Today in History (February 13th):
1633: Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
1635: The oldest public institution in America, the Boston Latin School, was founded.
1668: Portugal was recognized as an independent nation by Spain.
1861: The first Medal of Honor was awarded to Col. Bernard Irwin, an assistant Army surgeon serving in the first major U.S.-Apache conflict.
1885: Birthdays: Former first lady Bess Truman, wife of former U.S. President Harry Truman.
1891: Birthdays: Artist Grant Wood.
1903: Birthdays: Writer Georges Simenon.
1918: Birthdays: Golf Hall of Fame member Patty Berg.
1919: Birthdays: Singer Tennessee Ernie Ford; Football coach Eddie Robinson.
1923: Birthdays: Pilot Chuck Yeager, the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound.
1933: Birthdays: Actor Kim Novak.
1934: Birthdays: Actor George Segal.
1938: Birthdays: Actor Oliver Reed.
1942: Birthdays: Actor Carol Lynley; Musician Peter Tork of the Monkees.
1944: Birthdays: Actor Stockard Channing; Talk show host Jerry Springer.
1945: Allied firebombing of the German city of Dresden caused a firestorm that destroyed the city and killed as many as 135,000 people. Soviet forces captured Budapest, Hungary. The 49-day battle killed more than 50,000 German troops.
1947: Birthdays: Hall of fame basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski.
1950: Birthdays: Musician Peter Gabriel.
1951: Birthdays: Actor David Naughton.
1957: Birthdays: Fitness activist Denise Austin.
1960: France tested its first atomic weapon.
1974: The Soviet Union expelled dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
1984: Konstantin Chernenko succeeded the late Yuri Andropov as Soviet leader.
1991: 36 people were killed when an Ash Wednesday mass at a Mexican church turned violent.
1998: Cuba began releasing 299 political prisoners following an appeal by Pope John Paul II. Nigerian troops overthrew the military junta that had ruled Sierra Leone since ousting the democratically elected government in May 1997.
2001: More than 400 people were killed in an earthquake in El Salvador.
2002: Pakistani police announced the arrest of the prime suspect in the abduction and slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
2003: The Bolivian capital of La Paz was plunged into chaos by protests that got out of hand. Fourteen people were killed.
2005: Flooding claimed more than 70 lives in Venezuela and Colombia.
2006: A U.N. report accused the United States of violating prisoners’ rights at its military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
2007: North Korea agreed to close its nuclear facilities in exchange for a $400 million package of oil and economic aid.
2008: Barack Obama won votes in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia by large margins, strengthening his lead over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. On the Republican side, John McCain won all three primaries as well, solidifying his lead over Mike Huckabee. The U.S. government confirmed reports that trailers supplied to survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita posed a possibly serious health risk because of formaldehyde.
2009: A Continental airlines turbo prop commuter plane crashed into a house near Buffalo, N.Y., killing 50 people, including one person in the house. More than 30 people died and 84 were injured when a female suicide bomber detonated a device on a major Shiite pilgrimage route in Iraq.
2010: About 15,000 coalition troops, including forces from the United States, other NATO countries and the Afghan government, launched a major offensive against Taliban strongholds at Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.
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2012: U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled a $3.8 trillion budget request that would hike taxes on the rich and spend new money on infrastructure and education but did little to reform entitlement programs.
Quotes
“It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last.” – Francois De La Rochefoucauld, moralist (1613-1680)
Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) English naturalist:
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
“A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, – a mere heart of stone.”
“Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.”
“False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.”
“I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.”
“I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.”
“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
“In the survival of favoured individuals and races, during the constantly-recurring struggle for existence, we see a powerful and ever-acting form of selection.”
“It has been a bitter moritification for me to digest the conclusion that the ‘race is for the strong’ and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science.”
wraith
PRONUNCIATION: (rayth)
http://wordsmith.org/words/wraith.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. A ghost.
2. An apparition of a person supposed to appear just before that person’s death.
3. An insubstantial copy of something: shadow.
ETYMOLOGY: From Scottish. Earliest documented use: 1513.
USAGE: “BlackBerry maker RIM, now a shadow of its former self and haunting the tech market like a wraith, took yet another hit.” – Tiernan Ray; Why Everyone’s Getting Pummeled; Barron’s (New York); Jul 2, 2012.
Explore “wraith” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=wraith
Dionysian
PRONUNCIATION: (dy-uh-NISH-uhn, -NIS-ee-uhn)
http://wordsmith.org/words/dionysian.mp3
MEANING: adjective: Uninhibited; undisciplined; spontaneous; wild; orgiastic.
ETYMOLOGY: After Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility in Greek mythology. He was a son of Zeus and considered the opposite of his brother, Apollo. His Roman equivalent is Bacchus. Earliest documented use: before 1610.
USAGE: “Nigella Lawson, who tends towards the indulgent side, revels in the wickedness of dionysian excess.” – Doug Anderson; Television; The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia); Nov 29, 2011.
Explore “dionysian” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=dionysian