Today in History (April 17th):
1421: The sea broke the dikes at Dort, Holland, drowning an estimated 100,000 people.
1521: Martin Luther spoke before the Diet of Worms, refusing to recant his teachings. Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church after refusing to admit to charges of heresy.
1524: Italian navigator Giovanni Verrazano discovered New York Harbor.
1790: American statesman, printer, scientist and writer Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia at age 84.
1837: Birthdays: American industrialist and financier J.P. Morgan.
1852: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Cap Anson.
1885: Birthdays: Danish author Karen Blixen (Out of Africa), who wrote under the name Isak Dinesen.
1894: Birthdays: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
1897: Birthdays: Novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder.
1918: Birthdays: Actor William Holden.
1923: Birthdays: Television journalist Harry Reasoner.
1934: Birthdays: Music promoter Don Kirshner.
1948: Birthdays: Musician Jan Hammer.
1951: Birthdays: Actor Olivia Hussey.
1959: Birthdays: Actor Sean Bean.
1961: A force of anti-Castro rebels began the Bay of Pigs attempt to overthrow Cuba’s new Communist government.
1964: Jerrie Mock of Columbus, Ohio, became the first woman to complete a solo flight around the world.
1967: Birthdays: Actor Henry Ian Cusick; Musician Liz Phair.
1970: With the world anxiously watching via television, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey to the moon, safely returned to Earth.
1974: Birthdays: Singer Victoria Beckham.
1989: The Polish labor union Solidarity was granted legal status after nearly a decade of struggle and suppression, clearing the way for the downfall of the country’s Communist Party.
1991: The Dow Jones industrial average closed at more than 3,000 for the first time.
1993: A federal court jury convicted two Los Angeles police officers of violating Rodney King’s civil rights in the black motorist’s 1991 arrest and beating.
2001: Mississippi voters, by a 2-1 ratio, decided to keep their state flag, which includes the Confederate battle cross in the upper left-hand corner.
2003: Billionaire philanthropist John Paul Getty Jr. died in London at the age of 70.
2004: The U.S. General Accounting Office, looking into the oil-for-food program administered by the U.N. for Iraq estimated the Saddam Hussein regime collected more than $11 billion in kickbacks and illegal sales. The Israeli army confirmed it had killed Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantissi, who had headed the militant group less than a month after his predecessor also was killed.
2006: Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, was convicted of 18 felony counts, including racketeering, conspiracy and tax and mail fraud. A bus carrying Mexican tourists plunged nearly 800 feet off a cliff in eastern Mexico between Vera Cruz and Mexico City, killing at least 63 people.
2008: During his first visit to the United States since becoming pope, Benedict XVI included a recurring theme in his remarks about the scandal that grew from allegations of child abuse by Roman Catholic priests. He said he was deeply ashamed and, in a surprise gesture, met with several victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Boston archdiocese. A suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest during a tribal leader’s funeral in northern Iraq, killing at least 50 people, authorities said.
2009: The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration reportedly cleared the way to regulate greenhouse gas omissions by declaring officially for the first time that carbon dioxide, methane and four other gases emit air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare.
2010: Vandals spray-painted graffiti on Rio de Janeiro’s colossal Christ The Redeemer statue. It was the first incident of that kind since the 98-foot-tall statue was dedicated in 1931.
2011: Human rights groups accused Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s forces of using indiscriminate cluster bombs to battle rebels in a residential area. The election of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, a non-Muslim and former vice president who succeeded the late incumbent, touched off three days of rioting that killed a reported 800-plus people. Many Muslims had expected Jonathan to step down after the election.
2012: U.S. investor Warren Buffett, one of the world’s wealthiest people, said he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Quotes
“Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.” – Japanese proverb
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” – Rudyard Kipling
“In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.” – Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
“What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.” – Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)
Isak Dinesen (1885-1962) Danish writer:
“Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.”
“God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.”
