Today in History (February 8th):
1587: Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded, charged with conspiring to kill England’s Queen Elizabeth I.
1692: A doctor in Massachusetts Bay Colony claimed two village girls may be bewitched, a charge that set off the Salem witch trials.
1693: The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia is granted a charter by Britain’s King William III.
1725: Peter the Great, emperor of Russia, died and was succeeded by his wife, Catherine.
1820: Birthdays: Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.
1828: Birthdays: Pioneer science fiction writer Jules Verne.
1834: Birthdays: Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, who devised the periodic table.
1886: Birthdays: Actor Charles Ruggles.
1888: Birthdays: Actor Edith Evans.
1894: Birthdays: Film director King Vidor.
1906: Birthdays: Chester Carlson, inventor of the Xerox copying process.
1910: The United States became the 12th nation to join the international scouting movement.
1915: D.W. Griffith’s The Birth Of A Nation, a landmark in the history of cinema and the first American full-length motion picture, opened in Los Angeles and was immediately a smash hit though many found its treatment of race offensive.
1921: Birthdays: Actor Lana Turner.
1922: Birthdays: Actor Audrey Meadows.
1925: Birthdays: Actor Jack Lemmon.
1931: Birthdays: Actor James Dean.
1932: Birthdays: Oscar-winning composer/conductor John Williams.
1940: Nazis shot every 10th person in two Polish villages near Warsaw in reprisal for the deaths of two German soldiers. Birthdays: Television journalist Ted Koppel.
1941: Birthdays: Actor Nick Nolte; Folk singer Tom Rush.
1942: Birthdays: Comedian Robert Klein.
1948: Birthdays: Rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Fame member Ron Tyson (The Temptations).
1949: Birthdays: Actor Brooke Adams.
1953: Birthdays: Actor Mary Steenburgen.
1955: Birthdays: Author John Grisham.
1960: First plaques installed on Hollywood Walk of Fame. The first people honored were Olive Borden, Ronald Colman, Louise Fazenda, Preston Foster, Burt Lancaster, Edward Sedgwick Ernest Torrence and Joanne Woodward. Birthdays: Philippines President Benigno Aquino III.
1968: Birthdays: Actor Gary Coleman.
1974: Three U.S. Skylab astronauts ended an 84-day orbital flight. Birthdays: Actor Seth Green.
1987: A 60-day cease-fire ended between the Philippine army and communist rebels. Twenty-eight people died in truce violations.
1993: A chartered passenger plane collided with a military aircraft over Tehran, killing at least 132 people at a military base where Iran celebrated Air Force Day. General Motors announced it was suing NBC-TV, contending the network rigged a demonstration crash showing a GM pickup truck with sidesaddle fuel tanks exploding into flames.
1995: The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to send 7,000 peacekeepers to Angola to maintain peace in the African nation.
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2003: Syria and Israel exchanged fire for the first time in 29 years in a dispute over a Syrian civilian killed in the demilitarized zone separating the two countries.
2004: U.S. President George W. Bush acknowledged in a TV interview that he might have been wrong in claiming before the war that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But, he said, I expected to find the weapons. Beyonce was a five-time winner at the Grammy Awards, tying the record for most Grammys by a female artist.
2006: Police opened fire on an Afghanistan mob protesting a series of published cartoons that depict the Prophet Muhammad, killing four protesters and raising the death toll there to 11.
2007: Anna Nicole Smith, a 39-year-old actor, model and tabloid fixture, was found dead in a Hollywood, Fla., hotel. Her death was attributed to accidental sedative overdose.
2008: A man at odds with city officials went on a shooting rampage at a Kirkwood, Mo., City Council meeting, killing five people, police said. Officers killed the suspect, identified as Charles Lee Cookie Thornton, an independent contractor. An explosion rocked the Imperial Sugar Co. facility at Fort Wentworth, Ga., near Savannah. Four people were killed and about 30 others were injured.
2010: The 10 U.S. missionaries held in earthquake-wracked Haiti on child trafficking charges called on the U.S. government to do more on their behalf. They were reported arrested as they tried to take 33 Haitian children to a Dominican Republic orphanage.
2011: Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was added to the list of accused in the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Musharraf, in exile in London, was the country’s military ruler when Bhutto was slain.
2012: A deep weather freeze, mostly in Eastern Europe, was blamed for 300 deaths, including at least 135 in Ukraine over two weeks.
Quotes
“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” – Booker T. Washington
William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) American General:
“Hold the fort! I am coming!”
“I make up my opinions from facts and reasoning, and not to suit any body but myself. If people don’t like my opinions, it makes little difference as I don’t solicit their opinions or votes.”
“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.”
“If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve.”
“It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.”
“My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
“The carping and bickering of political factions in the nation’s capital reminds me of two pelicans quarreling over a dead fish.”
“There is many a boy here to-day who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.”
“War is hell.”
Putting a Cap on Disagreement
Q: In the sentence, “Each of the baseball fans who attend/attends the game will get a free cap,” should the verb be singular (“attends”) or plural (“attend”)? My grammar book says that “each” is always singular. But does “who” refer to “fans” (plural verb) or to “each” (singular verb)? — Pat O’Brien via email
A: That free cap sounds like a great deal, especially for us middle-aged guys who wear baseball caps to cover up our baldpates. As a kid, I wore my Yankees cap so much that my mom worried it would make me bald. Maybe she was right, though I think the genes of her thin-haired dad had something to do with it, too.
Anyway, the correct choice here is the plural verb (“attend”). It’s true that the subject of the sentence — “each” — demands a singular verb. But “who” is the subject of the relative clause, “who attend the game,” and it must agree with the plural noun to which it refers: “fans.”
A handy way to determine the correct choice is to reword the sentence: “Of the baseball fans who attend the game, each is going to get a free cap.”
Q: In the travel section of the Hartford Courant, the writer writes of “gourmands” savoring New England flavor. Should not the word be “gourmet?” I have always thought of a gourmand as being one who eats and drinks excessively, a glutton — not at all like a gourmet who appreciates good food. – Sundaram V. Ramanan, M.D., via email
A: You’ve said a mouthful. “Gourmand” (sometimes spelled “gormand”) does indeed bear the connotation of gluttony, while “gourmet” means “a connoisseur of fine food and drink.”
The origins of the two words help explain their different meanings. “Gourmand,” which entered English during the 1400s, derives from the French “gourmant” (glutton). “Gourmet,” which didn’t show up in English until the 1800s, is an alteration of the French “gromet” (boy servant, vintner’s assistant), hence its reference to someone who knows about wine and food.
Because “gourmand” is similar to the French word “gourmandise,” which means “an appreciation of fine cuisine,” some people use it as a synonym for “gourmet,” and this secondary definition is now included in many dictionaries.
Nevertheless, “gourmand” bears a connotation of excessive culinary or bibulous indulgence, and those who use it to mean “a connoisseur of food and drink” with no connotation of gluttony will give purists indigestion.
Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.
Copyright 2013 Creators Syndicate Inc.