Today in History (December 1st):
1761: Birthdays: French wax figure sculptor Marie Tussaud.
1886: Birthdays: Detective novelist Rex Stout.
1891: The game of basketball was invented when James Naismith, a physical education teacher at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Mass., put peach baskets at the opposite ends of the gym and gave students soccer balls to toss into them.
1903: The world’s first drive-in gasoline station opened for business in Pittsburgh.
1904: Birthdays: Former United Mine Workers president W.A. Tony Boyle.
1911: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Walter Alston.
1913: Birthdays: Singer/actor Mary Martin.
1917: The Rev. Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town near Omaha.
1933: Birthdays: Soul singer Lou Rawls.
1935: Birthdays: Comedian/filmmaker Woody Allen.
1939: Birthdays: Golf Hall of Famer Lee Trevino.
1940: Birthdays: Comedian Richard Pryor.
1943: Ending a Big Three meeting in Tehran, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Russian Premier Josef Stalin pledged a concerted effort to defeat Nazi Germany.
1944: Birthdays: Rock n’ roll Hall of Fame member John Densmore (The Doors).
1945: Birthdays: Singer/actor Bette Midler.
1951: Birthdays: Actor Treat Williams.
1953: The first Playboy magazine was published. Marilyn Monroe was on the cover.
1955: Rosa Parks, a black woman, was arrested in Montgomery, Ala., for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus, signaling, along with its resulting bus boycott and related events, the birth of the modern civil rights movement.
1960: Birthdays: Model Carol Alt.
1970: Birthdays: Comedian Sarah Silverman.
1976: Birthdays: Matthew Shepard, murder victim killed because he was gay.
1977: Birthdays: Sandwich shop spokesman Jared Fogle.
1988: Benazir Bhutto appointed prime minister of Pakistan, a post she held un August 1990 and again from October 1993-November 1996.
2004: One dozen people were killed in a prison riot and shootouts in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, during a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
2005: Same-sex marriage became legal in South Africa when the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that laws banning it were unconstitutional.
2006: U.S. President George W. Bush proclaimed Dec. 1 World AIDS Day and urged all Americans to join in the fight against the disease. The British government decided on a near total indoor public smoking ban in England. Only private homes and hotel rooms were exempt.
2007: A methane gas explosion injured 52 miners at the underground Ukraine coal mine where 101 miners died in a blast two weeks earlier.
2008: The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 680 points after the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the United States has been in recession since December 2007 and the release of a report indicating that U.S. manufacturing hit a 26-year low. President-elect Barack Obama introduced Hillary Clinton, his chief rival in the Democratic presidential race, as his choice for secretary of state. He also said he wanted to retain Robert Gates as secretary of defense.
2009: U.S. President Barack Obama announced he was sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, raising the number of military personnel there to 100,000. His plan called also for troop removal to begin in July 2011.
2010: The Obama administration announced that it would extend the moratorium on offshore drilling off the Eastern Gulf Coast and along the Atlantic Coast until stricter environmental and safety regulations were implemented. The United Nations projected 3.1 percent economic growth worldwide in 2011 and a 3.5 percent rise in 2012. The report said that wasn’t enough to solve the jobs problem which saw at least 30 million jobs evaporate from 2007-09.
2011: Iceland became the first Western European country to recognize a Palestinian sovereign state. In its resolution, the Icelandic Parliament voted to specifically recognize the pre-1967 borders of the West Bank and Gaza, The Palestinian Authority has asked the United Nations for full statehood recognition.
Quotes
“Democracy, to me, is liberty plus economic security.” – Maury Maverick, attorney and congressman (1895-1954)
“Commandment Number One for any truly civilized society is this: Let people be different.” – David Grayson [pen name of Ray Stannard Baker], journalist, author (1870-1946)
“Literature is news that stays news.” – Ezra Pound
“Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don’t read the lines.” – Margaret Millar, novelist (1915-1994)
Woody Allen (1935- ) US film director, actor:
“A fast word about oral contraception. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, she said ‘no.'”
