Today in History (December 3rd):
1755: Birthdays: Presidential portrait painter Gilbert Stuart.
1818: Illinois was admitted as the 21st state in the United States.
1826: Birthdays: Civil War-era Gen. George B. McClellan.
1833: Oberlin College in Ohio opened with an enrollment of 29 men and 15 women, the nation’s first truly co-educational college.
1838: Birthdays: U.S. Weather Bureau meteorologist Cleveland Abbe, who initiated daily weather bulletins.
1857: Birthdays: English novelist Joseph Conrad.
1904: The Jovian moon Himalia was discovered.
1925: Birthdays: Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung; Pioneer country singer Ferlin Husky.
1927: Birthdays: Singer Andy Williams.
1929: The Ford Motor Co. raised the pay of its employees from $5 to $7 a day despite the collapse of the U.S. stock market.
1930: Birthdays: French film director Jean-Luc Godard.
1937: Birthdays: Former race car driver Bobby Allison.
1948: The first news of the Whittaker Chambers spy case disclosed that microfilm of secret U.S. documents was found in a pumpkin on the former magazine editor’s Maryland farm, allegedly for delivery to a communist power. Birthdays: Rocker Ozzy Osbourne.
1951: Birthdays: Former race car driver Rick Mears.
1952: Birthdays: Actor Mel Smith.
1953: Birthdays: Olympic gold medal skier Franz Klammer.
1960: Birthdays: Actor Daryl Hannah; Actor Julianne Moore.
1965: Birthdays: Olympic figure skater Katarina Witt.
1967: Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful heart transplant at Cape Town, South Africa.
1968: Birthdays: Actor Brendan Fraser.
1981: Birthdays: Actor Brian Bonsall.
1984: Poison gas leaked at a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. The world’s most deadly chemical disaster was blamed for 2,889 deaths.
1990: Soldiers seized Argentina’s army headquarters two days before U.S. President George H.W. Bush was due to visit. The rebellion was quickly put down.
1992: The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize a U.S.-led multinational force to Somalia. Roman Catholic officials in Boston agreed to pay compensation to 68 people who claimed they were sexually abused 25 years ago by priest James Porter.
1995: South Korean police arrested former President Chun Doo-hwan on charges of orchestrating the December 1979 military coup that helped him to power.
1997: Delegates from 131 countries met in Canada to sign the Convention on the Prohibition, Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines.
2001: Responding to a new wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, Israel struck the West Bank with planes, helicopter gunships, tanks and bulldozers, firing missiles into Yasser Arafat’s headquarters.
2003: An international court in Tanzania convicted three Rwandan media executives of genocide for inciting a 1984 killing spree by machete-wielding gangs accused of slaughtering about 800,000 Tutsis.
2004: The death toll from a series of storms in the Philippines stood at 568 with hundreds missing. Ukraine’s top court invalidated the Nov. 21 presidential election and said it was fraught with fraud. A new election was set for Dec. 26.
2005: The American Civil Liberties Union charged the CIA with violating U.S. and international human rights laws by transporting terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation in secret prisons.
2006: Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. foreign policy, was re-elected president of Venezuela.
2007: An estimate by U.S. intelligence says Iran halted its nuclear bomb program in 2003 but adds Tehran is keeping open the option to develop such weapons. The British schoolteacher jailed by Sudan for allowing her 7-year-old students to name a class teddy bear Mohammed, an act perceived by Muslims as an insult to Islam, was pardoned and released after serving about half her 15-day sentence.
2009: Comcast, the largest cable operator in the United States, bought 51 percent of NBC Universal from General Electric for $13.75 billion. Three Somalia Cabinet ministers were among the more than 20 people killed in the suicide bombing at a graduation ceremony in Mogadishu.
2010: Unemployment dealt the fragile U.S. economy another blow when the November jobless rate rose from 9.6 percent, where it had held steady for several months, to 9.8 percent. Thirty-nine thousand jobs were added during the month with 15 million people reported looking for full-time work.
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2011: Britain’s ambassador to Iran said this week’s siege of the British embassy in Tehran clearly had the backing of the Iranian government. The embassy, ransacked and damaged by a first-floor fire, was closed and Iranian diplomats in Britain were sent home.
Quotes
“Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.” – Milan Kundera, novelist, playwright, and poet (b.1929)
“It requires less character to discover the faults of others than to tolerate them.” – Jean Antoine Petit-Senn, 1792–1870
“Let us believe neither half of the good people tell us of ourselves, nor half of the evil they say of others.” – Jean Antoine Petit-Senn, 1792–1870
“He that is down needs fear no fall.” – John Bunyan, 1628-1688
“Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts; the sight of the deep-blue sky and the clustering stars above seems to impart a quiet to the mind.” – Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758
“Call no man foe but never love a stranger.” – Stella Benson, poet
“Into every life some rain must fall. Usually when your car windows are down.” – Anonymous
“Getting a dog is like getting married. It teaches you to be less self-centered, to accept sudden, surprising outbursts of affection, and not to be upset by a few scratches on your car.” – Will Staunton
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) English novelist:
“A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.”
“A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them.”
“Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.”
“All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.”
“An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.”
“Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.”
“As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook.”
“As to honor – you know – it’s a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn’t theirs.”
“Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.”
“Don’t talk to me of your Archimedes’ lever. He was an absentminded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.”
decimate
PRONUNCIATION: (DES-i-mayt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/decimate.mp3
MEANING: (verb tr.), To destroy a large part of something.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin decimare (to take the tenth), from decem (ten). Earliest documented use: around 1600. Also see hecatomb.
NOTES: In the ancient Roman army a group of soldiers guilty of mutiny were punished by killing every tenth soldier. Today the word has evolved to mean large-scale damage where a major proportion is annihilated. Instead of 10%, today it’s more like 90%.
USAGE: “The World T20 showed now they have the batting firepower to decimate their opponents.” – Shamik Chakrabarty; IPL’s Gangnam Effect; Financial Express (New Delhi, India); Oct 14, 2012.
Explore “decimate” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=decimate
troglodyte
PRONUNCIATION: (TRAHG-leh-dIt)
MEANING: (noun), A prehistoric or ancient cave dweller, hence a reclusive, anachronistic person who resists change; a pongid (gorilla, orangutan, or chimpanzee).
ETYMOLOGY: Greek troglodytes “caveman” from trogle “hole made by gnawing, (later) cave” (from trogein “to gnaw”) + dytes “one who enters.” The adjective is “troglodytic” [trahg-le-‘di-tik]. The first constituent, “troglo-” may be combined with other Greek constituents to create new words like troglophile “cave-lover” or troglophobe “someone who fears spelunking.”
USAGE: “Jane is a troglodyte who brushes her hair, wears sensible shoes, and leaves home only at night in her 1978 station wagon.”