Today in History (November 11th):
Veterans Day
1744: Birthdays: Abigail Adams, wife of U.S. President John Adams.
1821: Birthdays: Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
1831: Nat Turner, who led fellow slaves on a bloody uprising in Virginia, was hanged. Turner, an educated minister, believed he was chosen by God to lead people out of slavery. Some 60 whites were killed in the two-day rampage.
1864: Birthdays: Austrian pacifist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Alfred Hermann Fried.
1885: Birthdays: U.S. Army Gen. George Patton.
1889: Washington was admitted to the union as the 42nd state.
1891: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Walter Rabbit Maranville.
1899: Birthdays: Actor Pat O’Brien.
1904: Birthdays: Alger Hiss, accused of being a communist spy in Washington in the late 1940s.
1909: Birthdays: Actor Robert Ryan.
1918: World War I ended with the signing of the Armistice. Birthdays: Actor Stubby Kaye.
1921: U.S. President Warren Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
1922: Birthdays: Novelist Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
1925: Birthdays: Comedian Jonathan Winters.
1927: Birthdays: Jazz musician Mose Allison.
1938: Kate Smith first performed God Bless America on her weekly radio show. The song had been written for her by Irving Berlin.
1945: Composer Jerome Kern, who wrote such memorable tunes as Ol’ Man River, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and The Last Time I Saw Paris, died at the age of 60.
1951: Birthdays: Golfer Frank Fuzzy Zoeller.
1960: Birthdays: Actor Stanley Tucci.
1962: Birthdays: Actor Demi Moore.
1964: Birthdays: Actor Philip McKeon; Actor Calista Flockhart.
1974: Birthdays: Actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
1982: The space shuttle Columbia blasted off on the first commercial space mission.
1987: U.S. President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Anthony Kennedy to the U.S. Supreme Court after Judge Douglas Ginsburg withdrew his nomination and Judge Robert Bork was rejected by the Senate.
1989: An estimated 1 million East Germans poured into reopened West Germany for a day of celebration, visiting and shopping. Most returned home.
1992: The Church of England broke the tradition of a male-only clergy when it voted to allow the ordination of women as priests.
1994: Jimi Hendrix’s stage outfit, John Lennon’s army shirt and guitars from the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and the Beach Boys were among the items sold at the first pop memorabilia and guitar sale at Christie’s in New York.
2001: Two months after the terrorist attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush and leaders from around the world stood near the World Trade Center ruins and, in a solemn ceremony, honored the dead from more than 80 nations.
2002: As many as 34 people were killed by tornadoes and straight-line windstorms that swept across the U.S. South and the Ohio Valley.
2004: Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader whose colorful career ranged from terrorist to diplomat, a key figure in the forever smoldering Middle East, died in a Paris hospital after several days in a coma. He was 75.
2005: Harvard-educated Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, dubbed the Iron Lady, claimed victory as the first woman president of Liberia.
2006: An anonymous tip led investigators to a mass grave in Bosnia containing more than 100 victims of the infamous Srebrenica massacre.
2008: Dignitaries from France and Britain laid wreaths at Verdun, France, to note the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I at the site of one of the war’s bloodiest battles.
2010: The head of the U.N. Commission for Human Rights urged nations to expand opportunities for legal immigration to help handle widespread reports of discrimination and prejudice against migrants.
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2011: Greece’s new interim Cabinet was sworn in with Lucas Papademos, former European Central Bank vice president, appointed prime minister. His main tasks were keeping Greece in the eurozone and implementing terms of the troubled country’s $177 billion debt deal. Mexican Interior Minister Francisco Blake Morawas, point man in the government’s war against organized crime and the drug cartels, was killed along with seven others in a helicopter crash in southern Mexico City.
Quotes
George S. Patton, Jr. (1885-1945) US general:
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
“A piece of spaghetti or a military unit can only be led from the front end.”
“A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.”
“Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.”
“All very successful commanders are prima donnas and must be so treated.”
“Always do everything you ask of those you command.”
“Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.”
“Americans play to win at all times. I wouldn’t give a hoot and hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor ever lose a war.”
wunderkind
PRONUNCIATION: (VOON-duhr-kind, wun-)
http://wordsmith.org/words/wunderkind.mp3
MEANING: noun:
1. A child prodigy.
2. A person who achieves great success early in the career.
ETYMOLOGY: From German Wunderkind, from Wunder (wonder) + Kind (child). Earliest documented use: 1891.
USAGE: “Miguel Angel Sano is the wunderkind, one of the best young players the Dominican Republic has ever produced.” – David Malitz; The Big Leagues’ Hits and Errors; The Washington Post; Jul 13, 2012.
bellwether
PRONUNCIATION: (BEL-weth-uhr)
MEANING: noun: A leader of a movement or activity; also, a leading indicator of future trends.
ETYMOLOGY: Bellwether is a compound of bell and wether, “a male sheep, usually castrated”; from the practice of hanging a bell from the neck of the leader of the flock.
USAGE: “Before the election in question, the state’s proud citizens had fancied their state to be a sort of bellwether, feeling that as they went, so went the nation.”
fatuous
PRONUNCIATION: (FACH-oo-uhs)
http://wordsmith.org/words/fatuous.mp3
MEANING: adjective: Foolish or inane, especially in a complacent and smug manner.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin fatuus (foolish). Earliest recorded use: 1633.
USAGE: “You know it’s patronising because every five minutes there is an utterly fatuous remark dressed up as profundity.” – Amol Rajan; When Women Aren’t on Top; The Independent (London, UK); Oct 13, 2010.
Explore “fatuous” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=fatuous