Today in History (November 17th):
1734: John Peter Zenger, who founded America’s first regularly published newspaper, was arrested for allegedly libeling the colonial governor of New York.
1755: Birthdays: King Louis XVIII of France.
1790: Birthdays: German astronomer and mathematician August Mobius.
1800: The U.S. Congress convened in Washington for the first time.
1869: The Suez Canal in Egypt was opened, linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.
1878: Birthdays: Social reformer Grace Abbott.
1881: Samuel Gompers organized the forerunner of the American Federation of Labor.
1887: Birthdays: British army Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
1901: Birthdays: Drama teacher/actor Lee Strasberg.
1916: Birthdays: Historian Shelby Foote.
1925: Birthdays: Actor Rock Hudson.
1930: Birthdays: Two-time Olympic decathlon gold medalist Bob Mathias.
1937: Birthdays: British comedian Peter Cook.
1938: Birthdays: Balladeer Gordon Lightfoot.
1942: Birthdays: Film director Martin Scorsese.
1943: Birthdays: Model/actor Lauren Hutton.
1944: Birthdays: Actor/director Danny DeVito; Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels; Baseball Hall of Fame member Tom Seaver; Basketball Hall of Fame member Jim Boeheim.
1949: Birthdays: U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
1958: Birthdays: Actor Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
1960: Birthdays: Model/actor RuPaul.
1964: Birthdays: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.
1966: Birthdays: Actor Daisy Fuentes.
1969: Strategic arms limitation talks began between the United States and the Soviet Union in Helsinki, Finland.
1978: Birthdays: Actor Rachel McAdams.
1983: Birthdays: Writer Christopher Paolini.
1989: Riot police in Prague, Czechoslovakia, stormed into a crowd of more than 20,000 pro-democracy demonstrators, beating people with truncheons and firing tear gas.
1992: An appeals court in Washington ruled the Watergate tapes and Nixon presidential papers rightfully belonged to U.S. President Richard Nixon when he left office in 1974.
1993: The U.S. House of Representatives approved the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1997: 60 people were killed when six Islamic militants opened fire on a group of tourists at Luxor, Egypt.
2003: Accused Washington sniper John Muhammad was convicted of capital murder by a jury in Virginia Beach, Va., and sentenced to die. He was executed Nov. 10, 2009.
2004: Pakistani authorities announced an Islamic militant wanted in connection with the killing of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl had died in a shootout with police.
2005: U.S. Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a decorated Vietnam veteran and ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Committee who supported the 2003 invasion, called for immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
2006: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved marketing of silicone gel-filled breast implants, ending a 14-year moratorium on the devices.
2007: At least 30 bodies wrapped in black plastic and dead for some time were found in a mass grave at a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad.
2009: U.S. residents were almost evenly divided over efforts in Congress to reform the country’s healthcare system with 48 percent for the changes and 49 percent against, a Washington Post-ABC News poll indicated.
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2011: The number of Americans filing for their first week of unemployment benefits dipped for the third consecutive week, breaking another seven-month low. About 388,000 people filed for initial jobless t benefits in the week ended Nov. 12, the U.S. Labor Department said. It marked the lowest level since April 2.
Quotes
“Time wounds all heels.” – Jane Ace, radio comic
Eugene Wigner (1902-1995) Hungarian-born US physicist:
“Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It takes so long to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.”
“It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too.”
“[While] solipsism may be logically consistent with present quantum mechanics, monism in the sense of materialism is not.”
“The simplicities of natural laws arise through the complexities of the language we use for their expression.”
“The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences”
rictus
PRONUNCIATION: (RIK-tuhs)
MEANING: noun:
1. The gape of the mouth, as of birds.
2. A gaping grin or grimace.
ETYMOLOGY: Rictus is from Latin rictus, “the open mouth,” from ringi, “to show the teeth.”
USAGE: “Nathan’s mouth contorted in a rictus of terror as he watched the thing from the swamp shamble slowly towards him.”
spendthrift
PRONUNCIATION: (SPEND-thrift)
http://wordsmith.org/words/spendthrift.mp3
MEANING:
noun: A person who spends money wastefully.
adjective: Wasteful with money.
ETYMOLOGY: A spendthrift is, literally, one who spends his wealth, from Middle English thrift (prosperity), from Old Norse thrifast (to thrive), from thrifa (to grasp). Earliest documented use: 1601.
NOTES: Spendthrift is the longest word whose phonetic and normal spellings are the same. Two colorful synonyms of this word are dingthrift and scattergood.
USAGE: “A Saudi judge has told a seminar on domestic violence that it is okay for a man to slap his wife for lavish spending.” Saudi Judge Says OK to Slap Spendthrift Wife; Agence France Presse(Paris); May 10, 2009.
Explore “spendthrift” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=spendthrift
therewithal
PRONUNCIATION: (thair-with-ALL)
http://wordsmith.org/words/therewithal.mp3
MEANING: adverb: Together with; besides.
ETYMOLOGY: From there + withal, from the joining of the phrase “with al” (with all). First recorded use: c. 1330.
USAGE: “A festive Bazaar invites one and all to sample its selection of well-chosen words, therewithal, with imagination and inspiration to create stories and greeting cards.” – This Week’s Arts Round-up; The Cornishman (Cornwall, UK); Dec 10, 2009.
Explore “therewithal” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=therewithal