oprah Winfrey Show broadcast its final original episode after 25 years on the air.
2012: An attack by government forces in the Houla area of Syria killed 108 people, including 49 children. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon later called it an appalling and brutal crime involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force. Private space company SpaceX’s Dragon capsule became the first commercial cargo vessel to visit the International Space Station.
Quotes
“My love life is terrible. The last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty.” – Woody Allen
“Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” – Donald Porter
“Mausoleum, noun. The final and funniest folly of the rich.” – Ambrose Bierce, author and editor (1842-1914)
“He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.” – Dante Alighieri, poet (1265-1321)
approbation
PRONUNCIATION: (ap-ruh-BAY-shuhn)
MEANING: (noun)
1. The act of approving; formal or official approval.
2. Praise; commendation.
ETYMOLOGY: Approbation is from Latin approbatio, from approbare, “to approve or cause to be approved,” from ap- (for ad-), used intensively + probare, “to make or find good,” from probus, “good, excellent, fine.”
USAGE: “The candidate’s speech struck a responsive chord among the crowd of well-wishers and won him much approbation.”
callow
PRONUNCIATION: (KAL-oh)
http://wordsmith.org/words/callow.mp3
MEANING: adjective: Inexperienced or immature.
ETYMOLOGY: From Old English calu (bald, featherless). Earliest documented use: before 1000.
USAGE: “Belva Davis was a young and callow rookie from a tiny black radio station in Oakland.” – Jerry Roberts; California Pioneer; The Santa Barbara Independent (California); Apr 21, 2011.
Explore “callow” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=callow
hecatomb
PRONUNCIATION: (HEK-uh-toom, -tom)
http://wordsmith.org/words/hecatomb.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A large-scale slaughter.
ETYMOLOGY: Originally a hecatomb was a public sacrifice and feast of 100 oxen or cattle to the gods in ancient Greece and Rome. The word is derived from Latin hekatombe, from Greek hekatombe, from hekaton (hundred) + bous (ox). Another word derived from bous (ox) is boustrophedon.
USAGE: “The use of high-tech weapons will result in hecatombs, smart as the US bombs may be.” – Lost Values; Kathimerini (Athens, Greece); Mar 17, 2003.