Today in History (February 7th):
1478: Birthdays: English statesman and writer Thomas More.
1497: The Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence, Italy, took place when followers of Girolamo Savonarola burned thousands of books, art and cosmetics.
1795: States ratified the U.S. Constitution’s 11th Amendment, which outlines the power of the federal judiciary.
1804: Birthdays: Farm equipment manufacturer John Deere.
1812: Birthdays: English novelist Charles Dickens.
1863: The HMS Orpheus sinks off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand, killing 189.
1867: Birthdays: Little House books author Laura Ingalls Wilder.
1885: Birthdays: Novelist Sinclair Lewis.
1887: Birthdays: Ragtime composer and pianist Eubie Blake.
1898: Emile Zola was tried for libel following publication of J’Accuse.
1904: A massive fire, possibly started by a discarded cigarette, struck Baltimore, burning for 31 hours and destroying an 80-block downtown area. Miraculously no lives or homes were lost.
1908: Birthdays: Buster Crabbe, actor (Flash Gordon) and Olympic swimming gold medalist.
1932: Birthdays: Writer Gay Talese.
1940: British railroads were nationalized.
1946: Birthdays: Actor Pete Postlethwaite.
1955: Birthdays: Actor Miguel Ferrer.
1956: Autherine Lucy, the first black person admitted to the University of Alabama, was expelled after she accused school officials of conspiring in the riots that accompanied her court-ordered enrollment. Birthdays: Comedian Emo Philips.
1960: Birthdays: Actor James Spader.
1962: Birthdays: Actor Eddie Izzard; Country singer Garth Brooks.
1964: The Beatles arrived in the United States for the first time and immediately set off a frantic wave of Beatlemania.
1966: Birthdays: Comedian Chris Rock.
1973: The U.S. Senate voted to set up a committee to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington’s Watergate complex.
1978: Birthdays: Actor Ashton Kutcher.
1984: Two U.S. shuttle astronauts made the first untethered space walk.
1986: Both Ferdinand Marcos and challenger Corazon Aquino claimed victory in the Philippine presidential election. Haiti’s President for Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled to France.
1991: Jean-Bertrand Aristide was inaugurated as Haiti’s first democratically elected president in 186 years. The British Cabinet, meeting at London’s 10 Downing St., was attacked with mortars by members of the Irish Republic Army.
1992: The European Union was created when the Maastricht Treaty was signed.
1993: 13 more women accused U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood of improper advances, bringing the total to 23 women who have said the Oregon Republican harassed them with unwelcome sexual overtures.
1995: The alleged mastermind in the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, was arrested in Pakistan.
1999: King Hussein of Jordan died of cancer at age 63. Hussein ruled Jordan for 46 years.
2003: Colombian rebels were blamed for a bomb explosion at a Bogota social club that killed more than 30 people.
2005: Rescuers reported no survivors among the 104 people aboard an Afghan airliner that crashed in the mountains near Kabul. It was Afghanistan’s worst air disaster.
2007: The U.S. military confirmed a twin-rotor Sea Knight transport helicopter crashed northwest of Baghdad, the fifth in 18 days. Seven died in the latest crash.
2008: The U.S. Congress gave final approval to a $168 billion stimulus package for taxpayers in an effort to rekindle the flickering American economy. Rebates of $300-$600 went to individuals earning up to $75,000 and to couples with incomes up to $150,000, plus extra money for children. Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said she lent her campaign $5 million before Super Tuesday to be competitive. Further, some senior members of Clinton’s campaign staff reportedly agreed to go without pay for a month.
2009: The worst series of brushfires in Australian history claimed more than 200 lives, destroyed almost 2,000 homes and burned at least 1.1 million acres in Victoria state. The New York Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, major league baseball’s highest paid player, admitted taking performance-enhancing drugs earlier in his career.
2010: Viktor Yanukovich regained the Ukrainian presidency with a close runoff election over Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
2011: Anti-government groups protesting in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in a determined bid to oust Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak formed a unified leadership to provide a voice for demonstrators in the future. A mutiny within joint north and south Sudanese forces on the regional border claimed up to 50 lives.
2012: A federal appeals court in California rejected a ban on same-sex marriage that voters had approved four years earlier. The court ruled the ban violated the constitutional rights of those involved. Polar researchers announced Russian scientists briefly pierced the 2-mile-thick veil over a freshwater lake hidden beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet for millions of years.
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Quotes
“I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.” – Edith Cavell, nurse and humanitarian (1865-1915)
“An invasion of armies can be resisted but not an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) American Abolitionist:
“A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.”
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.”
“It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
“One and God make a majority.”
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
“The soul that is within me no man can degrade.”
“The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.”
“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”
“When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.”
cockle
PRONUNCIATION: (KAHK-ehl)
MEANING: (noun)
1. A ribbed bivalve of the genus Cardium with traits of the clam and the scallop.
2. A wild plant (Lychnis Githago) with a reddish or purplish flower common in cornfields.
3. A pucker or imperfection in material (used as a verb, today’s word means “to wrinkle or pucker,” as a solution that cockles a piece of cloth).
ETYMOLOGY: This word comes from from Old French coquille “scallop, shell” from Latin conchylium “shellfish,” itself borrowed from Greek “konkhylion,” the diminutive of konkhe “cockle, mussel.” The Latin equivalent of “konkhe” was concha “mussel, shellfish.”
USAGE: “The lovely Janie Myerson cockled the brows of many at the reception with her cockled silk sheath cut low in the back.”
impudent
PRONUNCIATION: (IM-pyuh-duhnt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/impudent.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Marked by offensive boldness.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin im- (not) + pudere (to make or be ashamed) which also gave us pudibund (prudish), pudency (modesty), and pudeur (a sense of shame). Earliest documented use: 1386.
USAGE: “The tie has matching socks and braces … It seems imprudent (and possibly impudent) to ask if his boxers match, as well.” – Mike Amos; Laughing Matter; Northern Echo (Darlington, UK); Mar 5, 2011.
Explore “impudent” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=impudent
dilettante
PRONUNCIATION: (DIL-i-tahnt, dil-i-TAHNT, -tay, -tee)
http://wordsmith.org/words/dilettante.mp3
MEANING:
(noun), One who takes up an activity or interest in a superficial or casual way.
(adjective), Superficial; amateurish.
ETYMOLOGY: From Italian dilettante (amateur), from Latin delectare (to delight).Earliest documented use: 1733.
USAGE: “I long ago came to realize that I am a putterer, a grazer, a dilettante. I create the impression of getting a lot done by dabbling through my days. I read two pages of a book, write half a letter, paint a portion of the front porch, bake half a tin of muffins, teach a class, wash a window.” – Robert Klose; Confessions of a Dedicated Dilettante; The Christian Science Monitor (Boston, Massachusetts); May 10, 2004.
Explore “dilettante” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=dilettante