Today in History (March 27th):
1513: Ponce de Leon sighted America for the first time.
1813: Birthdays: Printmaker Nathaniel Currier, of Currier and Ives.
1845: Birthdays: German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen, discoverer of X-rays.
1868: Birthdays: Schoolteacher Patty Smith Hill, who wrote the words for Happy Birthday to You.
1879: Birthdays: Photographer Edward Steichen.
1886: Apache leader Geronimo surrendered to U.S. federal authorities. Birthdays: Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
1899: Birthdays: Actor Gloria Swanson.
1901: Birthdays: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Eisaku Sato.
1924: Birthdays: Jazz singer Sarah Vaughan.
1939: Birthdays: Race car driver Cale Yarborough.
1942: Birthdays: Actor Michael York.
1952: Birthdays: Actor Maria Schneider.
1958: Nikita Khrushchev replaced Nikolai Bulganin as premier of the Soviet Union.
1963: Birthdays: Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.
1964: The strongest earthquake to hit North America — magnitude 9.2 — struck Alaska, killing 117 people.
1970: Birthdays: Singer Mariah Carey.
1975: Birthdays: Singer Fergie (Stacy Ann Ferguson).
1977: Two Boeing 747 jumbo jets collided and exploded in flames on a foggy runway in the Canary Islands, killing 577 people in the worst aviation disaster in history.
1980: A Norwegian oil platform capsized during a storm in the North Sea, killing 123 people.
1990: Soviet soldiers dragged Lithuanian army deserters from a hospital in Vilnius and took over the headquarters of Lithuania’s independent Communist Party to reassert Moscow’s control over the dissident Baltic republic.
1993: Jiang Zemin was appointed president of the People’s Republic of China.
1996: An Israeli court convicted Yigal Amir of assassinating Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and sentenced him to life in prison.
1998: U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Viagra for use as a treatment for male impotence.
2002: A suicide bomber killed 19 Israelis attending a Passover meal at a hotel in Netanya. More than 100 others were injured.
2003: Health officials said 1,408 people in 14 countries had been stricken with severe acute respiratory syndrome and 53 had died, including at least 34 in China.
2004: NASA’s unmanned experimental hypersonic plane reached about 5,000 mph in a test flight — more than seven times the speed of sound.
2005: Ailing Pope John Paul II appeared at his apartment window before an Easter crowd in St. Peter’s Square but was unable to speak. He silently blessed thousands of pilgrims who wept and cheered. About 1 million chanting demonstrators converged on Taiwan’s capital to protest China’s Anti-Secession Law.
2006: A suicide bomber outside a police recruiting center in northern Iraq killed at least 30 people and wounded 30 others.
2007: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brokered a deal between Israeli and Palestinian leaders to meet twice a week to address security issues. Leaders of Myanmar staged a military parade to show off their new capital city, Naypyitaw.
2008: Violence raged around Baghdad and in southern Iraq where clashes between Iraqi security forces and rebel militia members killed at least 100 people.
2009: At least 50 people were killed in a suicide bombing in a crowded mosque in Jamrud in the Khyber region of northwestern Pakistan.
2010: U.S. President Barack Obama announced a major new nuclear arms treaty with Russia calling for a reduction in the countries’ nuclear weapons arsenals with regular inspections.
2011: Jesuits in the U.S. Northwest were expected to pay $166 million to hundreds of people sexually abused at their boarding schools, by far the largest sum agreed to by a Roman Catholic religious order. An estimated half-million protesters marched in London against the British government’s budget cuts.
2012: A JetBlue flight landed in Texas after passengers tackled a pilot who screamed obscenities and shouted threats about al-Qaida and bombs. Flight 191 was en route from New York to Las Vegas when the incident unfolded. Six to 10 passengers grabbed the pilot as he ran through the Airbus A320’s cabin and pinned him to the floor.
Quotes
“Ambition is like hunger; it obeys no law but its appetite.” – Josh Billings, columnist and humorist (1818-1885)
“Fame was thrilling only until it became grueling. Money was fun only until you ran out of things to buy.” – Gloria Swanson
“There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves.” – Soren Kierkegaard, philosopher (1813-1855)
“A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.” – Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)
Edward Steichen (1879-1973) American photographer:
“Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.”
