Today in History (March 6th):
1475: Birthdays: Italian painter and sculptor Michelangelo.
1619: Birthdays: French dramatist Cyrano de Bergerac.
1806: Birthdays: English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
1820: The Missouri Compromise was enacted allowing Missouri to join the United States as a slave state but leaving the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.
1831: Birthdays: Union Army Gen. Philip Sheridan.
1836: The Battle of the Alamo ended with the surrender of the volunteers defending the fort. Mexican forces captured the Alamo in San Antonio killing the last of 187 defenders who had held out in the fortified Texas mission for 13 days. Frontiersman Davy Crockett was among those killed on the final day.
1853: La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi premiered in Venice, Italy.
1857: The U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling that black slave Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom in a federal court, even though his white owner had died in a free state.
1885: Birthdays: Humorist and short story writer Ring Lardner.
1900: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Robert Moses Lefty Grove.
1905: Birthdays: Texas swing bandleader Bob Wills.
1906: Birthdays: Comic actor Lou Costello.
1915: Birthdays: One-armed professional baseball player Pete Gray.
1923: Birthdays: Television personality Ed McMahon.
1924: Birthdays: Symphony conductor Sarah Caldwell.
1926: Birthdays: Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan.
1927: Birthdays: Mercury Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper; Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
1936: Birthdays: Former District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry.
1940: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Willie Stargell.
1942: Birthdays: Actor Ben Murphy.
1944: During World War II, U.S. bombers flying from Britain began the first daytime attacks on Berlin. Birthdays: Singer Mary Wilson.
1946: Birthdays: Rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Fame member David Gilmour.
1947: Birthdays: Actor/director Rob Reiner; High jumper Dick Fosbury; News commentator John Stossel.
1959: Birthdays: Actor Tom Arnold.
1967: Svetlana Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin’s daughter, defected to the United States.
1972: Birthdays: Basketball star Shaquille O’Neal.
1981: Walter Cronkite signed off from the CBS Evening News for the final time after 19 years at the anchor’s desk.
1982: An Egyptian court sentenced five Muslim fundamentalists to death for the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Seventeen others drew prison terms.
1987: An earthquake and flood in northeastern Ecuador killed more than 300 people and ruptured a main oil pipeline. The British car ferry The Herald of Free Enterprise capsized off Zeebrugge, Belgium, killing at least 189 of the more than 500 people aboard.
1991: U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared the Persian Gulf War over.
2000: A federal jury convicted three New York City police officers of covering up the 1997 assault on prisoner Abner Louima in a police station men’s room.
2002: Robert Ray, who succeeded Kenneth Starr as special prosecutor, said there was sufficient evidence to convict U.S. President Bill Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Monica Lewinski case. But, he said Clinton had agreed to admit he gave false testimony under oath, thus avoiding prosecution.
2003: U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States could lead a coalition of nations that would disarm Iraq even without U.N. authority. The U.S. Senate approved a U.S.-Russian agreement whereby each country would reduce deployed nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012.
2006: Officials said the 2005 hurricane season was the costliest disaster in U.S. history with Congress considering another $20 billion in relief. The federal government already had committed $88 billion to help areas devastated by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.
2008: A Palestinian gunman fired hundreds of rounds of automatic weapons fire at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem, killing eight students. At least 68 people died in a series of coordinated bombings in a mostly Shiite shopping district in Baghdad.
2009: U.S. unemployment hit 8.1 percent in February, the highest point since 1983. The figure represented the loss of 651,000 jobs. The White House said U.S. President Barack Obama planned to reverse former President George W. Bush’s policy limiting federal funding for stem-cell research.
2010: Several top Taliban leaders were killed when helicopter gunships targeted their hideouts, the Pakistani interior minister reported.
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2012: A 28-year-old high school teacher in Jacksonville, Fla., responded to being fired by returning to the campus and shooting the headmistress to death with an assault rifle. Toyota Motors recalled about 680,000 vehicles in the United States in two separate recalls, one involving airbags in pickups, the other for faulty brake lights in sedans and crossovers.
Quotes
“Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb?” – Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931)
“A woman’s always younger than a man of equal years.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“I am reminded of a colleague who reiterated “all my homosexual patients are quite sick” – to which I finally replied “so are all my heterosexual patients.” – Ernest van den Haag, psychotherapist
“Advertising is legalized lying.” – H.G. Wells, writer (1866-1946)
Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) French novelist
“A large nose is the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, generous and liberal man.”
“A kiss is a rosy dot over the ‘i’ of loving.”
“The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men’s apples and head their cabbages.”
“I may climb perhaps to no great heights, but I will climb alone.”
“Perish the Universe, provided I have my revenge.”
picaresque
PRONUNCIATION: (pi-keh-RESK)
MEANING: (adjective), Pertaining to the life of an adventurous rogue, usually of low origin, who uses his wits to overcome obstacles and survive in a world bent on arresting his progress. Pertaining to novel whose main character is such a person.
ETYMOLOGY: From Spanish “picaresco,” the adjective from picaro, perhaps from picar “to prick” from Vulgar Latin piccare. Akin to French pique “a prick, irritation” from piquer “to prick” which is the origin of English pique “to provoke” (Harold’s odd accent piqued Adie’s curiosity), “to be proud” (He piqued himself in his well-kempt mutton-chops), and “to vex.” Today’s term is most widely used in referring to novels about the adventures of a sly romantic rogue. These novels began in Spain but soon spread throughout Europe. ‘Guzman de Alfarache’ (1599) by Mateo Aleman is the earliest and Henry Fielding’s “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling” (1749) is probably the best such novel in English. Today’s adjective is based on the Spanish word picaro (or picaroon) “an adventurous rogue” while a picara is his female counterpart, e.g. Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders.
USAGE: “Sherry has picked up with a fellow who seems to have lived a rather picaresque life up to now.”
schadenfreude
PRONUNCIATION: (SHAAD-n-froi-duh)
http://wordsmith.org/words/schadenfreude.mp3
MEANING: (noun), Pleasure derived from another’s misfortunes.
ETYMOLOGY: From German Schadenfreude, from Schaden (damage, harm) + Freude (joy). Earliest documented use: 1852.
USAGE: “Right after the election was called for President Obama, I did something I rarely do: I tuned in to Fox News. Nothing is tastier than schadenfreude and I wanted to see ‘Team 53 Percent’ unravel as it tried to spin Mitt Romney’s defeat.” – Liza Sabater; Occupy the Divide; Essence (New York); Jan 2013.
Explore “schadenfreude” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=schadenfreude
props
PRONUNCIATION: (props)
http://wordsmith.org/words/props.mp3
MEANING: noun: Due respect; an expression of approval or regard.
ETYMOLOGY: Shortening and plural of the word proper, as in “proper respect”. Earliest documented use: 1980s.
USAGE: “Jagz must have hugged or given props to every player on the team.” – Don Brennan; Spezza Finds His Five; The Ottawa Sun (Canada); Jan 3, 2012.
Explore “props” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=props
corniche
PRONUNCIATION: (KOR-nish, kor-NEESH)
http://wordsmith.org/words/corniche.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A coastal road, especially one cut into the side of a cliff.
ETYMOLOGY: From French route en corniche, from Italian cornice (frame, ledge), perhaps from Latin cornix (crow), from its resemblance to the beak of a crow. Earliest documented use: 1837.
USAGE: “The median strip on the corniche has a magical open-air museum.” – Maureen Dowd; A Girls’ Guide to Saudi Arabia; Vanity Fair (New York); Aug 2010.