Today in History (December 6th):
1421: Birthdays: England’s King Henry VI.
1768: Encyclopedia Britannica was first published.
1778: Birthdays: French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac.
1811: The first in a series of earthquakes rocked the Midwest in and around New Madrid, Mo.
1849: Abolitionist Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery.
1864: Birthdays: Pioneer Western movie star William S. Hart.
1865: The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, abolishing slavery in the United States.
1877: The Washington Post published its first edition.
1884: Construction of the Washington Monument was completed.
1886: Birthdays: Poet Joyce Kilmer.
1889: Deaths: Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, died in New Orleans.
1896: Birthdays: Lyricist Ira Gershwin.
1898: Birthdays: Photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt.
1900: Birthdays: Actor Agnes Moorehead.
1907: In West Virginia’s Marion County, an explosion in a network of mines owned by the Fairmont Coal Co. in Monongah killed 361 coal miners. It was the worst mining disaster in U.S. history.
1908: Birthdays: Jazz bank robber Lester Baby Face Nelson.
1917: More than 1,600 people died in an explosion when a Belgian relief ship and a French munitions vessel collided in the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Birthdays: Ice cream entrepreneur Irv Robbins.
1920: Birthdays: Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck.
1921: Birthdays: Football Hall of Fame member Otto Graham.
1922: The Irish Free State, forerunner of the modern Republic of Ireland, was officially proclaimed.
1923: A presidential address was broadcast on the radio for the first time when Calvin Coolidge spoke before Congress.
1924: Birthdays: Comedian Wally Cox.
1926: Deaths: French impressionist painter Claude Monet died at age 86.
1933: Americans crowded into liquor stores, bars and cafes to buy their first legal alcoholic beverages in 13 years, following repeal of Prohibition.
1941: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a message to Japanese Emperor Hirohito expressing hope that gathering war clouds would be dispelled. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor the next day.
1945: Birthdays: Actor James Naughton.
1948: Birthdays: Actor JoBeth Williams.
1953: Birthdays: Actor Tom Hulce.
1955: Birthdays: Comedian Steven Wright.
1962: Birthdays: Actor Janine Turner.
1967: Birthdays: Director and screenwriter Judd Apatow.
1969: An all-star concert headlined by the Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway in Livermore, Calif., turned tragic when a spectator was stabbed to death by members of the Hell’s Angels, who had been hired as security guards for the event.
1971: Birthdays: AIDS victim Ryan White.
1973: Gerald Ford was sworn in as U.S. vice president under Richard Nixon, replacing Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned in the face of income tax evasion charges.
1975: The U.S. Senate authorized a $2.3 billion emergency loan to save New York City from bankruptcy.
1990: Saddam Hussein asked the Iraqi Parliament to authorize the release of all hostages held by Iraq. The legislature acted the next day and all Americans who wished to leave were out a week later.
1992: The destruction of a mosque in India by Hindu extremists set off two months of Muslim-Hindu fighting that claimed at least 2,000 lives.
1997: The Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s Far East was hit by one of the largest earthquakes recorded, measuring 8.5 to 9 in magnitude. But, there were no reported deaths in the sparsely populated area.
1998: Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela.
2002: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was gravely disturbed by Israel’s Gaza attack that left 10 Palestinians dead, including two U.N. Relief Works Agency employees.
2003: U.S. Embassy officials confirmed that U.S. troops apparently accidentally bombed a house near Ghazni, Afghanistan, killing nine children and one adult.
2004: The U.S. Congress passed a sweeping intelligence bill that would create a national intelligence director and enact other major recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission.
2005: Two suicide bombers targeted a Baghdad police academy, killing at least 43 officers and cadets and injuring 73 others. At least 128 people were killed when an Iranian military aircraft hit a 10-story residential building in Tehran and exploded shortly after takeoff.
2006: Robert Gates was confirmed as the secretary of defense by the U.S. Senate on a 95-2 vote.
2007: A coal mine gas explosion in China’s Shanxi Province killed at least 70 people and left 26 others trapped underground. An initial investigation indicated the blast was caused by illegal mining activities.
2009: Major U.S. banks paid back a large portion of the bailout billions received from the government as the year drew to a close, earlier than the Treasury Department expected. Officials said of the $370 billion lent to ailing companies, all but $42 billion was being returned. Many victims of a Russian nightclub fire that killed 156 people were reported trapped behind locked doors as they tried to flee.
2010: Julian Assange, the Australian-born co-founder of WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website that published thousands of heretofore secret U.S. government documents, was arrested in England on a Swedish warrant accusing him of sexual assault. An operation targeting investment fraud netted more than 500 defendants for alleged schemes involving at least 120,000 victims and more than $10 billion, U.S. officials said.
2011: Reports say two bomb attacks in Afghanistan that killed at least 63 people appear to have been aimed at Shiite Muslims observing Ashura, a major religious day marking the anniversary of the martyrdom of Abdul Fazi, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.
