Today in History (July 26th)
1788: New York becomes the 11th state of the United States upon ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
1796: Birthdays: Artist George Catlin, painter of American Indian scenes.
1847: Liberia became Africa’s first republic and Africa’s first sovereign, black-ruled democratic nation.
1856: Birthdays: George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and critic (1856-1950): He revolutionized the Victorian stage, then dominated by artificial melodramas, by presenting vigorous dramas of ideas. The lengthy prefaces to Shaw’s plays reveal his mastery of English prose. In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Dublin, Shaw was the son of an unsuccessful merchant; his mother was a singer who eventually left her husband to teach singing in London. Shaw left school at 14 to work in an estate agent’s office. In 1876 he went to London and for nine years was largely supported by his parents. He wrote five novels, several of them published in small socialist magazines. Shaw was himself an ardent socialist, a member of the Fabian Society, and a popular public speaker on behalf of socialism. Work as a journalist led to his becoming a music critic for the Star in 1888 and for the World in 1890; his enthusiasm for Wagner proved infectious
to his readers. As drama critic for the Saturday Review after 1895, he won readers to Ibsen; he had already written The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891). In 1898 Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a wealthy, wellborn Irishwoman. By this time his plays were beginning to be produced. Although Shaw’s plays focus on ideas and issues, they are vital and absorbing, enlivened by memorable characterizations, a brilliant command of language, and dazzling wit. His early plays were published as Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (2 vol., 1898). The “unpleasant” plays were Widower’s Houses (1892), on slum landlordism; The Philanderer (written 1893, produced 1905); and Mrs. Warren’s Profession (written 1893, produced 1902), a jibe at the Victorian attitude toward prostitution. The “pleasant” plays were Arms and the Man (1894), satirizing romantic attitudes toward love and war; Candida (1893); and You Never Can Tell (written 1895). In 1897 The Devil’s Disciple, a play on the American Revolution, was produced with great success in New York City. It was published in the volume Three Plays for Puritans (1901) along with Caesar and Cleopatra (1899), notable for its realistic, humorous portraits of historical figures, and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (1900). During the early 20th century Shaw wrote his greatest and most popular plays: Man and Superman (1905), in which an idealistic, cerebral man succumbs to marriage (the play contains an explicit articulation of a major Shavian theme, that man is the spiritual creator, whereas woman is the biological “life force” that must always triumph over him); Major Barbara (1905), which postulates that poverty is the cause of all evil; Androcles and the Lion (1912; a short play), a charming satire of Christianity; and Pygmalion (1913), which satirizes the English class system through the story of a cockney girl’s transformation into a lady at the hands of a speech professor. The latter has proved to be Shaw’s most successful work, as a play, as a motion picture, and as the basis for the musical and film My Fair Lady (1956; 1964). Of Shaw’s later plays, Saint Joan (1923) is the most memorable; it argues that Joan of Arc, a harbinger of Protestantism and nationalism, had to be killed because the world was not yet ready for her. In 1920 Shaw, much criticized for his antiwar stance, wrote Heartbreak House, a play that exposed the spiritual bankruptcy of the generation responsible for World War I. Among Shaw’s other plays are John Bull’s Other Island (1904), The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906), Fanny’s First Play (1911), Back to Methuselah (1922), The Apple Cart (1928), Too True to Be Good (1932), The Millionairess (1936), In Good King Charles’s Golden Days (1939), and Bouyant Billions (1949). Perhaps his most popular nonfiction work is The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928). Bibliography: See his collected plays, ed. by D. H. Laurence (6 vol., 1970-73); his letters, particularly those to Ellen Terry (1931), Mrs. Patrick Campbell (1952), Granville-Barker (1957), and Molly Tompkins (1960); his collected letters, ed. by D. H. Laurence (2 vol., 1972); his autobiography, reconstructed by Stanley Weintraub (2 vol., 1969-70).
