Today in History (July 27th)
1794: Maximilien Robespierre, architect of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, was overthrown and arrested by the National Convention. Robespierre who encouraged the execution, mostly by guillotine, of more than 17,000 enemies of the revolution, was himself guillotined the following day.
1824: Birthdays: French novelist Alexandre Dumas the Younger (Camille).
1866: The Transatlantic Telegraph Cable was completed.
1882: Birthdays: British aircraft pioneer Geoffrey de Havilland.
1905: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Leo Durocher.
1909: Orville Wright set a record by staying aloft in a plane for 1 hour, 12 minutes, 40 seconds.
1916: Birthdays: Actor Keenan Wynn.
1920: Birthdays: Bluegrass star Henry D. Homer Haynes, member of the Homer and Jethro musical duo.
1921: At the University of Toronto, Canadian scientists Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully isolated insulin — a hormone they believed could prevent diabetes — for the first time.
1922: Birthdays: Television producer Norman Lear.
1924: Birthdays: Film critic Vincent Canby.
1931: Birthdays: Actor Jerry Van Dyke.
1937: Birthdays: Actor Don Galloway.
1944: Birthdays: Singer/songwriter Bobbie Gentry.
1948: Birthdays: Figure skater Peggy Fleming; Actor/director Betty Thomas.
1949: Birthdays: Singer Maureen McGovern.
1953: After two years and 17 days of truce negotiations, an end was declared to the war in Korea.
1972: Birthdays: Actor Maya Rudolph.
1977: Birthdays: Actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
1980: Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, deposed shah of Iran, died in an Egyptian military hospital of cancer at age 60.
1986: Greg LeMond, 25, of Sacramento, became the first American to win cycling’s most famous contest, the Tour de France.
1989: A Korean Air DC-10 crashed in heavy fog while attempting to land at Tripoli airport in Libya, killing 82 people, four of them on the ground.
1995: The leaders of the three largest industrial labor unions in the United States — the United Automobile Workers, the United Steel Workers of America and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers — voted to merge by the year 2000.
1996: A bomb exploded at Olympic Park in Atlanta during the Summer Games. One woman was killed and more than 100 people were injured.
2002: Nine coal miners were trapped 240 feet underground in southwestern Pennsylvania when a wall collapsed, inundating them with water. A three-day rescue operation saved them all.
2003: Legendary comic Bob Hope died of pneumonia at his home in Toluca Lake, Calif. He was 100 years old.
2004: A major U.S. Muslim charity and seven officers were charged with providing millions of dollars to Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group blamed for dozens of suicide bombings in Israel.
2007: Forensic experts exhumed remains of 131 Bosnian Muslims massacred by Bosnian Serbs and buried in a mass grave at Srebrenica in 1995.
2011: The U.S. Postal Service released a list of 3,700 post offices it was considering closing as the federal agency revamped the way it does business.
2012: The Games of the XXX Olympiad — the Summer Olympics — opened in London with 10,820 athletes representing 204 countries.
Quotes
“To know how to say what other people only think is what makes men poets and sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think, makes men martyrs or reformers, or both.” – Elizabeth Rundle Charles, writer (1828-1896)
“We shouldn’t maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.” – Gustave Flaubert
“Some men of a secluded and studious life have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon which, though far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that restless world of waters.” – Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832)
“The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke.” – Ximenes Doudan, journalist (1800-1872)
“For disappearing acts, it’s hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.” – Doug Larson
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) French writer:
“All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.”
“Be at the pains of putting down every single item of expenditure whatsoever every day which could possibly be twisted into a professional expense and remember to lump in all the doubtfulls.”
“Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else.”
“Child! Do not throw this book about; refrain from the unholy pleasure of cutting all the pictures out.”
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“From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends, There’s nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends.”
“I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.”
“I said to Heart, ‘How goes it?’ Heart replied: ‘Right as a Ribstone Pippin!'”
