Today in History (June 30th):
1859: Frenchman Jean Francois Gravelet, known professionally as the Great Blondin, became the first daredevil to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
1870: Ada Kepley became the first woman to graduate from an accredited law school in the United States, Union College of Law in Chicago.
1888: Robert Louis Stevenson published his adventure novel “The Black Arrow.”
1893: Birthdays: English socialist leader Harold Laski.
1905: The theory of relativity was introduced by Albert Einstein in On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.
1908: A spectacular explosion occurred over central Siberia, probably caused by a meteorite. The fireball could be seen hundreds of miles away.
1917: Birthdays: Actor Susan Hayward; Singer Lena Horne.
1923: Jazz pioneer Sidney Bechet made his first recording. It included Wild Cat Blues and Kansas City Blues.
1934: German leader Adolf Hitler ordered a bloody purge of his own political party. Hundreds of Nazis he feared might become political enemies were assassinated. Birthdays: Magician Harry Blackstone Jr.
1936: Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War novel Gone With the Wind was published. Birthdays: Actor Nancy Dussault.
1943: Birthdays: Singer Florence Ballard of The Supremes.
1950: U.S. troops were moved from Japan to help defend South Korea against the invading North Koreans.
1955: Birthdays: Actor David Alan Grier.
1966: Birthdays: Former heavyweight champion boxer Mike Tyson.
1971: Three Soviet Cosmonauts, crewmembers of the world’s first space station, were killed when their spacecraft depressurized during re-entry.
1982: The extended deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment expired, three states short of the 38 needed for passage.
1984: Birthdays: Singer and American Idol winner Fantasia Barrio.
1985: Birthdays: Swimmer Michael Phelps, winner of 18 Olympic gold medals.
1986: Hugh Hefner, calling his Playboy Bunny a symbol of the past, closed Playboy Clubs in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.
1992: Fidel Ramos was inaugurated as the eighth Philippine president in the first peaceful transfer of power in a generation.
1998: A casualty of the Vietnam War buried at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington, Va., was identified as Air Force Lt. Michael Blassie of St. Louis.
2004: The Cassini spacecraft, in space on a U.S.-European mission, became the first device to orbit the planet Saturn.
2005: Israel declared the Gaza Strip a closed military zone. All Israelis, except for residents, service providers and reporters, were barred from entering.
2006: A U.S.-Canadian investigation grounded a group accused of using helicopters and planes to ferry drugs from British Columbia across the border. Agents reported arresting 46 people and seizing 4 tons of marijuana, 800 pounds of cocaine, aircraft and $1.5 million in cash.
2009: The U.S. military completed its withdrawal from Baghdad and other Iraqi cities and towns as planned. Nearly 130,000 American troops remained on duty at forward-operating bases. Yemenia Airways Flight IY626, which had taken off from Sanaa, Yemen, crashed into the Indian Ocean while trying to land at Moroni, the capital of Comoros, killing 152 of 153 people aboard. The lone survivor was a 14-year-old girl.
2011: The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Gen. David Petraeus as director of the CIA.
2012: Members of the Ansar Dine Islamic rebel group, wielding shovels and pickaxes, damaged historic shrines of Muslim saints in Timbuktu, Mali, considering them idolatrous.
Quotes
“Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.” – Bertrand Russell
“The ring always believes that the finger lives for it.” – Malcolm De Chazal, writer and painter (1902-1981)
“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.” – Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
“A good listener helps us overhear ourselves.” – Yahia Lababidi, author (b. 1973)
Ann Taylor (1782-1866) English children’s writer and poet:
“Who ran to help me when I fell,”
“And would some pretty story tell,,”
“Or kiss the place to make it well,”
“My mother.”
– My Mother (st. 6)
You can watch every one of them all was from the Lumina Foundation and their Inside Higher Ed Poll. cialis consultation Little did you female generic viagra know that ED is not a dangerous condition, it can be a potential sign of underlying cardiovascular disease. This article looks at a couple of examples viagra australia online of cracker victims. Transit levitra india Address is a newly launched app for International Shopping. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star!,”
“How I wonder what you are,,”
“Up above the worlds so high,”
“Like a diamond in the sky!”
– Rhymes for the Nursery – The Star
“Thank you, pretty cow, that made,”
“Pleasant milk to soak my bread.”
– The Cow
“Sweet innocent, the mother cried,”
“And started from her nook.”
“That horrid fly is put to hide”
“The sharpness of the hook.”
– The Little Fish that Would Not Do as It Was Bid
lollygag
PRONUNCIATION: (LOL-ee-gag
MEANING: (verb intr.), also lallygag
1. To fool around, waste time, or spend time lazily.
2. To neck.
ETYMOLOGY: Origin uncertain.
USAGE: “Bryan was wont to spend his days lollygagging around while surfing the Internet, accomplishing very little in the way of the actual work he was supposedly being paid for.”
mumpsimus
PRONUNCIATION: (MUMP-suh-muhs)
http://wordsmith.org/words/mumpsimus.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. A view stubbornly held in spite of clear evidence that it’s wrong.
2. A person who holds such a view.
ETYMOLOGY: According to an old story, a priest used the nonsense word mumpsimus (instead of Latin sumpsimus) in the Mass. Even when told it was incorrect, he insisted that he had been saying it for 40 years and wouldn’t change it. The expression is “quod in ore sumpsimus” (‘which we have taken into the mouth’). Earliest documented use: 1530.
USAGE:
“She knows the boss’s behavior is wrong but mumpsimus has set in.” – Mary Lou Dobbs; Repotting Yourself; O Books; 2010.
“Do not be a mumpsimus about networking. … Resist the popular notion that networking is all fake sincerity and pushy behavior.” – Dean Lindsay; Cracking the Networking Code; World Gumbo; 2005
fimicolous
PRONUNCIATION: (fy-MIK-uh-luhs, fuh-)
http://wordsmith.org/words/fimicolous.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Living in or growing in animal excrement.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin fimus (dung) + colere (to inhabit).
USAGE: “The shameless consumption of fimicolous humanity was really amusing them.” – Jonathan J. Malone; The Chronicles of Kingdom Come; BookSurge Publishing; 2009.
grift
PRONUNCIATION: (grift)
http://wordsmith.org/words/grift.mp3
MEANING:
(noun)
1. A swindle or a confidence game.
2. Money obtained by fraud.
(verb tr., intr.), To swindle someone; to obtain something by swindling.
ETYMOLOGY: Of uncertain origin, perhaps an alteration of graft, the origin of which remains unknown as well.
USAGE: “The real genius of the ever-evolving 419 scam is its ability to change with the times. Like Madonna or antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus, the money-advancing grift continuously reinvents itself to better infiltrate society’s weaknesses.” – Helen A.S. Popkin; Don’t Get Taken by This Adorable Scam; MSNBC; Nov 7, 2007.