1874: Birthdays: Serge (Sergei Aleksandrovich) Koussevitzky (serzh kos?vit’ske; Rus. syirga’ ?lyiksän’dr?vich kosyivet’ske) 1874-1951, Russian-American conductor, studied in Moscow. He began his career as a double bass player. In 1908 he made his debut as a conductor in Berlin. In 1910 he and his wife, Natalie, formed an orchestra that Koussevitzky conducted until 1918. In 1917 he was made conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra in Petrograd. Leaving Soviet Russia (1920), he stayed mainly in Paris until coming to the United States in 1924, becoming a citizen in 1941. He was conductor (1924-49) of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and also directed (from 1936) the Berkshire Symphonic Festivals, today known as the Tanglewood Music Festival. A champion of new music and the first important maestro to emphasize modern American music, he created (1942) the Koussevitzky Foundation to commission and perform new works by American composers.
1875: Birthdays: Carl Gustav Jung (kärl gos’täf yong), 1875-1961, Swiss psychiatrist, founder of analytical psychology. The son of a country pastor, he studied at Basel (1895-1900) and Zürich (M.D., 1902). After a stint at the University Psychiatric Clinic in Zürich, Jung worked (1902) under Eugen Bleuler at the Burgholzli Clinic. He wrote valuable papers, but more important was his book on the psychology of dementia praecox (1906), which led to a meeting (1907) with Sigmund Freud. Finding that their theoretical positions had much in common, the two formed a close relationship for a number of years: Jung edited the Jahrbuch für psychologische und psychopathologische Forschungen and was made (1911) president of the International Psychoanalytic Society. However, a formal break with Freud came with the publication of Jung’s revolutionary work The Psychology of the Unconscious (1912), which disagreed with the Freudian emphasis on sexual trauma as the basis for all neurosis and with the literal interpretation of the Oedipus complex. Prior to World War II, Jung became president of the Nazi-dominated International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy. As the Nazis forced their Aryan ideology on the association, Jung became increasingly uncomfortable and resigned. In addition, in 1943 he aided the Office of Strategic Services by analyzing Nazi leaders for the United States. Questions have arisen, however, regarding his alleged racial theories of the unconscious. While Jung’s work is of little importance in contemporary psychoanalytic practice, it remains widely influential in such fields as religious studies and literary criticism. Jungian psychology is based on psychic totality and psychic energism. He postulated two dimensions in the unconscious, the personal (repressed or forgotten content of an individual’s mental and material life) and the archetypes (images, patterns, and symbols that are often seen in dreams and fantasies and appear as themes in mythology and religion) of a collective unconscious (those acts and mental patterns shared by members of a culture or universally by all human beings). In Psychological Types (1921) Jung elucidated the concepts of extroversion and introversion for the study of personality types. He also developed the theory of synchronicity, the coincidence of causally unrelated events having identical or similar meaning. Additionally, he was the first person to introduce into the language such terms and concepts as “anima” and “New Age.” For Jung the most important and lifelong task imposed upon any person is fulfillment through the process of individuation, the achievement of harmony of conscious and unconscious, which makes a person one and whole. Jung’s many works are compiled in H. Read, M. Fordham, and G. Adler, ed., Collected Works of C. G. Jung (20 vol., 1953-79). Long withheld from publication, his mystical and visionary illustrated work The Red Book (Liber Novus) (1914-30) was released in a translated facsimile edition, ed. by S. Shamdasani, in 2009.
1894: Birthdays: Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) English author; grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, brother of Sir Julian Huxley, and half-brother of Sir Andrew Huxley. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he traveled widely and during the 1920s lived in Italy. He came to the United States in the 1937 and settled in California. On the verge of blindness from the time he was 16, Huxley devoted much time and energy in an effort to improve his vision. He began his literary career writing critical essays and symbolist poetry, but he soon turned to the novel. Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925), and Point Counter Point (1928) are brittle, skeptical pictures of a decadent society. Brave New World (1932), the most popular of his novels, presents a nightmarish, dystopian civilization in the 25th cent. It was followed by Eyeless in Gaza (1936), After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939), Ape and Essence (1948), The Devils of Loudon (1952), and The Genius and the Goddess (1955). Marked by an exuberance of ideas and comic invention, his novels reflect, with increasing cynicism, his disgust and disillusionment with the modern world. His later writings, however, reveal a strong interest in mysticism and Eastern philosophy. His fascination with mind-expansion and experimentation with LSD prompted the writing of The Doors of Perception (1954), a long essay extremely popular in the drug-oriented 1960s and still one of his most-read books. Huxley’s other works include collections of short stories, of which Mortal Coils (1922) is representative, and essays, including End and Means (1937) and Brave New World Revisited (1958).
