Today in History (June 28th):
1491: Birthdays: English King Henry VIII.
1577: Birthdays: Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens.
1703: Birthdays: English clergyman John Wesley, founder of Methodism.
1712: Birthdays: French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
1778: The Continental Army under command of Gen. George Washington defeated the British at Monmouth, N.J.
1824: Birthdays: French physician Paul Broca.
1838: Victoria was crowned queen of England. She would rule for 63 years, 7 months.
1867: Birthdays: Italian author Luigi Pirandello.
1902: Birthdays: Composer Richard Rodgers.
1909: Birthdays: British spy novelist Eric Ambler.
1914: Archduke Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia, an act considered to have ignited World War I.
1919: World War I officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
1926: Birthdays: Filmmaker and comedian Mel Brooks.
1932: Birthdays: Actor Pat Morita.
1938: Birthdays: Former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
1946: Birthdays: Comedian Gilda Radner.
1948: Birthdays: Actor Kathy Bates.
1954: Birthdays: Actor Alice Krige.
1960: Birthdays: Football Hall of Fame member John Elway.
1966: Birthdays: Actor John Cusack; Actor Mary Stuart Masterson.
1969: The clientele of a New York City gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, rioted after it was raided by police. The event is considered the start of the gay liberation movement. Birthdays: Actor/singer Danielle Brisebois.
1971: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the use of public funds for parochial schools was unconstitutional.
1972: U.S. President Richard Nixon announced that no more draftees would be sent to Vietnam unless they volunteered for service in the Asian nation.
1979: Birthdays: Actor Felicia Day.
1984: Israel and Syria exchanged prisoners for the first time in 10 years; 291 Syrian soldiers were traded for three Israelis.
1997: Mike Tyson bit off a piece of one of heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield’s ears during a title fight in Las Vegas.
2000: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts of America had a constitutional right to exclude gay members.
2003: People eager to block telemarketing calls overwhelmed a government website that began accepting phone numbers at the National Do Not Call Registry. The Federal Trade Commission said 735,000 numbers were registered the first day.
2004: The U.S.-led coalition formally transferred political power in Iraq to an interim government that would run the country until elections were held.
2008: The Presbyterian Church voted to amend its constitution to allow openly gay and lesbian clergy.
2009: Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, rousted out of bed in the middle of the night by soldiers, was forced from office and into exile in Costa Rica in the culmination of a bitter power struggle over proposed constitutional changes.
2010: U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., died in a Virginia hospital at age 92. Byrd was in the U.S. House from 1953-59 before moving to the Senate, where he served from 1959-2010 — a total of nearly 57 years in Congress.
2011: The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi on charges of crimes against humanity.
2012: The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the new healthcare law known as the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare.
Quotes
“What is robbing a bank compared to founding one?” – Bertolt Brecht
“A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.” – Lewis H. Lapham, editor and writer (1935-)
“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” – Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian (1892-1971)
Gilda Radner (1946-1989) U.S. comic actor:
By educating men, sildenafil super we can ensure that fewer men lose their sexual prowess and get obstacles in their love life. Stay tadalafil free in touch with your health care provider after you quit. After 4 months, I am seeing that I usually get seriously harder erections and I don’t give up in one hour or so time. viagra uk without prescription Not many people know it as erectile dysfunction they call it with the cialis australia online name of impotence. “Comedy is very controlling – you are making people laugh. It is there in the phrase ‘making people laugh.’ You feel completely in control when you hear a wave of laughter coming back at you that you have caused.”
“I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn’t itch.”
“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”
“Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”
complice
PRONUNCIATION: (KOM-plis)
http://wordsmith.org/words/complice.mp3
MEANING: (noun), An associate; accomplice.
ETYMOLOGY: Via French from Latin com- (with) + plicare (to fold). Ultimately from the Indo-European root plek- (to plait), which is also the source of plait, pleat, pliant, ply, apply, deploy, display, exploit, replicate, and perplex. Earliest documented use: 1475.
USAGE: – “The Rhodesian army employed several methods to get information about the guerrillas and their complices.” – Picture Coverage of the World; Transaction Publishers; 2011.
scoria
PRONUNCIATION: (SKOR-ee-uh) plural scoriae (SKOR-ee-ee)
http://wordsmith.org/words/scoria.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. In metallurgy, the refuse or slag left from smelting.
2. Porous cinderlike fragments of solidified lava.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin scoria, from Greek skoria (dross), from skor (dung).
USAGE: “[The hiker] actually said the snow made it a bit easier, because it was a bit softer to walk on than the rocky scoria.” – Rescuers Help Injured Man Off Mt Taranaki; Otago Daily Times (New Zealand); Jun 8, 2010.
Explore “scoria” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=scoria
jake
PRONUNCIATION: (jayk)
http://wordsmith.org/words/jake.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Satisfactory; all right; okay.
ETYMOLOGY: Of unknown origin.
USAGE: “So far as the state is concerned, everything is jake. But the council seems determined to throw a monkey wrench into the works.” – James Gill; Council Seems Eager to Trip Up Churchill; The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana); Apr 20, 2005.
Returning to ‘Element’-ary School
A few weeks ago I explained how five chemical elements came to be named for Greek and Roman gods. Let’s feast again at the periodic table and discover the mythological origins of five more elements.
–Tantalum — When Tantalus, a mortal son of Zeus, shared his father’s secrets with ordinary humans, his father punished him by placing him in fresh water up to his chin and dangling luscious fruits above his head.
Doesn’t sound so bad, right? But every time Tantalus stooped to slake his thirst, the water drained away. And when he reached for the fruit, it moved upward beyond his grasp. This excruciating torture inspired the English word “tantalize.”
In 1814, the Swedish chemist Anders Eckeberg discovered a new metal that could be placed in strong acid without “drinking” it, that is, reacting with it. So his fellow Swedish chemist Jons Berzelius, remembering the perpetually parched Tantalus, dubbed the new element “tantalum.”
–Niobium — At about the same time, the English chemist Charles Hatchett discovered a new metal, right here in the United States. He dubbed it “columbium,” after “Columbia,” a term for the U.S. But other scientists claimed that columbian was identical to tantalum and wasn’t new at all.
This dispute was resolved in 1846 when German chemist Heinrich Rose determined that columbium was indeed a new element. But because it resembled tantalum so closely, Rose dubbed it “niobium” after Tantalus’ weeping daughter, Niobe. American scientists stuck with “columbium” for a while, but “niobium” eventually prevailed.
–Selenium — Another mythological daughter also gave her name to an element. Selene, the daughter of Hyperion, was the Greek goddess of the moon. In 1818 the aforementioned Berzelius discovered a new element very similar to tellurium.
Because “tellurium” had been named for Tellus, the Roman goddess of the earth, Berzelius strove for balance by calling its sister element “selenium” for the goddess of the moon.
–Neptunium and Plutonium — In 1940 chemists at the University of California produced two new radioactive elements derived from uranium (which had been named in 1788 for Uranus, the Roman god of the sky).
So, following the order of the planets, they named the newcomers “neptunium” (for Neptune, Roman god of the sea) and “plutonium” (for Pluto, Greek god of the underworld).
Though Pluto is no longer considered a planet, its namesake element abides.
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 email to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254
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