Today in History (May 14th):
1607: Jamestown, VA was settled as an English colony.
1643: King Louis XIV, who would be known as The Sun King, became ruler of France at the age of 4.
1727: Birthdays: English portrait painter Thomas Gainsborough.
1771: Birthdays: Scottish reformer Robert Owen.
1796: Dr. Edward Jenner, a rural England physician, tested his smallpox vaccine on a healthy 8-year-old boy.
1804: One year after the United States doubled its territory with the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition left St. Louis on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.
1881: Birthdays: Hall of Fame baseball player Ed Walsh.
1885: Birthdays: German composer Otto Klemperer.
1899: Birthdays: Hall of Fame baseball player Earle Combs.
1904: The Olympic Games were conducted in the United States for the first time, in St. Louis.
1921: Birthdays: Actor Richard Deacon.
1925: Birthdays: Opera coloratura soprano Patrice Munsel.
1929: Birthdays: Hall of Fame hockey player Gump Worsley.
1936: Birthdays: Singer Bobby Darin.
1942: The U.S. Congress established the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps for World War II duty. Birthdays: Hall of Fame baseball player Tony Perez.
1944: Birthdays: Filmmaker George Lucas.
1948: Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel, establishing the first Jewish state in 2,000 years.
1952: Birthdays: Filemaker Robert Zemeckis; Musician David Byrne.
1961: Birthdays: Actor Tim Roth.
1965: Birthdays: Irish writer Eoin Colfer.
1969: Birthdays: Actor Cate Blanchett.
1973: The United States launched Skylab, its first manned orbiting laboratory.
1988: A church bus was hit by a pickup truck going the wrong way on a road near Carrollton, Ky., killing 27 bus passengers, mostly teenagers.
1991: U.S. President George H.W. Bush nominated Robert M. Gates to be director of the CIA, a position he was denied four years earlier due to the Iran-Contra investigation.
1992: Lyle Alzado, NFL lineman-turned-actor/businessman, died of brain cancer, which he had blamed on steroid abuse. He was 43.
1998: Entertainment legend Frank Sinatra died after suffering a heart attack. He was 82.
2000: Hundreds of thousands of mothers and other gun-control advocates took part in the Million Mom March in Washington and several other cities, demanding sensible gun laws and mourning the loss of children to gun violence.
2002: Three gunmen killed 34 people in Jammu, capital of India’s disputed state of Kashmir.
2003: Sheriff’s deputies in Victoria, Texas, found as many as 100 people stuffed into a truck operated by smugglers of illegal aliens. Nineteen had died of the heat in the vehicle.
2004: U.S. authorities released 315 Iraqi prisoners from Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison amid an investigation into alleged prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block same-sex marriages in Massachusetts, the only state at the time to allow the practice.
2007: Plans were announced to return the Chrysler automaker to U.S. ownership. The German company DaimlerChrysler said it would sell 80.1 percent of its Chrysler division to a U.S. private equity firm for $7.4 billion.
2008: The polar bear was chosen for the endangered species list by the U.S. Commerce Department because of shrinkage in its sea-ice habitat blamed on global climate change.
2009: A Gallup poll indicated that, for the first time since the survey initially asked the abortion question in 1995, a majority of Americans (51 percent) described themselves as pro-life rather than pro-choice (42 percent).
2010: Two suicide bombers, one in a car and the other on foot, blew themselves up at an Iraqi soccer stadium as a match was beginning. Officials said at least 25 people were killed and 100 others were hurt.
2011: The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 62, was arrested for an alleged sexual attack on a New York hotel housekeeper. He resigned four days later. The charges were eventually dropped.
2012: A Gallup poll indicated 80 percent of Democrats supported President Barack Obama but just 59 percent of Republicans said they would be satisfied with Mitt Romney as their party’s presidential nominee.
Quotes
“Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.” – Matsuo Basho, poet (1644-1694)
“Perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking.” – Mary Poppins
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“You don’t marry someone you can live with, you marry someone you can’t live without.” – Anonymous
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.” – Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)
“The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.” – Solomon ibn Gabirol, 1021-1058
“Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.” – Democritus, 460 BC-370 BC
“Know thyself means this, that you get acquainted with what you know, and what you can do.” – Menander, 342 BC-291 BC
George Lucas (1944- ) U.S. film producer, director, writer:
“People expected Episode III, which is where Anakin turns into Darth Vader, to be Episode I. And then they expected Episodes II and III to be Darth Vader going around cutting people’s heads off and terrorizing the universe.”
“None of the films I’ve done was designed for a mass audience, except for Indiana Jones. Nobody in their right mind thought American Graffiti or Star Wars would work.”
“The secret to film is that it’s an illusion.”
“You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you are doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.”
“If you could look at…issues more open-mindedly, at what’s going on with the human mind behind all this, on all sides, you could have a more interesting conversation, without people screaming, plugging their ears, and walking out of the room like kids do.”
McJob
PRONUNCIATION: (mehk-JOB0
MEANING: (noun), A low-paying, non-challenging job with few benefits or opportunities, typically in the service sector.
ETYMOLOGY: Coined by Douglas Coupland, in his novel Generation X, after McDonald’s fast-food chain.
USAGE: “In his idle moments Francis was wont to dream of quitting his high-stress position selling advertising to angry, unwilling clients and get a simple McJob where his limited worries ended when he punched out at the end of his shift.”
petrify
PRONUNCIATION: (PE-tri-fy)
http://wordsmith.org/words/petrify.mp3
MEANING:
(verb tr.)
1. To turn into stone.
2. To harden or deaden.
3. To stun or paralyze with fear.
(verb intr.), To become stony or callous.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin petra (rock), from Greek petra (cliff, rock). Ultimately from the Indo-European root per- (to lead, pass over), which also gave us support, comport, petroleum, sport, passport, petrichor (the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain), colporteur (a peddler of religious books), Swedish fartlek (a training technique), Norwegian fjord (bay), and Sanskrit parvat (mountain). Earliest documented use: 1425.
USAGE: “The thought of death does not petrify me.” – Keith Roach; Dr. Roach; Idaho State Journal (Pocatello); Jan 9, 2013.
Explore “petrify” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=petrify
foursquare
PRONUNCIATION: (FOHR-skwair)
http://wordsmith.org/words/foursquare.mp3
MEANING:
(adjective)
1. Firm; unyielding.
2. Frank; forthright.
3. Square in shape.
(adverb), In a firm or forthright manner.
ETYMOLOGY: From four + square, from Latin exquadrare (to square). Earliest documented use: before 1300.
USAGE: “China does have one strength that this country lacks: a leadership foursquare behind modern science while America’s carbon cavemen question the need for green energy.” – Froma Harrop; We’re Indebted to an Unfriendly Nation; The Dallas Morning News (Texas); Dec 22, 2010.
Explore “foursquare” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=foursquare