1895: Birthdays: Comedian Gracie Allen.
1903: Birthdays: U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver, D-Tenn., who led the 1950-51 Senate investigation of organized crime.
1908: The Office of the Chief Examiner was born when a group of newly hired investigators was ordered to report to the Justice Department. The special unit officially became the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935. Birthdays: Salvador Allende (sälvähor’ äyan’da go’sans) (1908-73) President of Chile (1970-73). A physician, he helped found the Chilean Socialist party in 1933, was minister of health (1939-42) and president of the senate (1965-69). Four times a presidential candidate, he won in 1970 by a narrow plurality. Attempting to implement socialism by democratic means (“the Chilean road to socialism”), he nationalized industries, including the U.S.-owned copper multinationals, and pushed extensive land reform. As a minority president, however, his programs provoked strong resistance in the opposition-controlled congress and judiciary. The Chilean people, too, became highly polarized, resulting in vocal support and often violent opposition. Instability was further fueled by soaring inflation and widespread shortages, caused in part by the U.S. economic blockade and the undercover activities of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. In Sept., 1973, Allende was overthrown in a bloody military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. He was reported to have committed suicide during the coup, but many believed that he had been murdered. In 2011 his body was exhumed for an autopsy, which confirmed his suicide. Democracy was not restored in Chile until 1990.
1909: Birthdays: Actor Vivian Vance.
1914: Birthdays: Erskine Hawkins, trumpet virtuoso, band leader.
1921: Birthdays: Storyteller Jean Shepherd.
1922: Birthdays: Actor Jason Robards; Movie producer Blake Edwards; Baseball Hall of Fame member Hoyt Wilhelm.
1923: Birthdays: Children’s author Jan Berenstain.
1928: Birthdays: Stanley Kubrick. director/screenwriter/producer, Birthplace: New York City, Stanley Kubrick’s list of film credits is long and prestigious, including Spartacus (1960), Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), and Full Metal Jacket (1987). He began directing self-financed films while working full-time as a photographer for LOOK magazine, and emerged as a mainstream director with 1957’s World War I film Paths to Glory. Although some critics have labeled his style as cold, Kubrick has garnered many awards for his work, including an Academy Award for best special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Motion Picture and best director (A Clockwork Orange), the Directors Guild of America’s D. W. Griffith Award (1997), and Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion for Career Achievement (1997). Kubrick died in his home at age 70. His family refused to release any details, other than to say he died of natural causes. At the time of his death, Kubrick had just completed production of Eyes Wide Shut, a psychological thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.
1935: Birthdays: Charlotte Beers, advertising executive, Birthplace: Beaumont, Tex, Adept at combining her business acumen with a little Southern charm, Beers has paved the way for women to succeed in the extremely competitive milieu of advertising. Exceptionally hard working, she carved out successes for her company and herself at a string of jobs. First as a market researcher for Uncle Ben’s, next as an account executive at J. Walter Thompson, where she became the first female vice president in the firm’s 106-year history. Disappointed when she was denied further promotion, she left Thompson for Tatham-Laird & Kudner where she worked 100-hour weeks for two years to turn around the firms low employee morale and shaky financial status. She became CEO, and under her reign over the next decade increased profit margins to double the industry average, tripled billings to $325 million, and lured in major new business accounts. She resigned in 1992 and was heavily courted by several firms but decided to take on the challenges posed by the $5.4 billion, 8,000-employee multinational Ogilvy & Mather. She stayed for four years, increasing billings by $2 billion, before handing over the reins to Shelly Lazarus, a longtime Ogilvy employee. In Oct. 2001, she joined secretary of state Colin Powell as under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a post she held until March 2003.
In 1941, U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur was named commander of U.S. forces in the Philippines.
1943: Birthdays: Mick Jagger, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Musician, Birthplace: Dartford, Kent, England, Lead singer of the rock and roll group The Rolling Stones, Jagger is truly a legend, known as much for his onstage antics as he is for his offstage ones with his ex-wife, model Jerry Hall (b. 7/2/56; Mesquite, Texas). The Stones debuted in London in 1962 and became popular for their seemingly uninhibited and rebellious lifestyles. Together for 3 decades, they are one of the longest standing rock groups since rock was born, with hits such as ‘The Last Time’ (1965), ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ (1965), and ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ (1969). Jagger released two solo albums, She’s the Boss (1985) and Primitive Love (1987); still popular today, the Stones’ most recent albums include Steel Wheels (1988) and Flashpoint (1991).
