Today in History (May 7th):
1711: Birthdays: Scottish philosopher David Hume.
1718: City of New Orleans was founded.
1763: Ottawa Indian chief Pontiac led a major uprising against the British at Detroit.
1789: The first presidential inaugural ball, celebrating the inauguration of George Washington, was conducted in New York City.
1812: Birthdays: English poet Robert Browning.
1824: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was performed for the first time.
1833: Birthdays: German composer Johannes Brahms.
1840: Birthdays: Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
1885: Birthdays: Western actor George Gabby Hayes.
1892: Birthdays: Poet Archibald MacLeish; Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito.
1901: Birthdays: Actor Gary Cooper.
1909: Birthdays: Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid instant camera.
1915: A German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland, killing nearly 1,200 people, including 124 Americans.
1919: Birthdays: Argentine political figure Eva Peron.
1922: Birthdays: Actor Darren McGavin.
1931: Birthdays: Singer Teresa Brewer.
1933: Birthdays: Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas.
1939: Birthdays: Singer Johnny Maestro; Singer Jimmy Ruffin.
1945: U.S. Army Gen. Dwight Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany from Gen. Alfred Jodl.
1948: The Council of Europe was founded.
1950: Birthdays: Television journalist Tim Russert.
1954: Birthdays: Filmmaker Amy Heckerling.
1960: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, shot down over the Soviet Union May 1, confessed he was on a spy mission for the CIA.
1987: U.S. Rep. Stewart McKinney, R-Conn., died at age 56, the first member of Congress identified as a victim of AIDS.
1995: Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris and former French premier, was elected president of France on his third try.
1997: Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic was convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal in the first case of its kind to go to trial since just after World War II.
2000: Vladimir Putin was sworn in as Russia’s second president in the first democratic transfer of executive power in the nation’s 1,000-year history.
2004: Army Pfc. Lynndie England, the 21-year-old woman seen smiling next to naked Iraqi prisoners in widely circulated Abu Ghraib prison photographs, was charged by the military with assaulting Iraqi detainees and conspiring to mistreat them.
2005: Giacomo, a 50-to-1 shot, won the Kentucky Derby over Closing Argument, which went off at 71-1.
2007: Officials reported no survivors in the crash of a Kenyan Airlines plane that went down in a Cameroon mangrove swamp with 114 aboard.
2008: Dmitri Medvedev was sworn in to succeed Vladimir Putin as president of Russia. Putin was named prime minister the next day. Former Irish Finance Minister Brian Cowan was elected prime minister of Ireland.
2010: As the massive Gulf of Mexico oil leak, gushing an estimated 210,000 gallons — roughly 5,000 barrels — of crude into the gulf every day and pushing close to the Louisiana coast, officials sought new ways to seal off the ruptured pipe 5,000 feet below the surface.
2011: The U.S. government said videos taken from the Pakistan hideout of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, killed a week earlier in a U.S. commando raid, showed him directly running al-Qaida operations and constitute the greatest intelligence bonanza collected from a top terrorist.
2012: Vladimir Putin was sworn in to a six-year term as president of Russia. He also was president from 2000-08.
2013: Deaths: Ray Harryhausen, Special-effects and stop-motion pioneer (‘Jason and the Argonauts, Mighty Joe Young, It Came From Beneath the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth, One Million Years B.C., The Valley of Gwangi, and Clash of the Titans.)
Quotes
“Life is an adventure in forgiveness.” – Norman Cousins, author and editor (1915-1990)
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“A lie told often enough becomes truth.” – Vladimir Lenin
“Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.” – Charles de Montesquieu, philosopher and writer (1689-1755)
Eva Duarte de Peron (1919-1952) Argentine political leader:
“Answer violence with violence. If one of us falls today, five of them must fall tomorrow.”
“Charity separates the rich from the poor; aid raises the needy and sets him on the same level with the rich.”
“I am my own woman.”
“I am only a simple woman who lives to serve Peron and my people.”
“I am only a sparrow amongst a great flock of sparrows.”
“I have one thing that counts, and that is my heart; it burns in my soul, it aches in my flesh, and it ignites my nerves: that is my love for the people and Peron.”
“I know that, like every woman of the people, I have more strength than I appear to have.”
“I was born Maria Eva Duarte in one of those miserable dry and sleepy little towns in 1919.”
“I will come again, and I will be millions.”
“I will return and I will be a million.”
“If I have to apply five turns to the screw each day for the happiness of Argentina, I will do it.”
“In government, one actress is enough.”
ameliorate
PRONUNCIATION: (a-MEL-yuh-rayt, uh-MEE-lee-)
MEANING: (verb tr., intr.), To make or grow better; to improve; also meliorate.
ETYMOLOGY: Alteration of meliorate, from Late Latin melioratus, past participle of meliorare, from Latin melior (better).
USAGE: “After an extended hospital stay, the tedium, discomfort, and confinement of Susan’s extended illness was ameliorated by the warm, familiar surroundings of her room at home along with her compassionate and loving family.”
tar baby
PRONUNCIATION: (TAHR bay-bee)
http://wordsmith.org/words/tar_baby.mp3
MEANING: (noun),Something to be avoided: a sticky situation or problem from which it’s almost impossible to get out of.
ETYMOLOGY: After “Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby”, one of the folk stories compiled by Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings. In the story, Brer Fox tries to trap Brer Rabbit by making a baby doll out of tar and puts it on the side of the road. Earliest documented use: 1881, in the above-mentioned story.
USAGE: “The Nixon tar baby clung to Mr. Ford. A month after taking office he pardoned the ex-president, immediately dissipating much of the good will derived from his handling of the White House changeover.” – Editorial; A Ford, Not a Lincoln; The Blade (Toledo, Ohio); Dec 28, 2006.
NOTES: The term has developed racial overtones and should be used cautiously. Check out the Toledo Blade’s follow-up about the use of the term in the above editorial.
casuistry
PRONUNCIATION: (KAZ-oo-i-stree)
http://wordsmith.org/words/casuistry.mp3
MEANING: (noun), Deceptive or excessively subtle reasoning, especially on moral issues.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin casus (case, fall, chance), past participle of cadere (to fall). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kad- (to fall) that is also the source of cadence, cascade, casualty, cadaver, chance, chute, accident, occident, decay, and recidivism. Earliest documented use: 1712.
USAGE: “We were once a brutally honest people, but we’ve become too much given to casuistry.” – Gabriel Anda; Scissors, Rock, and Paper Doll; Xlibris; 2011.
Explore “casuistry” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=casuistry