Today in History (December 18th):
1778: Birthdays: Britain’s Joseph Grimaldi, known as the greatest clown in history.
1788: Birthdays: British Methodist leader and hymnist Charles Wesley.
1856: Birthdays: English physicist Joseph Thomson, discoverer of the electron.
1863: Birthdays: Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
1865: The 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery in the United States.
1870: Birthdays: British short story writer Saki (H.H. Munro).
1878: Birthdays: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
1879: Birthdays: Swiss modernist painter Paul Klee.
1886: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Tyrus Ty Cobb.
1904: Birthdays: Film director George Stevens (Shane, A Place in the Sun, Giant).
1912: After three years of digging in the Piltdown gravel pit in Sussex, England, amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson announced the discovery of two skulls that appeared to belong to a primitive hominid and ancestor of man. The find turned out to be a hoax.
1913: Birthdays: West German statesman Willy Brandt (Nobel Peace Price laureate); Writer Alfred Bester.
1915: U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, whose first wife died a year earlier, married Edith Bolling Galt.
1916: Birthdays: Actor Betty Grable.
1917: Birthdays: Actor Ossie Davis.
1935: Birthdays: Chef Jacques Pepin.
1943: Birthdays: Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.
1946: Birthdays: South African activist Steve Biko; Film director Steven Spielberg.
1950: Birthdays: Movie critic/historian Leonard Maltin.
1954: Birthdays: Actor Ray Liotta.
1963: Birthdays: Actor Brad Pitt.
1966: Saturn’s moon Epimetheus was discovered.
1978: Birthdays: Actor Katie Holmes.
1980: Birthdays: Singer Christina Aguilera.
1989: A pipe bomb killed Savannah, Ga., City Councilman Robert Robinson, hours after a bomb was discovered at the Atlanta federal courthouse. A racial motive was cited in a rash of bomb incidents.
1991: General Motors announced it would close 21 plants and eliminate 74,000 jobs in four years to offset record losses.
1997: South Koreans elected longtime leftist opposition leader Kim Dae-jong president, marking the first time that a member of the opposition defeated a candidate of the New Korea Party and its predecessors. The 6-mile-long Tokyo Bay tunnel connecting Kawasaki and Kisarazu opened. The project took 8 1/2 years to complete and cost $17 billion.
2003: Teenager Lee Malvo was convicted of murder in the Washington-area sniper attacks. His adult companion, John Muhammad, was convicted earlier by a jury that recommended the death penalty.
2004: The United States officially forgave all of the $4.1 billion owed the government by Iraq and urged other creditors to do the same.
2005: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 77, was hospitalized after suffering what was described as a mild stroke. Bolivia elected Eso Morales as its first Indian president.
2006: Robert Gates was sworn in as the U.S. Defense secretary. He served until July 1, 2011.
2007: African National Congress delegates chose Jacob Zuma as their leader, ousting South African President Thabo Mbeki who had controlled the party for 10 years.
2008: Rwandan Col. Theoneste Bagosora was convicted of genocide by a U.N. court for his involvement in the 1994 massacre of 800,000 people.
2010: The U.S. Congress voted to repeal don’t ask, don’t tell policy that prohibits openly gay men and women from serving in the military. U.S. President Barack Obama signed the measure into law Dec. 22.
2011: Gas prices in the United States fell more than 5 cents over the previous two weeks as crude oil prices dropped. The average regular gasoline was $3.24 a gallon. Former Czech Deaths: President Vaclav Havel, one of the leading anti-Communist dissidents of the 1970s and 1980s, died at the age of 75.
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Quotes
“My soul is a broken field, plowed by pain.” – Sara Teasdale, poet (1884-1933)
“Friends are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly.” – Anonymous
“If male homosexuals are called ‘gay’, then female homosexuals should be called ‘ecstatic’.” – Shelly Roberts
“A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a workstation… go figure.” – Steven Wright
John Webster (1580-1632) English writer:
“A politician is the devil’s quilted anvil; He fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard.”
“Fortune’s a right whore. If she give ought, she deals it in small parcels, that she may take away all at one swoop.”
“‘Tis better to be fortunate than wise.”
“We are merely the stars tennis-balls, struck and bandied which way please them.”
“When I go to hell, I mean to carry a bribe: for look you, good gifts evermore make way for the worst persons.”
“We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.”
“Is not old wine wholesomest, old pippins toothsomest, old wood burns brightest, old linen wash whitest? Old soldiers, sweetheart, are surest, and old lovers are soundest.”
subjugate
PRONUNCIATION: (SUHB-juh-gayt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/subjugate.mp3
MEANING: (verb tr.), To bring under control or to make submissive.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin subjugare (to subjugate), from sub- (under) + jugum (yoke). Ultimately from the Indo-European root yeug- (to join), which is also the ancestor of such words as junction, yoke, yoga, adjust, juxtapose, junta, jugular, and jugulate. Earliest documented use: 1429.
USAGE: “Even more families lost control of their land, as the Indonesian army divided and relocated communities in its attempt to subjugate the population.” – Country Plots; The Economist (London, UK); May 5, 2012.
Explore “subjugate” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=subjugate
cloy
PRONUNCIATION: (KLOY)
MEANING: (verb)
1. To oversatiate with rich food, to overfeed, to cause nausea by overfeeding with delicious, rich food;
2. to oversatiate with anything otherwise pleasant to point it becomes unpleasant.
ETYMOLOGY: This word is a reduction of accloy “to clog” from Middle English “acloien,” which derives from Old French encloer “to drive a nail into.” In the Middle Ages cannon and other armaments were rendered useless by driving a nail into their touchhole (which led to the powder) and clogging it. This sense led to that of being overfed, satiated’clogged,’ so to speak, with food. The Old French word “encloer” devolved from the Latin “inclavare,” made up of in “in” + clavare “to nail,” a verb based on clavus “a nail,” a close relative of clavis “key.” This Latin word also gave us “clove,” the anesthetizing spice that looks like a small spike. The same root emerged in Russian as klyuch’ “key” while in German it picked up an initial [s] to become Schlussel “key” and Schloss “castle.”
USAGE: “The speech made by the 40-million-dollar-a-year president was cloyed with insincere references to the work force and its importance to the company.”
callipygous
PRONUNCIATION: (kal-uh-PY-guhs)
http://wordsmith.org/words/callipygous.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Having well-shaped buttocks.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek calli- (beautiful) + pyge (buttocks). Earliest documented use: 1923. Another form of this word is callipygian. Two related words aredasypygal and steatopygia.
USAGE:
“The boys knew that if they could remember the details of their school work only half as vividly as they recalled every detail of the callipygous Kathy, they would all be eligible for full college scholarships.” – John H. Steinemann; Handstand; Askmar; 2010.
“‘Pick me,’ Aphrodite says, arching her back and turning slightly to present to him under her robe a callipygous formation more perfect than ever he has seen.” – Joseph Heller; Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man; Simon & Schuster; 2000.
Explore “callipygous” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=callipygous