1945: Birthdays: Helen (Ilynea Lydia) Mirren, actress, Birthplace: London, England, An intelligent, versatile actress, Mirren performed on the British stage during the 1960s and 1970s, playing Ophelia, Cleopatra, and other challenging roles. She made important film appearances in Excalibur (1981), The Comfort of Strangers (1991), Calendar Girls (2003), The Madness of King George (1994), and Gosford Park (2001); the two latter roles won her Oscar nominations. Mirren’s portrayal of hard-bitten police inspector Jane Tennison in the PBS series Prime Suspect (1992 and ongoing) has brought her great popularity stateside, as well as winning her an Emmy.
1947: President Harry S Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
1948: U.S. President Harry S. Truman ordered desegregation of the U.S. military.
1952: Argentina’s first lady, Eva Peron, died in Buenos Aires at age 33. King Farouk I of Egypt abdicated after a coup led by Gamal Abdal Nasser.
1953: Fidel Castro was among a group of rebelling anti-Batistas who unsuccessfully attacked an army barracks.
1954: Birthdays: Tennis player Vitas Gerulaitis.
1955: Birthdays: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
1956: Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser created a crisis by nationalizing the British and French-owned Suez Canal. Birthdays: Olympic gold medal skater Dorothy Hamill.
1959: Birthdays: Kevin Spacey, actor/director, Birthplace: South Orange, New Jersey, Known for playing offbeat characters in movies like The Usual Suspects (1995), for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, L.A. Confidential (1997), and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), he began his career on the stage, with the New York Shakespeare Festival, and won a Tony Award for Lost in Yonkers (1991). He worked with Jack Lemmon on stage and television in O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1987) and in film in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). His role in the 1999 film American Beauty earned him a Best Actor Oscar. Other films include Pay It Forward(2000), and The Shipping News (2001). He made his directorial debut in 1996 with Albino Alligator.
1964: Birthdays: Sandra Bullock, actress, Birthplace: Washington D.C. Actress known for her ‘girl-next-door’ appeal, she is the daughter of an opera singer. Bullock’s voice lessons led to her debut as a country singer in The Thing Called Love (1993). After studying acting at E. Carolina University in North Carolina, she landed roles in Speed (1994), While You Were Sleeping (1995), and The Net (1995). Bullock has become one of Hollywood’s most popular leading women, starring in the romantic films In Love and War (1996), Hope Floats (1998), Practical Magic (1998), Forces of Nature (1999), and comedies 28 Days (2000), Miss Congeniality (2000), and Two Weeks Notice (2002). She portrays To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee in Infamous (2006) and Peyton Place author Grace Metalious in Grace (2006).
1973: Birthdays: Actor Kate Beckinsale.
1984: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson became the first network television show to be broadcast in stereo.
1990: The U.S. House of Representatives voted 408-18 to reprimand Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., for actions he took on behalf of a male prostitute.
1992: Under pressure, Iraq backed down and agreed to allow U.N. inspectors to look for documentation on weapons of mass destruction.
2005: The shuttle Discovery lifted off from Cape Canaveral in the first launch since the 2003 Columbia tragedy.
2007: The U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed anti-terrorism legislation that enhances screening of air and sea cargo and allocates more funds to states deemed at risk of attack.
2009: The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme Court.
2010: The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, said the decision to post more than 75,000 secret U.S. Afghan war documents on the Internet was to give a complete picture of the conflict. The White House called said the deed had a potential to be very harmful.
2011: U.S. Rep. David Wu, a seven-term Oregon Democrat, announced he would resign after a published report alleged he had made unwanted sexual advances on the 18-year-old daughter of a friend and campaign donor.
2012: Republican U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney was harshly criticized in London for suggesting, a day before the start of the Olympic Games, that the city might be unprepared for them.
