Today in History (March 9th):
1454: Birthdays: Explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
1824: Birthdays: Leland Stanford, railroad builder and founder of California’s Stanford University.
1841: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, with one dissent, that the African slaves who seized control of the Amistad slave ship had been illegally forced into slavery and thus were free under U.S. law.
1862: The opposing ironclad ships, the Union’s Monitor and the Confederate’s Merrimac (renamed the Virginia), battled to a draw off Hampton Roads, Va.
1864: Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was appointed commander in chief of Union forces in the U.S. Civil War.
1892: Birthdays: English novelist and poet Victoria Sackville-West.
1902: Birthdays: Actor Will Geer.
1910: Birthdays: Composer Samuel Barber.
1917: Several hundred Mexican guerrillas under the command of Francisco Pancho Villa crossed the U.S.-Mexican border and attacked the small border town of Columbus, N.M., killing 17 Americans.
1918: Birthdays: Detective novelist Mickey Spillane.
1934: Birthdays: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space; Actor Joyce Van Patten.
1936: Birthdays: Actor Marty Ingels; Country singer Mickey Gilley.
1940: Birthdays: Actor Raul Julia.
1942: Birthdays: Rock ‘n’ roll singer Mark Lindsay.
1943: Birthdays: Actor Trish Van Devere; Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer.
1945: 343 American airplanes bombed Tokyo with incendiary bombs, killing 83,000 people and destroying some 250,000 buildings over 16 square miles. Birthdays: Rock musician Robin Trower.
1958: Birthdays: Actor Linda Fiorentino.
1959: Barbie, the perennially popular doll, debuted in stores.
1964: Birthdays: Actor Juliette Binoche.
1971: Birthdays: Actor Emmanuel Lewis.
1984: Birthdays: Olympic gold medal skier Julia Mancuso.
1986: The module containing the bodies of the seven astronauts killed in the Jan. 28 explosion of the shuttle Challenger was located off Florida.
1987: Birthdays: Rapper/actor Bow Wow.
1990: Haitian dictator Gen. Prosper Avril stepped down from power under pressure and the military agreed to turn the nation over to civilian rule.
1992: A federal judge in New York announced a final $1.3 billion agreement to settle civil suits growing out of the 1989 collapse of Drexel Burham Lambert, once the most powerful firm on Wall Street.
2004: John Allen Muhammad was sentenced to death for his part in one of 10 Washington-area sniper killings in 2002. A government report warned that obesity could become the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States.
2005: Dan Rather stepped down as anchor and managing editor of CBS Evening News. His action followed acknowledgment of major flaws in a broadcast about U.S. President George Bush’s National Guard service.
2006: scientists reported evidence of water on a Saturn moon.
2007: The Justice Department accused the FBI of misusing the USA Patriot Act in gathering information on thousands of U.S. citizens and foreign nationalists allegedly with suspected links to terrorism.
2008: Pakistani leaders voted to strip President Pervez Musharraf of certain crucial powers and reinstate the Supreme Court he had fired a week earlier. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was elected to a second term. During his first term he removed Spanish troops from Iraq and legalized same-sex marriage.
2009: U.S. President Barack Obama lifted the U.S. limit on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, calling it an important advancement in the cause of science in America. The U.N. reported the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe had claimed an estimated 4,000 lives with nearly 90,000 others having contracted the disease.
2010: A magnitude-6 earthquake struck six towns in the mountainous Turkish province of Karakocan. At least 57 people died and 71 others were injured. The Israeli government announced plans to go ahead with construction of 1,600 homes in a Jewish settlement in mostly Arab East Jerusalem despite U.S. opposition.
2011: A suicide bomber killed and wounded dozens of mourners at a funeral in northwestern Pakistan, the second straight day of such violence in the country. The archbishop of Philadelphia placed 21 Roman Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children on administrative leave.
2012: The U.S. economy added 227,000 jobs in February but the unemployment rate held at 8.3 percent, the U.S. Labor Department said. It is the lowest jobless rate since February 2009 and the White House called the month’s tally part of a positive trend.
Quotes
“If it wasn’t for the last minute nothing would get finished.” – Alison Smidt
“Wherever I go everybody knows me but here’s why … I’m a merchandiser, I’m not just a writer. I stay in every avenue you can think of.” – Mickey Spillane
“There are more truths in twenty-four hours of a man’s life than in all the philosophies.” – Raoul Vaneigem, writer and philosopher (b.1934)
“Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” – Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)
“All men — whether they go by the name of Americans or Russians or Chinese or British or Malayans or Indians or Africans — have obligations to one another that transcend their obligations to their sovereign societies.” – Norman Cousins, author, editor, journalist and professor (1915-1990)
Robert James Fischer (1943- ) American chess player:
“Chess is life.”