Quotes
“One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.” – Martin Luther King Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968)
“Only a brave person is willing to honestly admit, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers.” – Rodan of Alexandria
“My brother Bob doesn’t want to be in government — he promised Dad he’d go straight.” – John Fitzgerald Kennedy
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“Anyway, there’s plenty of room for doubt. It might seem easy enough, but computer language design is just like a stroll in the park…. Jurassic Park, that is.” – Larry Wall
“Real programmers don’t comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.” – Tom Van Vleck
“The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep.” – Henry Maudsley, psychiatrist (1835-1918)
“Would the boy you were be proud of the man you are?” – Laurence J. Peter, educator and author (1919-1990)
“The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion.” – Robert Houghwout Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
“For every prohibition you create you also create an underground.” – Jello Biafra, musician (b. 1958)
Ira Gershwin, US lyricist:
“Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state”
“A song without music is a lot like H2 without the O.”
“One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.”
“Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice; it whitens only the hair.”
“I got rhythm, I got music, I got my man – Who could ask for anything more?”
dubious
PRONUNCIATION: (DOO-bee-uhs, DYOO-)
http://wordsmith.org/words/dubious.mp3
MEANING: (adjective)
1. Marked by doubt.
2. Of questionable character.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin dubius (wavering), from duo (two). Ultimately from the Indo-European root dwo- (two) that also gave us dual, double, doubt, diploma, twin, between, redoubtable, and didymous. Earliest documented use: 1548.
USAGE: “A scandal over dubious transfers of millions of euros is creating turbulence for European defense giant EADS.” – Investigation into Dubious EADS Austria Deal Intensifies; Der Spiegel (Hamburg, Germany); Nov 12, 2012.
Explore “dubious” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=dubious
physis
PRONUNCIATION: (FY-sis)
MEANING: (noun)
1. Nature personified; nature as a source of growth or change.
2. Something that grows, changes, or becomes.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek physis (origin).
USAGE: “The current strike forces of the two African regions who depend most on physis and stamina rather than skill is yet to be tested on the international arena.”
rhopalic
PRONUNCIATION: (ro-PAL-ik)
http://wordsmith.org/words/rhopalic.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Having each successive word longer by a letter or syllable.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin rhopalicus, from Greek rhopalos (club, tapered cudgel).
NOTES: A rhopalic verse or sentence is one that balloons — where each word is a letter or a syllable longer. The word is also used as a noun. Here’s a terrific example of a rhopalic by Dmitri Borgmann: “I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalises intercommunications’ incomprehensibleness.”
USAGE: “Soapy fired off a rhopalic sentence, that is, one in which each word is one letter longer than the word that precedes it: ‘I am the only dummy player, perhaps, planning maneuvers calculated brilliantly, nevertheless outstandingly pachydermatous, notwithstanding unconstitutional unprofessionalism.'” – Alan Truscott; Talking About Behavior; The New York Times; Oct 26, 1986.
apophasis
PRONUNCIATION: (uh-POF-uh-sis)
http://wordsmith.org/words/apophasis.mp3
MEANING: (noun), Allusion to something by denying it will be said.
ETYMOLOGY: Via Latin from Greek apophanai (to say no), from apo- (away from) + phanai (to say). Ultimately from the Indo-European root bha- (to speak) that is also the source of fable, phone, fame, boon, and infant. First recorded use: 1657.
USAGE:
“There is almost no complaint that Ralph Nader and Dear Abby won’t listen to, but I don’t remember either of them ever tried to do anything about a dangling participle or a badly mixed metaphor, not to mention damnable apophasis.” – Jack Smith; Hey, Watch That Language!; Milwaukee Journal (Wisconsin); Nov 11, 1974.
“It’s an Afghan apophasis. By claiming he does not want to participate in a political process that is hopelessly overrun with corruption, Abdullah is acknowledging just the opposite — that he very much wants power and influence in the Afghan political realm.” – Teddy Minch; Well Now What?; The Tufts Daily (Medford, Massachusetts); Nov 4, 2009.
Explore “apophasis” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=apophasis
Babylon
PRONUNCIATION: (BAB-uh-luhn, -lawn)
http://wordsmith.org/words/babylon.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A place of great luxury and extravagance, usually accompanied with vice and corruption.
ETYMOLOGY: After Babylon, an ancient city of southwestern Asia, on the Euphrates River, now the site of Al Hillah city. It was the capital of Babylonia and known for its opulence and culture. It was the site of the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Earliest documented use: around 1225.
USAGE: “Tsuyoshi Morimoto said that when the economic crisis hit the international market, many big companies turned to Iraq in hopes that it would save them. ‘Big companies talked a lot about Iraq and paid a huge amount of attention to it. It is just like we suddenly built a Babylon, and now the Babylon is collapsing.'” – Qassim Khidhir; “Don’t Expect Too Much From Iraq”; Kurdish Globe (Arbil,Kurdistan); Jan 16, 2010.
Explore “babylon” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=Babylon