Today in History (October 18th):
1776: The border between Maryland and Pennsylvania was settled. Dubbed the Mason-Dixon line, it became the unofficial boundary between North and South.
1851: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville was published.
1859: Birthdays: French philosopher Henri Bergson.
1889: Birthdays: Novelist Fannie Hurst.
1898: The United States took control of Puerto Rico one year after Spain had granted self-rule to the Caribbean nation. Birthdays: Singer/actor Lotte Lenya.
1919: Birthdays: Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau; Singer Anita O’Day.
1920: Birthdays: Greek actor Melina Mercouri.
1921: Birthdays: Former Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina.
1922: The British Broadcasting Corp. was established.
1925: Grand Ole Opry opened in Nashville.
1926: Birthdays: Rock ‘n’ roll legend Chuck Berry.
1927: Birthdays: Actor George C. Scott.
1928: Birthdays: Sports broadcasting legend Keith Jackson.
1931: Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history, died in West Orange, N.J., at the age of 84.
1934: Birthdays: Actor Inger Stevens.
1935: Birthdays: Actor Peter Boyle.
1938: Birthdays: Actor Dawn Wells.
1939: Birthdays: Lee Harvey Oswald, assumed assassin of President John F. Kennedy; Football Hall of Fame member Mike Ditka.
1947: Birthdays: Singer-songwriter Laura Nyro; Actor Joe Morton.
1950: Birthdays: Playwright Wendy Wasserstein.
1951: Birthdays: Actor Pam Dawber; Writer Terry McMillan.
1956: Birthdays: Tennis Hall of Fame member Martina Navratilova.
1959: The Soviet Union announced an unmanned space vehicle had taken the first pictures of the far side of the moon.
1960: Birthdays: Actor Jean-Claude Van Damme; Actor Erin Moran.
1961: Birthdays: Musician Wynton Marsalis.
1974: The jury in the Watergate coverup trial heard a tape recording in which U.S. President Richard Nixon told aide John Dean to try to stop the Watergate burglary investigation before it implicated White House personnel.
1979: Birthdays: Recording artist Ne-Yo, born Shaffer Chimere Smith.
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1987: Birthdays: Actor Zac Efron.
1990: Birthdays: Television personality Bristol Palin.
1991: Israel and the Soviet Union agreed to renew full diplomatic relations for the first time since 1967.
1992: Numerous civilians were killed or wounded when Serbian forces unleashed a citywide artillery barrage on Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
2002: North Korea revealed it was working on a secret nuclear weapons program and U.S. intelligence officials concluded that Pakistan was a major supplier of critical equipment for it.
2004: Exhumation orders were issued for 42 bodies in Sonthofen, Germany, where a hospital orderly admitted to giving lethal injections to 16 patients.
2007: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned home after eight years in exile to triumphant fanfare that gave way to panic when a suicide bomber killed a reported 139 people in her convoy. She wasn’t hurt.
2009: A suicide bomber struck a meeting of Iranian Shiites and Sunnis in Sabaaz, killing at least 42 people, including six senior officers of the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps. The African Union gave its backing to a call for an arms embargo on Guinea for the alleged slaying of 157 political prisoners.
2010: A federal jury in New York convicted four men of plotting to bomb a synagogue and Jewish community center and shoot down U.S. military aircraft. Pope Benedict XVI canonized six new saints, including the first from Canada and Australia.
2011: Gilad Shalit, the 25-year-old Israeli soldier kidnapped by the militant Palestinian group Hamas in a high-profile incident, was released after being held for more than five years. His release came in exchange for 1,000 Palestinians who had spent years in Israeli jails.
Quotes
“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” – Mark Twain
“Simplicity is the essence of the great, the true and the beautiful in art.” – George Sand (Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin), French author
“I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of a country, one has to go there poor.” – Grace Moore, actress and singer (1898-1947)
Pangloss
PRONUNCIATION: (PAN-glos)
http://wordsmith.org/words/pangloss.mp3
MEANING:
noun: One who is optimistic regardless of the circumstances.
adjective: Blindly or unreasonably optimistic.
ETYMOLOGY: After Dr. Pangloss, a philosopher and tutor in Voltaire’s 1759 satire Candide. Pangloss believes that, in spite of what happens — shipwreck, earthquake, hanging, flogging, and more — “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” The name is coined from Greek panglossia (talkativeness). Earliest documented use: 1794.
USAGE:
“Steven Pinker is a Pangloss … The world is a better place than it used to be.” – Bill McSweeney; Why We Should Look on the Bright Side; The Irish Times (Dublin); Dec 3, 2011.
“Don Regan tried to pick up where Mike Deaver left off in the spin game of gilding foul-ups with a Pangloss sheen, but he was a bit too candid.” – Jim Fain; Lights, Action, Camera Again; Observer-Reporter (Pennsylvania); Aug 14, 1987.
Explore “Pangloss” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=Pangloss