“I don’t believe in evil, I believe only in horror. In nature there is no evil, only an abundance of horror: the plagues and the blights and the ants and the maggots.”
“I think it will be truly glorious when women become real people and have the whole world open to them.”
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“Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine.”
“Man reaches the highest point of lovableness at 12 to 17 – to get it back, in a second flowering, at the age of 70 to 90.”
“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.”
“When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.”
deracinate
PRONUNCIATION: (dee-RAS-uh-nayt)
MEANING: (transitive verb)
1. To pluck up by the roots; to uproot.
2. To displace from one’s native or accustomed environment.
ETYMOLOGY: Deracinate comes from Middle French desraciner, from des-, “from” (from Latin de-) + racine, “root” (from Late Latin radicina, from Latin radix, radic-). The noun form is deracination.
USAGE: “After her parents moved her across the country for her father to take a new job, Janice felt deracinated, all of her friends left behind in her suburban habitat as she was forced to adapt to her new high-rise-dwelling life.”
doubting Thomas
PRONUNCIATION: (DOU-ting TOM-uhs)
http://wordsmith.org/words/doubting_Thomas.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A person who is habitually doubtful or someone who refuses to believe something until given proof.
ETYMOLOGY: After Saint Thomas, apostle, who doubted Jesus Christ’s resurrection according to the Bible. Earliest documented use: 1877.
USAGE: “At four, our daughter is a doubting Thomas so we pry open the mouths of snapdragons to show her the reason behind the name.” – Megan Fulweiler; Tales to Inspire the Young Gardener; The New York Times; Dec 12, 1982.
NOTES: Here’s to doubting Thomases of the world! Too many of us shut off our critical thinking ability and begin to take things on faith. As Mark Twain once said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”
Explore “doubting thomas” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=doubting%20thomas
calliopean
PRONUNCIATION: (kuh-ly-uh-PEE-uhn)
http://wordsmith.org/words/calliopean.mp3
MEANING: (adjective),Piercingly loud.
ETYMOLOGY: After calliope, a musical instrument having a series of steam whistles played by a keyboard. The instrument was named after Kalliope, the Muse of heroic poetry in Greek mythology, from Greek kalli- (beautiful) + ops (voice). Earliest documented use: 1855.
USAGE:
“Sunday we were doing yardwork when our ears perked to one of the season’s unmistakable aural cues… the calliopean siren’s song of the ice cream truck.” – Check It Out; The News & Observer (North Carolina); Mar 18, 2004.
“Rosalind Russell may have been more ‘bankable’, but didn’t have The Merm’s calliopean vocal cords.” – Ivan M. Lincoln; ‘Gypsy’ Coming to Life Again; The Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah); Feb 20, 1994.
gloze
PRONUNCIATION: (glohz)
http://wordsmith.org/words/gloze.mp3
MEANING:
(verb tr.),To minimize or to explain away.
(verb intr.)
1. To use flattery.
2. To make an explanation.
3. To shine brightly.
(noun)
1. A comment.
2. Flattery.
3. A pretense.
ETYMOLOGY: From Old French gloser (to explain), from Latin glossa (explanation ofa difficult word), from Greek glossa (word needing explanation, language). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ghel- (to shine), which is also the source of words such as yellow, gold, glimmer, glimpse, glass, arsenic, melancholy, and cholera. Earliest documented use: around 1290.
USAGE:
“When Anthony Blunt was exposed 20 years ago, there were some who tried to gloze his conduct.” – Geoffrey Wheatcroft; Her Russia Right or Wrong; The Spectator (London, UK); Sep 18, 1999.
“From the pyramid’s apex 42.3 billion candlepower’s worth of white lightshines, glozes, fulgurates, burns.” – Josh Axelrad; Repeat Until Rich: A Professional Card Counter’s Chronicle of the Blackjack Wars; Penguin; 2010.
Explore “gloze” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=gloze