“All I want to do, ever, is just play chess.”
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“I don’t believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.”
“All that matters on the chessboard is good moves.”
“You can only get good at chess if you love the game.”
“Chess demands total concentration and a love for the game.”
“I give 98 percent of my mental energy to chess. Others give only 2 percent.”
“Your body has to be in top condition. Your chess deteriorates as your body does. You can’t separate body from mind.”
“I prepare myself well. I know what I can do before I go in. I’m always confident.”
“Psychologically, you have to have confidence in yourself and this confidence should be based on fact.”
“People have been playing against me below their strength for fifteen years.”
“It’s just you and your opponent at the board and you’re trying to prove something.”
“Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.”
“I play honestly and I play to win. If I lose, I take my medicine.”
“You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances.”
“That’s what chess is all about. One day you give your opponent a lesson, the next day he gives you one.”
cloy
PRONUNCIATION: (KLOY)
MEANING: (verb)
1. To oversatiate with rich food, to overfeed, to cause nausea by overfeeding with delicious, rich food;
2. To oversatiate with anything otherwise pleasant to point it becomes unpleasant.
ETYMOLOGY: This word is a reduction of accloy “to clog” from Middle English “acloien,” which derives from Old French encloer “to drive a nail into.” In the Middle Ages cannon and other armaments were rendered useless by driving a nail into their touchhole (which led to the powder) and clogging it. This sense led to that of being overfed, satiated’clogged,’ so to speak, with food. The Old French word “encloer” devolved from the Latin “inclavare,” made up of in “in” + clavare “to nail,” a verb based on clavus “a nail,” a close relative of clavis “key.” This Latin word also gave us “clove,” the anesthetizing spice that looks like a small spike. The same root emerged in Russian as klyuch’ “key” while in German it picked up an initial [s] to become Schlussel “key” and Schloss “castle.”
USAGE: “The speech made by the 40-million-dollar-a-year president was cloyed with insincere references to the work force and its importance to the company.”
pedigree
PRONUNCIATION: (PED-i-gree)
http://wordsmith.org/words/pedigree.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. Lineage or ancestry.
2. A distinguished ancestry.
3. The origin or history of a person or thing.
ETYMOLOGY: From Anglo-Norman pé de grue (crane’s foot), from p´ (foot) + de (of) + grue (crane), from the resemblance of a crane’s foot to the succession lines in a genealogical chart. Earliest documented use: 1425.
USAGE:
“Keep reading to see which dogs have the pedigree and which are fresh from the puppy mill.” – David A. Keeps; The Look for Less; Los Angeles Times; Feb 22, 2011.
“Bernard James stands out with a basketball pedigree that’s unique in the ACC.” – Liz Clarke; Florida State’s Bernard James; Washington Post; Feb 23, 2011.
Explore “pedigree” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=pedigree
Armageddon
PRONUNCIATION: (ahr-muh-GED-n)
http://wordsmith.org/words/armageddon.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A decisive, catastrophic conflict.
ETYMOLOGY: From the Book of Revelation 16:16 where Armageddon is mentioned. It is the supposed site of a final battle between the forces of good and evil. The word is from Greek Harmagedon, from Hebrew har megiddo (Mount Megiddo).
USAGE: “In the event that the US unleashed a nuclear Armageddon, the radar station would have immediately warned Moscow.” – Luke Harding; For Sale: One Communist-era Ghost Town; The Guardian (London, UK); Feb 5, 2010.
Explore “armageddon” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=armageddon
subintelligitur
PRONUNCIATION: (sub-in-tuh-LIJ-it-uhr)
MEANING: (noun), Something that is not stated but understood.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin sub- (below) + intelligere (to understand, literally, to choose between), from inter- (between) + legere (to choose, collect, read). Ultimately from the Indo-European root leg- (to collect) that is also the source of lexicon, lesson, lecture, legible, legal, and select.
USAGE: “We pray to God as a Person, as a larger self; but there must always be a subintelligitur that He is not a Person. Our forms of worship, public and private, imply some interference with the course of nature.” – Benjamin Jowett; Life & Letters; 1886.