Today in History (May 26th):
1650: Birthdays: English Gen. John Churchill, ancestor of statesman Winston Churchill.
1864: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, anxious to create new free territories during the Civil War, signed an act establishing the Montana Territory. Montana became a state 25 years later.
1868: At the end of a historic two-month trial, the U.S. Senate failed to convict President Andrew Johnson of impeachment charges levied against him by the House of Representatives. Johnson won acquittal by one vote on each count.
1877: Birthdays: Dancer Isadora Duncan.
1886: Birthdays: Entertainer Al Jolson.
1896: Nicholas II became the Russian czar.
1897: Dracula was published by Irish writer Bram Stoker and went on sale in London.
1907: Birthdays: Actor John Wayne.
1908: Birthdays: Actor Robert Morley.
1912: Birthdays: Actor Jay Silverheels.
1913: Birthdays: Actor Peter Cushing.
1914: Birthdays: Trumpeter Ziggy Elman.
1920: Birthdays: Singer Peggy Lee.
1923: Birthdays: Actor James Arness.
1926: Birthdays: Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis.
1928: Birthdays: Right-to-die advocate Jack Kevorkian.
1939: Birthdays: Sportscaster Brent Musburger.
1940: The evacuation of Dunkirk began. Sailing vessels of every kind were pressed into service to ferry British, French and Belgian soldiers trapped by advancing German forces in northern France across the English Channel. All 200,000 were safely across by June 2. Birthdays: Musician and actor Levon Helm.
1948: Birthdays: Singer Stevie Nicks.
1949: Birthdays: Singer Hank Williams Jr.; Actor Pam Grier; Actor Philip Michael Thomas.
1951: Birthdays: Sally Ride, first U.S. woman in space.
1954: More than 100 crewmembers of the aircraft carrier USS Bennington died in an explosion off Rhode Island.
1962: Birthdays: Actor Genie Francis; Actor Bobcat Goldthwait.
1964: Birthdays: Musician Lenny Kravitz.
1966: Birthdays: Actor Helena Bonham Carter.
1972: At a Moscow summit, U.S. President Richard Nixon and Soviet Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev signed a pact limiting nuclear weapons.
1985: A cyclone struck the Bay of Bengal, killing 1,400 people in Bangladesh.
1991: A Lauda Air Boeing 767-300 exploded over Thailand after takeoff, killing all 223 people aboard.
1994: The United States and Vietnam resumed diplomatic relations. Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis Presley, were married in the Dominican Republic. They divorced two years later.
2003: A plane crash in Turkey killed all 74 aboard, including 62 Spanish soldiers returning from peacekeeping duties in Afghanistan.
2007: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran was accelerating its nuclear program to become an exporter of nuclear fuel.
2008: The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report that Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons research was a mystery, a matter of serious concern.
2009: U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor, a federal appeals judge, to the U.S. Supreme Court to succeed the retiring Justice David Souter. She was the first person of Hispanic ancestry nominated to the high court. The California Supreme Court upheld the ban on same-sex marriage, cementing results of an earlier public referendum. The 18,000 same-sex couples married before the ban, however, were still regarded as married.
2010: The shuttle Atlantis touched down at the Kennedy Space Center to end its final mission into space, 32nd flight over 25 years covering an estimated 120 million miles.
2011: Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general accused of directing the 1995 massacre of more than 8,000 Muslims, was arrested in Serbia and extradited to The Hague to face charges of genocide and other crimes against humanity.
2012: Dmitry Medvedev, prime minister and ex-president, was elected leader of the ruling United Russia party.
Quotes
“If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good.” – Thornton Wilder, writer (1897-1975)
“All that glitters is not gold” – John Dryden, a similar saying appeared earlier in Shakespeare and earlier still in Chaucer.
“Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.” – Woody Allen
“Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone’s finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?” – Walker Percy, author (1916-1990)
“The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.” – Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)
“Whoe’er excels in what we prize
Appears a hero in our eyes.”
– Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) English writer:
“Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet; In short, my dear, kiss me and be quiet.”
“Civility costs nothing, and buys everything.”
“I don’t say ‘Tis impossible for an impudent man not to rise in the world, but a moderate merit with a large share of impudence is more probable to be advanced than the greatest qualifications without it.”
“I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to fools, for ‘Tis only to them that they are blessings.”
“I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds.”
“I wish you would moderate that fondness you have for your children. I do not mean you should abate any part of your care, or not do your duty to them in its utmost extent, but I would have you early prepare yourself for disappointments, which are heavy in proportion to their being surprising.”
“In short I will part with anything for you but you.”
“Life is too short for a long story.”
“Nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity, though I am persuaded if there was a commonwealth of rational horses… it would be an established maxim amongst them that a mare could not be taught to pace.”
“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.”
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“No modest man ever did or ever will make a fortune.”
“Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; therefore whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world without giving some equivalent for it ought to be treated as a common enemy.”
ilomath
PRONUNCIATION: (FIL-uh-math)
MEANING: (noun), A lover of learning.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek philomaths (fond of learning), from philo- (loving) + math- root of manthanein (to learn).
USAGE: “While others called him indecisive and afraid of the real world, Chris preferred to think that the reason he’d become a ‘full-time student’ had more to do with his being a philomath than anything else.”
palatine
PRONUNCIATION: (PAL-uh-tyn, -teen)
http://wordsmith.org/words/palatine.mp3
MEANING: (adjective)
1. Of or relating to a palace.
2. Of or relating to a palate.
ETYMOLOGY:
For 1: After Palatine, from Latin Palatium, the name of the centermost of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built. Roman emperors built their palaces on this hill. The word palace also derives from the same source. Earliest documented use: 1436.
For 2: From French palatin, from Latin palatum palate (roof of the mouth). Earliest documented use: 1656.
USAGE:
“The palatine city Qal’a Bani Hammad in Algeria had terraced gardens and, in one of its palaces, an enormous rectangular pool.” – D. Fairchild Ruggles; Islamic Gardens and Landscapes; University of Pennsylvania Press; 2008.
“The teeth, tongue, palate, and gum are subjected to a direct painful influence — that is, direct pain which acts upon the minor palatine nerve.” – Aleksandr Nevzorov; The Horse Crucified and Risen; Nevzorov Haute Ecole; 2011.
Explore “palatine” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=palatine
panjandrum
PRONUNCIATION: (pan-JAN-druhm)
http://wordsmith.org/words/panjandrum.mp3
MEANING: noun: An important or self-important person.
ETYMOLOGY: The word is said to have been coined by dramatist and actor Samuel Foote (1720-1777) as part of a nonsensical passage to test the memory of his fellow actor Charles Macklin who claimed to be able to repeat anything after hearing it once. Earliest documented use: 1825, in the novel “Harry and Lucy Concluded”in which the author Maria Edgeworth attributes the word to Foote.
USAGE: “Another man coming to hear Fry was Graham Turner, the owner, chairman, former manager and grand panjandrum of Hereford United.” – Brian Viner; Unexpected Frictions Follow Ferguson’s Fall; The Independent (London, UK); Nov 14, 2009.
Explore “panjandrum” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=panjandrum
meiosis
PRONUNCIATION: (my-O-sis)
http://wordsmith.org/words/meiosis.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. Understatement for rhetorical effect.
2. The process of cell division in which the number of chromosomes per cell is reduced to one half.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek meiosis (lessening), from meioun (to lessen), from meion (less).
NOTES: Meiosis is a figure of speech in which underemphasis is used to achieve a greater effect, for example, “It took a few days to build the Great Wall of China.” Also see litotes.
USAGE:
“At times I have a problem with this understatement. Understatement is effective only when there is real purpose to the meiosis.” – James Gardner; Cold Mountain; National Review (New York); Dec 31, 1997.
“I took two years of biology in secondary school and couldn’t today tell you the difference between meiosis and mitosis without a little help from Google, yet no one’s arguing that studying cellular processes is a waste of precious school resources.” – Kate Sommers-Dawes; Foreign Language in High Schools is Worthwhile; Washington Post; May 13, 2010.
Explore “meiosis” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=meiosis
cashier
PRONUNCIATION: (ka-SHEER)
http://wordsmith.org/words/cashier.mp3
MEANING:
(verb tr.), To dismiss from service, especially with disgrace.
(noun), An employee who handles payments and receipts in a store, bank, or business.
ETYMOLOGY: From Dutch cassier or French caissier, both from French caisse (cashbox), from Latin capsa (case).
USAGE: “Iraq is thick with bitter men. Some 400,000 were cashiered from the army.” – Mideast Carnage Tests Our Resolve; Toronto Star (Canada); Aug 20, 2003.
Explore “cashier” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=cashier
atone
PRONUNCIATION: (uh-TOHN, rhymes with phone)
http://wordsmith.org/words/atone.mp3
MEANING: (verb tr., intr.), To make amends for.
ETYMOLOGY: From the contraction of the phrase “at one” meaning “to be in harmony”.
USAGE: “While society must be protected from those who might pose it a threat, it is vital we let people get on with their lives once they have atoned.” – Éamonn Mac Aodha; Minor Offenders Need More Help to Escape Spectre of Past Crime; The Irish Times (Dublin); Apr 28, 2009.