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“I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.”
“No photographer is as good as the simplest camera.”
“Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things.”
“Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.”
“Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.”
“The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth.”
“The use of the term art medium is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding.”
“When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don’t give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself.”
“When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration.”
“You know… that a blank wall is an apalling thing to look at. The wall of a museum – a canvas – a piece of film – or a guy sitting in front of a typewriter. Then, you start out to do something – that vague thing called creation. The beginning strikes awe within you.”
internecine
PRONUNCIATION: (in-tehr-NE-seen)
MEANING: (adjective), Aimed at total destruction; mutually destructive; pertaining to a struggle within an entity, such as a nation or organization.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin internecinus “massively destructive” from internecare “to slaughter,” based on nex (nec-s) “death,” an e-variant of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *nok-/*nek- “death.” The o-grade form is found in nocent “harmful, guilty,” the rarely used antonym of “innocent,” and in nocuous “harmful,” another rarity sitting in plain view inside “innocuous.” Both are from the Latin verb nocere “to harm or injure.” “Noxious” alone or in “obnoxious” derives from Latin noxa (nok-s-a)”injury, damage.” The e-grade form also turns up in Greek nekros “corpse, body,” underlying the other word for cemetery, necropolis “city of the dead.” Nectar, the drink of the gods, comes from PIE *nek “death” + *tar “overcoming,” the drink that overcame death, and “nectarine” derives from “nectar.”
USAGE: “The Department of Homeland Security was created, among other reasons, to reduce the internecine competition between the various security agencies of the federal government.”
blue blood
PRONUNCIATION: (BLOO bluhd)
http://wordsmith.org/words/blue_blood.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. An aristocratic or socially prominent lineage.
2. A member of such a family.
ETYMOLOGY: Loan translation of Spanish sangre azul (blue blood). The term arose from the visible veins of light-skinned royalty. Earliest documented use: 1835.
USAGE: “It figures that a golf blue blood would feel at home on such a classic course. ‘I love telling people that my great-uncle is a Masters champion, and that’s how my dad got started, and that’s the reason I play the game,’ Haas said.” – Karen Crouse; Leading After Three Rounds; The New York Times; Feb 16, 2013.
Explore “blue blood” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=blue+blood
accolade
PRONUNCIATION: (AK-uh-layd, -lahd, ak-uh-LAYD, -LAHD)
http://wordsmith.org/words/accolade.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. An award, honor, or an expression of praise.
2. A touch on someone’s shoulders with the flat blade of a sword in the ceremony of conferring knighthood. Earlier an embrace was used instead.
ETYMOLOGY: From French accolade (an embrace), from accoler (to embrace), from Latin accolare, from ad- (to, on) + collum (neck). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kwel- (to revolve), which is also the source of words such as colony, cult, culture, cycle, cyclone, chakra, collar, col , palindrome, and palinode. Earliest documented use: 1623.
USAGE: “The firm’s Bangor branch took the accolade for best performing store.” – Asda’s Price Guarantee Helps Sales; Belfast Telegraph (Northern Ireland); Feb 23, 2011.
Explore “accolade” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=accolade
begrudge
PRONUNCIATION: (bi-GRUHJ)
http://wordsmith.org/words/begrudge.mp3
MEANING: (verb tr.)
1. To envy or resent someone’s good fortune.
2. To be reluctant to give.
ETYMOLOGY: From Middle English grudgen (to grumble, complain), from Old French grouchier. Earliest documented use: around 1390.
USAGE:
“We do not begrudge Bill Gates or Warren Buffett their billions.” – Dani Rodrik; Free-Trade Blinders; BusinessDay (Lagos, Nigeria); Mar 12, 2012.
“We’d always been an exclusive pair, she never begrudging me with her secrets.” – Leif Enger; Peace Like A River; Grove/Atlantic; 2001.
Explore “begrudge” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=begrudge