Today in History (March 13th):
1639: Harvard College in Massachusetts was named for John Harvard, a founder and major benefactor of the school.
1733: Birthdays: English chemist Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen.
1781: The planet Uranus was discovered by British astronomer William Herschel.
1855: Birthdays: Astronomer Percival Lowell.
1868: The Republican-dominated U.S. Senate began impeachment proceedings against U.S. President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat and successor to Abraham Lincoln, climaxing a political feud following the Civil War. He was acquitted by one vote.
1881: Czar Alexander II, the ruler of Russia since 1855, was killed in a St. Petersburg street by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary People’s Will group.
1886: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member John Home Run Baker.
1887: Chester Greenwood of Maine received a patent for earmuffs.
1908: Birthdays: Publisher Walter Annenberg.
1910: Birthdays: Bandleader Sammy Kaye.
1911: Birthdays: L. Ron Hubbard, science fiction writer and founder of the Church of Scientology.
1913: Birthdays: Former CIA Director William Casey.
1921: Birthdays: Cartoonist Al Jaffee.
1929: Birthdays: Helen Callaghan Candaele Saint Aubin, known as the Ted Williams of women’s baseball.
1933: In the depths of the Great Depression, banks throughout the United States began to reopen after a weeklong bank holiday declared by President Franklin Roosevelt in a successful effort to stop runs on bank assets.
1939: Birthdays: Singer/songwriter Neil Sedaka.
1943: A plot by German officers to kill Hitler by blowing up his plane failed.
1950: Birthdays: Political commentator Charles Krauthammer; Actor William H. Macy.
1956: Birthdays: Actor Dana Delany.
1960: Birthdays: Rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Fame member Adam Clayton, U2 bass player.
1969: The Apollo 9 returned to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.
1974: The oil-producing Arab countries agreed to lift their five-month embargo on petroleum sales to the United States. The embargo, during which gasoline prices soared 300 percent, was in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel during the October 1973 Middle East War.
1985: Birthdays: Actor Emile Hirsch.
1989: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration quarantined fruit imported from Chile after traces of cyanide were found in two Chilean grapes.
1990: The Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies formally ended the Communist Party’s monopoly rule, establishing a presidential system and giving Mikhail Gorbachev broad new powers.
1992: More than 400 people were killed when a powerful earthquake hit northeastern Turkey.
1996: A gun collector opened fire on a kindergarten class in Dunblane, Scotland, killing 16 children, their teacher and himself. Liggett, the fifth-biggest tobacco company, broke ranks with its rivals and settled a class-action cancer lawsuit. World leaders — including U.S. President Bill Clinton, Russia’s Boris Yeltsin, King Hussein of Jordan and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat — met in Cairo to reaffirm the Middle East peace process.
1997: A Jordanian soldier killed seven Israeli schoolgirls at the Israeli-Jordanian border.
2000: The Tribune Co. and the Times Mirror Co., media giants featuring two of the nation’s oldest and largest newspapers (Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times), announced they would merge.
2004: Iran called an indefinite halt to inspections of its nuclear facilities. The California Supreme Court ordered an end to same-sex marriages in San Francisco.
2007: Mexican President Felipe Calderon expressed opposition to the U.S-Mexican border fence the United States was building in an effort to control illegal immigration.
2008: The body of Iraqi Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, who led Mosul’s Chaldean Catholic Church, was found in Mosul. He had been kidnapped in February. Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.
2009: Admitted Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff, accused of defrauding thousands of clients of billions of dollars in a massive Ponzi scheme over 20 years, pleaded guilty to 11 counts that lawyers say could net him a 150-year prison sentence.
2010: A string of explosions triggered by a reported four suicide bombers struck Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, killing at least 35 people and wounding another 45, all said to be civilians.
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2011: Saudi and United Arab Emirates troops were invited into Bahrain to shore up the beleaguered regime under fire by protesters seeking government reform. The Dalai Lama, 75-year-old spiritual leader of Tibet, announced his resignation from his second job, as his people’s official political leader, a post he had held since he was 18.
2012: An oil cargo ship collided with a passenger launch in Bangladesh’s Meghna River, claiming at least 26 lives with more than 200 people reported missing. Thirty passengers of the Dhaka-bound MV Shariatpur-1 swam to shore. The death toll reached 19 in reprisal attacks and the suicide bombing of a Catholic church in Jos, Nigeria.
Quotes
“Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass.” – Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)
“I pass the test that says a man who isn’t a socialist at 20 has no heart and a man who is a socialist at 40 has no head.” – William Casey
“Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.” – Ambrose Bierce
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.” – John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) English theologian and scientist
“I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning…”
“Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.”
“It is no use speaking in soft, gentle tones if everyone else is shouting.”
“The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”
“To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.”
tinnient
PRONUNCIATION: (TIN-ee-uhnt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/tinnient.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Ringing or tinkling.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin tinnire (to ring), of imitative origin, which also gave us tintinnabulation. Earliest documented use: 1668.
USAGE: “Designer-costumer Michael Annals’s exotic, colorful (and, at one point, tinnient) costumes for the Peruvians contrast effectively with the Spaniards’ blacks and grays.” – Caldwell Titcomb; The Royal Hunt of the Sun; The Harvard Crimson (Cambridge, Massachusetts); Nov 9, 1965.
predestinarianism
PRONUNCIATION: (pri-des-tuh-NAR-ee-uh-niz-uhm)
http://wordsmith.org/words/predestinarianism.mp3
MEANING: (noun), Belief in the doctrine of predestination, that the divine will has predetermined the course of events, people’s fate, etc.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin praedestination, from prae- (before) + destinare (to determine), from stare (to stand). Earliest documented use: 1722.
USAGE: “I have reacquainted myself with the old taste of Scottish predestinarianism. Y’know, damned or saved; nothing to do with free will or good works.” – Alexander Linklater; The Tale of the Three Alcoholics; The Guardian (London, UK); Nov 11, 2006.
Explore “predestinarianism” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=predestinarianism
reductio ad absurdum
PRONUNCIATION: (ri-DUHK-tee-o ad ab-SUHR-duhm)
http://wordsmith.org/words/reductio_ad_absurdum.mp3
MEANING: (noun), Demonstration of the falsity of a premise by showing an absurdity to which it would logically lead.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin reductio ad absurdum (reduction to the absurd), from reductio (reduction) + ad (to) + Latin absurdum (absurdity). Earliest documented use: 1659.
USAGE:
“Their reductio ad absurdum: why not just bypass the blog, too, and moveright on to 140 characters about Shermn’s Mrch?” – Matt Richtel; Blogs vs. Term Papers; The New York Times; Jan 20, 2012.
“I’m sorry, but all these ‘life begins at conception’ arguments are sheer nonsense. Killing a cluster of cells that has the potential of becoming human life is not the same as killing a human being. Here is a reductio ad absurdum argument for all the extreme pro-lifers. With modern cloning technology, a simple skin cell is a potential baby. Where do pro-life people stand on removing a wart or a mole? Are dermatologists the latest in the long list of baby killers?” – Dialogue is Needed on Abortion; St. Petersburg Times (Florida); May 20, 2009.
Explore “reductio ad absurdum” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=reductio+ad+absurdum