Today in History (Febuary 5th):
1631: British clergyman Roger Williams arrived in Salem, Mass., seeking religious freedom. He founded the colony of Rhode Island.
1788: Birthdays: Former British Prime Minister Robert Peel, founder of the London Police Force.
1837: Birthdays: Evangelist Dwight Moody.
1840: Birthdays: Scotsman John Dunlop, inventor of the pneumatic tire.
1848: Birthdays: Outlaw Belle Starr.
1878: Birthdays: French automotive pioneer Andre Citoen.
1880: Birthdays: French aviation pioneer Gabriel Voisin.
1881: Deaths: Thomas Carlyle.
1887: Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Otello” premiered at La Scala in Italy.
1900: Birthdays: U.S. statesman Adlai E. Stevenson.
1906: Birthdays: Actor John Carradine.
1914: Birthdays: Novelist William Burroughs.
1919: Screen legends Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists. Birthdays: Comedian/actor Red Buttons.
1921: The New York Yankees purchased 20 acres in the Bronx, N.Y. for Yankee Stadium.
1924: The Royal Greenwich Observatory began broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the “BBC pips”.
1928: Birthdays: Author Rev. Andrew Greeley.
1934: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Henry Aaron; Hockey commentator Don Cherry.
1939: Birthdays: Financial writer Jane Bryant Quinn.
1941: Birthdays: Stephen J. Cannell.
1942: Birthdays: Heisman Trophy winner and football Hall of Fame member Roger Staubach.
1943: Birthdays: Film director Michael Mann.
1944: Birthdays: Musician Al Kooper.
1947: Birthdays: Race car driver Darrell Waltrip.
1948: Birthdays: Writer/comedian Christopher Guest; Actor Barbara Hershey.
1958: A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb was lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
1961: Birthdays: Actor Tim Meadows.
1962: Birthdays: Actor Jennifer Jason Leigh.
1964: Birthdays: Actor Laura Linney.
1969: Birthdays: Singer Bobby Brown.
1971: Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard and Edward Mitchell walked on the moon for four hours.
1972: Bob Douglas became the first African-American elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
1974: U.S. Mariner 10 returned the first close-up photos of Venus’ cloud structure.
1976: Birthdays: Tony Jaa.
1981: U.S. President Ronald Reagan, in a nationwide address, said the United States was in the worst economic mess since the Great Depression and called for sweeping spending and tax cuts.
1984: Birthdays: Carlos Tévez.
1985: Birthdays: Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.
1986: World oil prices plunged toward $15 per barrel from $30 three months earlier after OPEC failed to curb production. Prices dropped to $9 by the summer of 1986.
1988: Two U.S. grand juries in Florida announced indictments of Panama military strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega and 16 associates on drug smuggling and money laundering charges.
1989: Radio Moscow announced the last Soviet soldier had left Kabul, Afghanistan.
1990: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed the Communist Party give up its monopoly on power in the Soviet Union. Two days later, the party’s Central Committee agreed.
1994: A mortar shell was fired into a crowded market in Sarajevo, Bosnia, killing 69 people and injuring 200. White supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of the 1963 killing of Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
1996: A judge ordered U.S. President Bill Clinton to testify in the Whitewater land dispute trial. He later did so via videotape.
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2005: A Moroccan family of four was charged in Spain in the March 11 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people.
2006: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran was halting voluntary cooperation in regards to Tehran’s nuclear program. The violent Muslim protest against Danish-published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad spread to Turkey, Indonesia, India, Thailand and New Zealand.
2007: U.S. astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak was arrested on several charges, including attempted kidnapping, after she drove from Houston to Orlando, Fla., to confront another officer whom she viewed as a romantic rival for a fellow astronaut.
2008: On Super Tuesday, Barack Obama took a slim lead in delegates over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic contest while John McCain outscored all of his opponents combined in the delegate battle for the Republican nomination.
2010: The president of Toyota Motors Co. apologized for quality control problems that led to massive Toyota recalls. Sticking gas pedal problems led to a recall of 4.2 million vehicles, followed by similar problems with the 2010 hybrid Prius. In the second lethal assault of the week on Shiite pilgrims in Iraq, two car bombs killed more than two dozen people in Karbala and injured another 75 on final day of the Arbaeen festival. Earlier, a suicide bomber killed 31 in Baghdad.
2011: Former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide said he was ending a seven-year exile and returning to Haiti. About a month earlier, former dictator and Aristide adversary Claude Baby Doc Duvalier returned to Haiti after 25 years in exile.
2012: Dominican Republic authorities called off a search for survivors after a small wooden boat carrying dozens of migrants capsized just off the coast. At least 16 people died and more than 30 were missing. Sauli Niinisto scored a resounding victory over Pekka Haavisto to become Finland’s 12th president.
Qutoes
“Don’t you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There’s one marked ‘Brightness,’ but it doesn’t work.” – Gallagher
“Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.” – Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)
“Failure is an event, never a person.” – William D. Brown
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American Statesman:
“A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you.”
“A diplomat’s life is made up of three ingredients: protocol, Geritol and alcohol.”
“A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.”
“A hungry man is not a free man.”
“A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.”
“A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.”
“Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.”
“After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquillity of a political convention.”
“All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.”
prehensile
PRONUNCIATION: (pri-HEN-sil, -syl)
MEANING: (adjective)
1. Capable of seizing or grasping, especially by wrapping around.
2. Skilled at keen perception or mental grasp of an idea or concept.
3. Greedy.
ETYMOLOGY: From French prehensile, coined by French naturalist Georges Louis Leclerc De Buffon, from Latin prehensus.
USAGE: “Larry was shocked to discover how his drugstore’s toothbrush rack had gone from a simple corner to a bazaar of ergonomic grips, flexing heads, and prehensile gum-probes.”
implacable
PRONUNCIATION: (im-PLAK-uh-buhl, -PLAY-kuh-)
http://wordsmith.org/words/implacable.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Impossible to pacify or appease.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin placare (to quiet or appease). Ultimately from the Indo-European root plak- (to be flat), which is also the source of fluke, flake, flaw, plead, please, supple, supplicatory, and archipelago. Earliest documented use: 1522.
USAGE: “Big issues that pit a single, powerless individual against a vast, implacable adversary have inspired some of his most memorable novels.” – Bill Sheehan; Grisham’s Latest; The Washington Post; Oct 23, 2012.
Explore “implacable” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=implacable
wastrel
PRONUNCIATION: (WAY-struhl)
http://wordsmith.org/words/wastrel.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A good-for-nothing, wasteful person.
ETYMOLOGY: Via French from Latin vasatre (to lay waste), from vastus (desert, empty) + -rel (a diminutive or pejorative suffix). Earliest documented use: 1589.
USAGE: “With Greece at the center of a cyclone that threatens the global economy, foreign citizens believe that their taxes have been raised to bail out the wastrel Greeks.” – Nikos Konstandaras; Orwell’s Elephant; Kathimerini (Athens, Greece); Oct 3, 2011.
Explore “wastrel” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=wastrel