Today in History (April 12th):
1777: Birthdays: American statesman Henry Clay.
1861: The Civil War began when Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter, S.C.
1898: Birthdays: Opera singer Lily Pons.
1916: Birthdays: Author Beverly Cleary.
1923: Birthdays: Actor/dancer Ann Miller.
1932: Birthdays: Singer Tiny Tim.
1935: Your Hit Parade premiered on radio.
1940: Birthdays: Jazz keyboard player Herbie Hancock.
1945: About 3 hours later after the death of Roosevelt, Vice President Harry Truman was inaugurated as President of the United States. Deaths: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the longest serving president in U.S. history, died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Ga., three months into his fourth term.
1946: Birthdays: Actor Ed O’Neill.
1947: Birthdays: Author Tom Clancy; Entertainer David Letterman; Actor Dan Lauria.
1949: Birthdays: Writer Scott Turow.
1950: Birthdays: Actor/singer David Cassidy.
1954: Birthdays: Musician Pat Travers; Writer Jon Krakauer.
1955: U.S. health officials announced that the polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk was safe, potent and effective.
1956: Birthdays: Actor Andy Garcia.
1957: Birthdays: Country singer Vince Gill.
1961: The Soviet Union launched the first manned spacecraft. Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth and return safely.
1971: Birthdays: Actor Shannen Doherty.
1979: Birthdays: Actor Claire Danes; Actor Jennifer Morrison.
1981: The first U.S. space shuttle flight was launched. The flight of Columbia was the first U.S. manned space mission since July 1976.
1990: Under pressure from environmentalists, three top U.S. tuna canneries — Heinz, Van Camp and Bumblebee — announced dolphin-safe tuna-catching practices.
1993: NATO warplanes began enforcing a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina, marking the first time the alliance’s forces were used outside its traditional defense area.
1994: Israel and the PLO agreed that 9,000 Palestinian police would be stationed in Jericho and the Gaza Strip after the Israeli military withdrawal.
1999: A federal judge in Little Rock, Ark., found U.S. President Bill Clinton in contempt of court for lying during his sworn deposition in January 1998, when he testified that he hadn’t had sexual relations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton was fined $1,202.
2002: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was overthrown in a military coup but was returned to office two days later riding a wave of public sentiment.
2003: Gen. Amir al-Saadi, Saddam Hussein’s top science adviser, denied Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction and surrendered to U.S. forces.
2007: Kurt Vonnegut Jr., whose novels such as Slaughterhouse-Five resonated with a generation, died in New York at the age of 84.
2009: U.S. Navy SEALs rescued an American captain held hostage by pirates off the Somalia coast by killing three of the kidnappers four days after the standoff began.
2010: NATO troops fired on a bus after the driver failed to stop as ordered at a southern Afghanistan checkpoint, killing four people and wounding 18 others. The driver said it was too dark to recognize the soldiers.
2011: Japanese officials put their nuclear plant disaster, badly damaged by a massive February earthquake and tsunami, on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl plant catastrophe in Ukraine when they raised the assessment of their situation to Level 7, the highest rating on the international scale with only Chernobyl so classified.
2012: North Korea, defying international warnings, fired a long-range test rocket but the launch ended in failure. U.S. officials said the rocket broke up and fell into the sea.
Quotes
“We don’t know who we are until we see what we can do.” – Martha Grimes
“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.” – Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899)
“It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them.” – Cesare Beccaria, philosopher and politician (1738-1794)
“Convulsions in nature, disorders, prodigies, miracles, though the most opposite to the plan of a wise superintendent, impress mankind with the strongest sentiments of religion.” – David Hume, philosopher, economist, and historian (1711-1776)
“A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; nor too far off, lest he freeze.” – Diogenes, philosopher (412?-323 BCE)
Eudora Welty (1909-2001) American author:
“A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.”
“A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”
“All serious daring starts from within.”
“Beware of a man with manners.”
“I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”
“Never think you’ve seen the last of anything.”
“Relationship is a pervading and changing mystery…brutal or lovely, the mystery waits for people wherever they go, whatever extreme they run to.”
“The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.”
“The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.”
“Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.”
“To imagine yourself inside another person…is what a storywriter does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.”
“When I was a child and the snow fell, my mother always rushed to the kitchen and made snow ice cream and divinity fudge-egg whites, sugar and pecans, mostly. It was a lark then and I always associate divinity fudge with snowstorms.”
“Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations.”
“Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer’s own life.”
Available in a range of delicious flavors! So this basically means that the real job discount viagra cialis of a marketing campaign starts after the mails are sent out. The scientists and the researchers have reported this medicine much effective to cure ED, just because cialis free consultation of its healing and rejuvenating properties. Beyond a certain point, the medicine shall no longer be present in the bloodstream or canada cialis tissue and it shall produce no side effects on the body. For that matter, even alcohol is good for buy viagra have a peek here one’s health. “Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.”
Munich
PRONUNCIATION: (MYOO-nik)
http://wordsmith.org/words/Munich.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A shortsighted or dishonorable appeasement.
ETYMOLOGY: After Munich, Germany, the site of a pact signed by Great Britain, France, Italy, and Germany on Sep 29, 1938 that permitted annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland by Nazi Germany. WWII began a year later; Sudetenland was restored to Czechoslovakia after the war.