“I shoot the Hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum, because if I use the leaden one his hide is sure to flatten em.”
peripatetic
PRONUNCIATION: (pair-uh-puh-TET-ik)
MEANING:
(adjective)
1. Of or pertaining to walking about or traveling from place to place; itinerant.
2. Of or pertaining to the philosophy taught by Aristotle (who gave his instructions while walking in the Lyceum at Athens), or to his followers.
(noun)
1. One who walks about; a pedestrian; an itinerant.
2. follower of Aristotle; an Aristotelian.
ETYMOLOGY: Peripatetic derives from the Greek peripatetikos, from peripatein, meaning “to walk about,” from peri-, “around, about” + patein, “to walk.”
USAGE: “Mary, the eldest, a fine girl with a haughty clear brow, was a peripatetic governess, who gave lessons to the tradesmen’s daughters.” – David Herbert Lawrence, ‘The Prussian Officer and Other Stories’
sitzfleisch
PRONUNCIATION: (SITZ-flaish, ZITS-)
http://wordsmith.org/words/sitzfleisch.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. The ability to sit through or tolerate something boring.
2. The ability to endure or persist in a task.
ETYMOLOGY: [From German Sitzfleisch, from sitzen (to sit) + Fleisch (flesh). Earliest documented use: Before 1930.
NOTES: Sitzfleisch is a fancy term for what’s commonly known as chair glue: the ability to sit still and get through the task at hand. It’s often the difference between, for example, an aspiring writer and a writer. Sometimes the word is used in the sense of the ability to sit out a problem — ignore it long enough in the hope it will go away.
USAGE: “Some prominent seats go to those with prominence. Others go to those with Sitzfleisch, like Representative Eliot L. Engel. Every year since 1989, the Bronx Democrat has won a prime spot at the State of the Union Address simply by showing up early and sitting in it.” – Elizabeth Kolbert; An Aisle Seat In the House or the Titanic; The New York Times; Jan 30, 1998.
psychopomp
PRONUNCIATION: (SY-ko-pomp)
http://wordsmith.org/words/psychopomp.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A guide of souls, one who escorts soul of a newly-deceased to the afterlife.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek psychopompos (conductor of souls), from psycho-, from psyche (breath, spirit, soul) + pompos (conductor, guide).
USAGE: “Harold Bloom here presents himself as a mystagogue and a soothsayer, a psychopomp of our times, conducting souls into unknown territories.” – Marina Warner; Where Angels Tread; The Washington Post; Sep 15, 1996.
Explore “psychopomp” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=psychopomp
menticide
PRONUNCIATION: (MEN-tuh-syd)
http://wordsmith.org/words/menticide.mp3
MEANING: (noun), The systematic undermining of a person’s beliefs, attitudes, and values.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin ment- (mind) + -cide (killing).
USAGE: “Our compliance with the dictates of Donor Agencies and environmentalists not to use DDT amounts to suicide or at least menticide of our people.” – Dr. Matthias Offoboche; Tackling Malaria the DDT Way; This Day (Lagos, Nigeria); Nov 29, 2005.
popinjay
PRONUNCIATION: (POP-in-jay)
http://wordsmith.org/words/popinjay.mp3
MEANING: (noun), Somone who indulges in vain and empty chatter.
ETYMOLOGY: Via French and Spanish from Arabic babbaga (parrot). The last syllable changed to jay because some thought the word referred to that bird instead of a parrot.
USAGE: “We Brits didn’t really like the way in which Jose Mourinho introduced himself as the ‘Special One’ when he joined Chelsea as manager. Being a braggart is so un-British, don’t you know — even if you are gifted with a bit of flair. The ‘Special One’ ought to have been told we don’t go in for flamboyance here. If we act the popinjay we can expect others to despise us behind their smiles.” – No Space for ‘Special Ones’; Western Morning News (Plymouth, UK); Sep 21, 2007.