Quotes
“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” – James Baldwin
“And after all, what is a lie? ’T is but The truth in masquerade.” – George Gordon Byron
“I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference!” – Jack Kerouac
“Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.” – G. W. F. Hegel
“The free thinking of one age is the common sense of the next.” – Matthew Arnold
“Death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down. The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.” – Woody Allen
“What’s the most popular pastime in America? Autoeroticism, hands down.” – Scott Roeben
“One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.” – Juvenal, poet (c. 60-140)
“An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.” – Bonnie Friedman, author (b. 1958)
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Robert Graves (1895-1985) English writer:
“A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.”
“Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.”
“I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horror of sordid passion and-if he is lucky enough-know the love of an honest woman.”
“I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.”
“If I were a girl, I’d despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.”
“If there’s no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.”
“Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.”
“Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.”
larruping
PRONUNCIATION: (LAR-uh-ping)
http://wordsmith.org/words/larruping.mp3
MEANING:
(adverb), Very.
(adjective), Excellent.
ETYMOLOGY: From larrup (to beat or thrash), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Dutch larpen (to thrash). Earliest documented use: 1888.
USAGE: “Little lady, you got any more of these larruping good biscuits?” – Bandit’s Hope; Marcia Gruver; Barbour Books; 2011.
noisome
PRONUNCIATION: (NOI-suhm)
http://wordsmith.org/words/noisome.mp3
MEANING: (adjective)
1. Offensive, especially to the sense of smell.
2. Harmful; noxious.
ETYMOLOGY: From Middle English noy (short of annoy), via French, from Latin inodiare (to make hateful), from in- (intensive prefix) + odium (hate).
USAGE:
“Phasing out of noisome exhausts on motorbikes should be handled seriously and urgently.” – ESG Response; Gibraltar Chronicle; Nov 28, 2009.
“The anti-social behaviour order, or Asbo, has helped to bring some relief to hard-pressed communities plagued by noisome neighbours and menacing yobs.” – Making Justice Swifter; The Daily Telegraph (London, UK); Oct 8, 2009.
Explore “noisome” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=noisome
stenotopic
PRONUNCIATION: (sten-uh-TOP-ik)
http://wordsmith.org/words/stenotopic.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Able to adapt only to a small range of environmental conditions.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek steno- (narrow, small) + topos (place). Opposite is eurytopic.
USAGE: “Like any gathering of aged immigrants, this was one helluva stenotopic congregation.” – Haim Chertok; Beating Blindness, and Bureaucracy, in Beersheba; The Jerusalem Post (Israel); Feb 9, 1996.
‘Dry Run’ Theories Are All Wet
Why do we call a rehearsal or practice session a “dry run”?
The origin of this term, which first entered English during the late 1800s, eluded linguists for more than a century.
Some speculated that it derived from “dry run,” a normally dry streambed or arroyo that floods only after a heavy rain. Others suggested it originally referred to a route tested out by bootleggers before they actually moved illegal liquor along it, hence a “dry run.”
But in 2004, the linguist Doug Wilson argued convincingly that these theories were all wet. In an entry posted on the website of the American Dialect society, Wilson said he had traced “dry run” to American firehouses of the late 1880s.
Back then, he explained, fire companies would often conduct practice sessions, public exhibitions and competitions. Such rehearsals or demonstrations were either “wet runs,” during which the hoses were deployed and used, or “dry runs,” during which the hoses never actually dispensed water.
Wilson discovered the first recorded use of the term “dry run” in a news story in the Aug. 2, 1888, issue of the Olean Democrat; it described a competition between two local fire companies: “Not less than 15 or more than 17 men to each company. Dry run, standing start, each team to be allowed one trial.”
And, yes, firefighters made “wet runs” as well. On July 6, 1896, the Salem, Mass. Daily News reported, “The wet run was made by the Fulton hook and ladder company and the Deluge hose company. … The hose company attached [its] hose to a fire plug and, ascending the ladder, gave a fine exhibition.”
Google Books Ngram viewer, which tracks the frequency of a word’s usage over the centuries, reveals a huge spike in the use of “dry run” during and after World War II.
In March 1943, for instance, the U.S. Army newspaper Stars and Stripes reported in a story about an airbase crash team, “Regularly, the crash crews go tearing out on a dry run.”
My hunch is that millions of American soldiers and sailors, who participated in many fire drills and practice runs during the war, picked up what had been a firefighters’ expression and brought it home to the U.S., where its meaning quickly expanded to any rehearsal or practice.
Soon this “private” term had been promoted up the ranks to “general parlance.”
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 e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.
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