“And my parents finally realize that I’m kidnapped and they snap into action immediately: They rent out my room.”
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“As the poet said, ‘Only God can make a tree,’ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.”
“Basically my wife was immature. I’d be at home in the bath and she’d come in and sink my boats.”
“Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.”
“Cloquet hated reality but realized it was still the only place to get a good steak.”
“Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.”
“Death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down. The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.”
“His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy. ”
absquatulate
PRONUNCIATION: (ab-SKWOCH-uh-layt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/absquatulate.mp3
MEANING: (verb intr.), To leave in a hurry; to flee.
ETYMOLOGY: A Mock-Latinate formation, from ab- (away) + squat + -ulate (as in congratulate). First cited from the late 1830s.
USAGE: “If you try to absquatulate again, I’ll sic the FBI on you.” – Elliott Roosevelt; Murder in the Executive Mansion; St. Martin’s Paperbacks; 1996.
esprit de corps
PRONUNCIATION: (eh-SPREE duh COR)
http://wordsmith.org/words/esprit_de_corps.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A spirit of solidarity; a sense of pride, devotion, and honor among the members of a group.
ETYMOLOGY: From French esprit (spirit), de (of), corps (body, group).
USAGE: “Using cooking to promote an esprit de corps and employee bonding had its beginnings on the West Coast.” – Jonnie Bassaro; Corporate Employees Bond Through Cooking; News-Times (Danbury, Connecticut); Sep 17, 2007.
Explore “esprit de corps” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=esprit+de+corps
imbroglio
PRONUNCIATION: (im-BROL-y)
MEANING: (noun), A confused tangle or mess; an intricately woven plot or set of circumstances; an embroilment.
ETYMOLOGY: From Italian imbroglio “entanglement.” The related verb “embroil” comes either from Italian imbrogliare “to tangle, confuse” or French embrouiller “to tangle, confuse,” probably by folk etymology (confusion with native words) with English embroil, originally meaning “to burn up.
USAGE: “Clinton’s presidency was muddled by an imbroglio with a White House intern.”
svelte
PRONUNCIATION: (svelt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/svelte.mp3
MEANING: adjective:
1. Slender; lithe.
2. Graceful; suave.
ETYMOLOGY: From French svelte (slender), from Italian svelto (slender), past participle of svellere (to pull out or stretch), from Latin exvellere, from ex- (out) vellere (to pull). First recorded use: 1817.
USAGE: “Five years ago, Kareena Kapoor, a top young actress in Bollywood, was a typical Punjabi girl, buxom and shapely, luscious like sweet kulfi ice-cream. Today, I imagine, kulfi would make her heave and biryani is never on her plate. For, you see, Kareena saw the light, and today she is svelte and sinewy enough to jog on the streets of LA and wear the tightest of designer jeans.” – Yasmin Alibhai-Brown; Why Are Asian Women Aspiring to Western Ideals of Beauty?; The Independent (London, UK); Nov 20, 2010.
Explore “svelte” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=svelte
antediluvian
PRONUNCIATION: (an-tee-di-LOO-vee-uhn)
http://wordsmith.org/words/antediluvian.mp3
MEANING: adjective: Extremely old; old-fashioned; primitive.
ETYMOLOGY: The word literally means before the flood, referring to the Biblical story of Noah and his flood. From Latin ante- (before) + diluvium (flood), from diluere (to wash away), from dis- (away) + -luere (to wash), combining form of lavere (to wash). Earliest documented use: 1646. The opposite is postdiluvian.
USAGE: “Despite the appearance of modernity, management remains antediluvian.” – Asian Banks Hold on to Their Antediluvian Ways; South China Morning Post (Hong Kong); Sep 10, 1997.
Explore “antediluvian” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=antediluvian