Today in History (March 18th):
1766: The British government repealed the Stamp Act.
1782: Birthdays: John C. Calhoun, the first U.S. vice president to resign that office.
1837: Birthdays: Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th president of the United States.
1844: Birthdays: Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
1858: Birthdays: German engineer Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the engine that bears his name.
1869: Birthdays: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
1877: Birthdays: Clairvoyant and therapist Edgar Cayce.
1886: Birthdays: Actor Edward Everett Horton.
1905: Birthdays: Actor Robert Donat.
1909: Birthdays: Winemaker Ernest Gallo.
1922: Mahatma Gandhi was sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience against the British rulers of India.
1923: Birthdays: Auto race promoter Andy Granatelli.
1925: The worst tornado in U.S. history roared through eastern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southern Indiana, killing 695 people, injuring 13,000 others and causing $17 million in property damage.
1926: Birthdays: Actor Peter Graves.
1927: Birthdays: Author George Plimpton.
1931: The first electric razor was marketed by Schick, Inc.
1932: Birthdays: Author John Updike.
1936: Birthdays: Former South African President F.W. de Klerk.
1937: A natural gas explosion at a public school in New London, Texas, killed 410 people, most of them children.
1938: Birthdays: Country singer Charley Pride.
1941: Birthdays: Singer/songwriter Wilson Pickett.
1956: Birthdays: Olympic gold medal-winning skier Ingemar Stenmark.
1959: Birthdays: Singer Irene Cara.
1962: France and Algeria signed a cease-fire agreement ending a seven-year civil war and bringing independence to the North African country.
1963: Birthdays: Actor/singer Vanessa Williams.
1964: Birthdays: Olympic champion skater Bonnie Blair.
1965: Soviet cosmonaut Alexi Leonov became the first person to walk in space.
1970: Birthdays: Singer and actor Queen Latifah.
1992: Hotel queen and convicted tax cheat Leona Helmsley was sentenced to four years in prison.
1993: Contra rebels freed five hostages held at the Nicaraguan Embassy in Costa Rica after the two sides agreed to begin talks to end the 10-day siege.
1995: Michael Jordan announced he was returning to professional basketball and the Chicago Bulls after a 17-month break, during which he had tried a baseball career.
2003: On the eve of war with Iraq, the U.S. State Department listed 30 countries as members of a coalition of the willing supporting military intervention but only the United States, Britain and Australia were known to be providing troops.
2005: Doctors removed the feeding tube keeping Terri Schiavo alive after a wide-ranging fight over the brain-damaged Florida woman’s care that involved U.S. President George Bush and Congress. News reports said Ukraine admitted to exporting missiles, designed to carry nuclear warheads, to Iran and China.
2006: An estimated 500,000 people took to the streets in French cities and towns for the largest protest against a new labor law. It allows employers to dismiss workers under the age of 26 for any reason during the first two years on the job.
2007: Israel’s Cabinet voted unanimously to boycott the new Hamas-dominated Palestinian unity government.
2008: Barack Obama, the front-runner in a tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination, denounced the profoundly distorted view of U.S. racial relations in controversial remarks by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but said he couldn’t reject the man himself. Wright’s comments ignited a political firestorm.
2009: U.S. President Barack Obama announced a $75 billion plan to help homeowners refinance mortgages and prevent foreclosure. He claimed the plan would help housing prices return to earlier values and improve struggling neighborhoods.
2010: U.S. President Barack Obama signed a jobs-stimulus measure into law, providing $17.5 billion in tax cuts and other employer incentives and shifted $20 billion to boost transit programs.
2011: Government troops used deadly force on crowds of demonstrators seeking reform in Syria and Yemen. The largest of several Syrian protests took place in Daraa where 30 people were reported killed. A crackdown in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa left at least 40 people dead.
2012: James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of Titanic, resurfaced after plunging to the deepest known point in the world’s oceans in his one-man submersible. Cameron descended to the bottom of the Mariana Trench near Guam — 7 miles beneath the surface of western Pacific Ocean.