NOTES: The name Munich is an exonym (a name used by outsiders). The local name (endonym) for Munich is München, derived from Mönch (monk) as the city was founded by Benedictine monks in 1158.
USAGE: “Neoconservatives, writes Jacob Heilbrunn, ‘see new Munichs everywhere and anywhere’.” – Andrew J. Bacevich; The Neocondition; Los Angeles Times; Jan 20, 2008.
Explore “munich” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=munich
Gordian
PRONUNCIATION: (GOR-dee-uhn)
http://wordsmith.org/words/gordian.mp3
MEANING: (adjective),Highly intricate; extremely difficult to solve.
ETYMOLOGY: In Greek mythology, King Gordius of Phrygia tied a knot that defied all who tried to untie it. An oracle prophesied that one who would undo this Gordian knot would rule Asia. Alexander the Great simply cut the knot with one stroke of his sword. Hence the saying, “to cut the Gordian knot”, meaning to solve a difficult problem by a simple, bold, and effective action. Earliest documented use: 1579.
USAGE: “The Gordian complexity of Afghanistan continues to confound Washington’s top military and political strategists.” – Patience, Perseverance Best Options in Afghanistan; The Dallas Morning News (Texas); Dec 27, 2010.
Explore “gordian” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=gordian
groundswell
PRONUNCIATION: (GROUND-swell)
http://wordsmith.org/words/groundswell.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. A surge of opinion or feeling about someone or something.
2. A broad deep swell of the ocean, caused by a distant storm or an earthquake.
ETYMOLOGY: Groundswell was the term sailors used for a swelling of the ocean. Why ground? Originally, ground referred to the bottom of anything, especially an ocean. Earliest documented use: 1817.
USAGE:
“A nationwide general strike fuelled by a groundswell of anger brought parts of Spain to a halt yesterday.” – General Strike; The New Zealand Herald (Auckland); Mar 31, 2012.
“Waves along the coasts may get as high as 23 feet this weekend due to two significant groundswells.” – High Surf Expected This Weekend; Los Angeles Times; Mar 29, 2012.
Explore “groundswell” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=groundswell
passe-partout
PRONUNCIATION: (pas-pahr-TOO)
http://wordsmith.org/words/passe-partout.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. Something, for example a master key, that enables unrestricted access.
2. An ornamental mat used to frame a picture.
3. An adhesive tape used to attach a picture to a mat, glass, backing, etc.
ETYMOLOGY: From French, literally, passes everywhere, from passer (to pass) + partout (everywhere), from par (through) + tout (all).
USAGE: “Francesco Isolabella, one of her lawyers, said, ‘Marion True is being used as an excuse to criminalize all American museums.’ Ms. True should not be used ‘as a passe-partout to get at the Getty.'” – Elisabetta Povoledo; Casting Blame for Looting In Trial of Getty Ex-Curator; The New York Times; Jan 18, 2007.
All of a Sudden She’s Right
Q: I thought it was “all of a sudden,” not “all of the sudden.” Am I right? –Margery Mosher, Putnam, Conn.
A: Indeed you are. Though people often say “all of the sudden” or “all the sudden,” usage authorities agree that “all of a sudden” is the correct phrase. In “Modern American Usage,” for instance, Bryan Garner categorizes “all of the sudden” as “unacceptable in standard usage.”
So “all of a sudden” takes its place among set phrases such as “all of a kind” or “all of a piece.”
Wait a minute. “Kind” and “piece” are nouns, but “sudden” is an adjective. Was “sudden” once a noun?
Indeed it was. The noun “sudden,” now obsolete, once meant “an unexpected occurrence, an emergency, a suddenness.” Proper Victorians would say, “Her tranquil tea party was interrupted by the most startling sudden.”
The noun form of “sudden” still survives in “all of a sudden” and the much less common phrase “on a sudden.” Both expressions are linguistic fossils, remnants of the long-dead noun “sudden.”
Q: Is it wrong to say, “I’m scared” instead of “I’m afraid,” as in, “I’m scared to go outside in the dark,” instead of “I’m afraid to go outside in the dark”? –An Avid Reader in Bordentown, N.J.
A: When it comes to correct usage, avid readers of my column are never in the dark!
No one objects to using the past participle “scared” when it’s followed by “to” and an infinitive, (“I’m scared to go outside”), or when it’s followed by the prepositions “by” or “about” (“I’m scared by lightning/I’m scared about rising prices”).
But some commentators do frown on the use of “scared” followed by the preposition “of” (“I’m scared of lightning”). They suggest using “afraid of” instead.
Their hesitation about “scared of” may have arisen because “scared” is a past participle, implying that someone or something has “scared” the person.
Boo! “Afraid,” on the other hand, is a straightforward adjective, implying no action by an outside agent.
“Scared of” may have been further tainted by the non-standard usage “ascared,” a combination of “afraid” and “scared” commonly heard in the Southern and Midland U.S.
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, while acknowledging that “scared of” occurs more often in speech and casual prose than in formal writing, declares that “scared of” is standard English.
So unless you’re writing a fancy proclamation or legal document, don’t be scared of using “scared of.”
Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254
Copyright 2013 Creators Syndicate Inc.