Today in History (November 24th):
1632: Birthdays: Dutch philosopher Baruch Benedict de Spinoza.
1713: Birthdays: British novelist and clergyman Laurence Sterne; Spanish missionary Junipero Serra.
1784: Birthdays: Zachary Taylor, 12th president of the United States.
1859: Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published.
1863: Union Gen. U.S. Grant launched the U.S. Civil War battle of Chattanooga in Tennessee.
1864: Birthdays: Painter Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.
1868: Birthdays: Ragtime composer Scott Joplin.
1869: Women from 21 states met in Cleveland to organize the American Women Suffrage Association.
1874: Joseph Glidden received a patent for barbed wire, which led to the farming of the U.S. Great Plains.
1888: Birthdays: Lecturer and author Dale Carnegie.
1912: Birthdays: Pianist Teddy Wilson.
1913: Birthdays: Actor Geraldine Fitzgerald.
1917: Birthdays: Actor Howard Duff.
1925: Birthdays: Political columnist William F. Buckley.
1938: Birthdays: Basketball Hall of Fame member Oscar Robertson.
1941: Birthdays: Musician Donald Duck Dunn.
1942: Birthdays: Comedian Billy Connolly.
1943: Birthdays: Basketball Hall of Fame member and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing.
1946: Birthdays: Serial killer Ted Bundy.
1947: Birthdays: Actor Dwight Schultz.
1950: Birthdays: Actor Stanley Livingston.
1963: Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was fatally shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby in a Dallas jail building two days after Kennedy was slain.
1969: Apollo 12 returns to Earth. It was the second moon-landing mission for NASA astronauts.
1971: A passenger ticketed as D.B. Cooper hijacked a Northwest Airlines flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle, and parachuted south of Seattle with a $200,000 ransom collected from the airline. He reportedly was never heard from again.
1974: The skeleton of “Lucy,” a 3.18 million years old female hominid, was found in Ethiopia.
1977: Birthdays: Actor Colin Hanks.
1978: Birthdays: Actor Katherine Heigl.
1985: Arab commandos forced an Egypt Air jetliner to Malta and began shooting passengers, fatally wounding two. Fifty-seven other people died when Egyptian commandos stormed the jet.
1993: The Brady bill handgun-control legislation cleared Congress. U.S. President Bill Clinton signed it into law on Nov. 30, 1993.
1995: Irish voters passed a referendum removing the constitutional ban on divorce.
2002: Suspected Islamic terrorists stormed a famous Hindu temple in Kashmir, India, killing seven people and wounding 30 others.
2003: Deaths: Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn, who had more wins (363) than any other left-hander in major league baseball history, died at the age of 82.
2005: A suicide car bomber struck at an Iraqi hospital where U.S. soldiers were giving away toys, killing at least 31 people, mostly women and children. Nearly two dozen others died in further violence during the day in Iraq.
2006: A car bomb killed at least 22 people in Talafar, Iraq, running the death toll in a 24-hour rash of Baghdad bombings to 202.
2007: A brigade of 5,000 U.S. troops left Diyala province, considered the first significant pullback of American troops from Iraq. Kevin Rudd took over as Australian prime minister, defeating John Howard who was seeking a fifth term after 11 years in office.
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2009: U.S. President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating slipped to less than 50 percent for the first time in his presidency, a 16 percentage point drop since his first full week in office, Gallup poll results indicated. Two men were executed in China for involvement in the country’s 2008 tainted milk scandal, which sickened 300,000 infants, killing six.
2010: Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay of Texas was convicted of money laundering on charges of illegally funneling $190,000 of corporate money through the Republican National Committee to candidates during the 2002 elections. New Zealand authorities said 29 men trapped in the Pike River coal mine were believed dead after a second gas explosion. Prime Minister John Key said it was the nation’s worst mine accident in 96 years.
2011: France approved the extradition of former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega to his home country where he faced a 20-year sentence for killing political opponents in the 1980s. Noriega was to have been sent to France on a money laundering conviction and had spent two decades in a U.S. prison for drug trafficking.
Quotes
“Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.” – Bradley Miller, activist (b. 1956)
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Dutch philosopher:
“Peace is not an absence of war. It is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”
“Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.”
“I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.”
“The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak”
“Happiness is a virtue, not its reward”
“Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”
“If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.”
invious
PRONUNCIATION: (IN-vi-ehs)
MEANING: (adjective) – Impassable, inaccessible, without paths or roads.
ETYMOLOGY: Latin in- “not” + via “way, road” from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *wegh-, which also gave Sanskrit vah-ami “bring, lead,” German Weg “way” and Wagen “wagon,” and English “way” and “wagon.” From the same root we get Latin vehiculum “carriage,” derived from veh-ere “bear, carry,” and borrowed into English as “vehicle.” Do not confuse today’s word with “envious” [‘en-vi- es] from “envy.” Be sure you write things like: “People will be envious (not invious!) of your talent!”
USAGE: “Everyone agreed that Professor Richard’s mind was less enviable than invious — almost impenetrable.”
dragoman
PRONUNCIATION: (DRAG-uh-man)
http://wordsmith.org/words/dragoman.mp3
MEANING: noun: An interpreter or guide.
ETYMOLOGY: The word took a scenic route to its present form via French, Italian, Latin/Greek, Arabic, and Aramaic, from Akkadian targumanu (interpreter). Earliest documented use: 1300s. Akkadian is now an extinct Semitic language once spoken in ancient Mesopotamia and written in cuneiform.
USAGE:
“Soon, Art Buchwald set himself up as the laughing dragoman to American celebrities. The foster home boy became Our Man in Paris. He took Elvis Presley to the Lido.” – Lance Morrow; Franglais Spoken Here; Time (New York); Sep 30, 1996.
“Born in Jerusalem, Wadie Said went from being a dragoman to a salesman in the United States and thence to a hugely successful businessman in Egypt.” – Penelope Lively; Books: Out of Place: State of Confusion; The Guardian (London, UK); Oct 9, 1999.
golem
PRONUNCIATION: (GO-luhm, -lem)
http://wordsmith.org/words/golem.mp3
MEANING: noun:
1. An automaton.
2. A blockhead.
ETYMOLOGY: From Yiddish goylem, from Hebrew golem (shapeless mass). First recorded use: 1897.
NOTES: In Jewish legend a golem was a human-like figure brought to life supernaturally. The most famous of these golem stories is of the golem of Prague, in which a 16th century rabbi created a golem to protect the Jews from anti-Semitic attacks.
USAGE: “I’ve created a golem that will continue to live, no matter what I do. Books get burnt and websites disappear, but my e-mail accounts continue to get spammed.” – Serge Debrebant; Berthold Metz: “I’m Trying To Become The World’s Most-Spammed Person”; Financial Times (London, UK); Apr 17, 2010.
Explore “golem” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=golem