Quotes
“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide… I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” – Thomas Edison, inventor (1847-1931)
“Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better.” – John Updike
“The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth – but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it . But tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.” – Robert Heinlein
“One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.” – John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.” – Charles Dickens, novelist (1812-1870)
“The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” – Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)
Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) American President:
“A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.”
“After an existence of nearly twenty years of almost innocuous desuetude these laws are brought forth.”
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“He mocks the people who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor.”
“Honor lies in honest toil.”
“I have considered the pension list of the republic a roll of honor.”
“It is a condition which confronts us – not a theory.”
“Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.”
“No man has ever yet been hanged for breaking the spirit of a law.”
“Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters.”
“Party honesty is party expediency.”
“Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.”
“The ship of Democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those aboard.”
peruse
PRONUNCIATION: (puh-ROOZ)
http://wordsmith.org/words/peruse.mp3
MEANING: (verb tr.)
1. To read or examine with great care.
2. To read or examine in a casual manner.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin per- (thoroughly) + Middle English usen (to use). Earliest documented use: 1475.
USAGE:
“The paper … is now being perused by a committee, where it could be stuck for weeks or months.” – The Islamists Reap a Reward; The Economist (London, UK); Oct 22, 2011.
“Writers can peruse Sitka’s online catalog and enroll in courses.” – Melissa Hart; Country Home; The Writer (Waukesha, Wisconsin); Mar 2013.
Explore “peruse” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=peruse
grandee
PRONUNCIATION: (gran-DEE)
MEANING: (noun)
1. A man of elevated rank or station.
2. In Spain or Portugal, a nobleman of the first rank.
ETYMOLOGY: Grandee comes from Spanish grande, from Latin grandis, “great, large, hence important, grand.” Related words include grandeur, “the state or quality of being grand”; grandiose, “characterized by affectation of grandeur”; aggrandize, “to make great or greater”; and, of course, grand.
USAGE: “Such was Albert’s need to live like a grandee that he was constantly living well beyond his financial needs and was burdened by a tremendous debt.”
doxy
PRONUNCIATION: (DOK-see)
http://wordsmith.org/words/doxy.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. A mistress or a promiscuous woman.
2. Opinion or doctrine.
ETYMOLOGY:
For 1: Of uncertain origin, perhaps from obsolete Dutch docke (doll). Earliest documented use: around 1530.
For 2: Back-formed from orthodoxy, heterodoxy, etc. From Greek doxa (opinion), fromdokein (to think). Ultimately from the Indo-European root dek- (to take or accept), which is also the root of words such as paradox, orthodox, doctor, disciple, discipline, doctrine, dogma, decent, decorate, dignity, disdain, condign, and deign. Earliest documented use: around 1730.
USAGE:
“The arresting officer would still be filling out paperwork and the doxy would be collecting her things and heading back to the street.” – Neil Steinberg; Blinded by Race; Chicago Sun-Times; Dec 31, 2008.
“In that twilight zone of the Anglican double standard, orthodoxy is really just a word for my doxy. Heterodoxy means everyone else’s doxy.” – Hywel Williams; Let Us All Err and Stray; The Guardian (London, UK);Jul 8, 2003.
Explore “doxy” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=doxy
gallimaufry
PRONUNCIATION: (gal-uh-MAW-free)
http://wordsmith.org/words/gallimaufry.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A hodgepodge; a jumble.
ETYMOLOGY: From Middle French galimafree (stew), probably from galer (to make merry) + mafrer (to gorge oneself).
USAGE: “I’ve got a gallimaufry of cosmetics bottles of various kinds.” – Caroline Kamp; How Do I Look?; The Independent (London, UK); May 21, 2005.
Explore “gallimaufry” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=gallimaufry
gramineous
PRONUNCIATION: (gruh-MIN-ee-uhs)
http://wordsmith.org/words/gramineous.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Of or relating to grass.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin gramineus, from gramen (grass).
USAGE: “Riding in a canoe, the king [Zahir Shah] often fired with his air gun on the sparrows that flew in a flock from gramineous plants, Rauf Liwal added.” – Wali Ahmad Zai; Kol Hashmat Khan is No More Splendid Land; Pajhwok Afghan News (Kabul, Afghanistan); Jul 12, 2006.