Today in History (June 5th):
1305: Clement V was elected Pope.
1718: Birthdays: British furniture maker Thomas Chippendale.
1723: Birthdays: Scottish economist Adam Smith.
1783: The first public demonstration of a hot-air balloon occurred at Annonay, France.
1850: Birthdays: Lincoln County, N.M., Sheriff Pat Garrett, the man who shot Billy the Kid.
1878: Birthdays: Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.
1883: Birthdays: English economist John Maynard Keynes.
1895: Birthdays: Actor William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy).
1898: Birthdays: Italian shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo.
1919: Birthdays: Author/illustrator Richard Scarry.
1928: Birthdays: Actor Robert Lansing.
1933: U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill abolishing the gold standard.
1934: Birthdays: Journalist/commentator Bill Moyers.
1939: Birthdays: British novelist Margaret Drabble.
1945: Birthdays: Olympic athlete John Carlos.
1949: Birthdays: Welsh author Ken Follett.
1951: Birthdays: Financial adviser Suze Orman.
1956: Birthdays: Entertainer Kenny G.
1967: The Six Day War began between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
1968: As he campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in Los Angeles, U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant. Kennedy, 42, died the next day.
1971: Birthdays: Rapper-turned-actor Mark Wahlberg.
1974: Birthdays: Actor Chad Allen.
1976: The Teton River Dam in Idaho collapsed as it was being filled for the first time, killing 14 people, flooding 300 square miles and causing an estimated $1 billion damage.
1985: General Motors agreed to buy Hughes Aircraft for more than $5 billion. At the time, it was the biggest corporate purchase outside the oil industry.
1986: Ronald Pelton, a former National Security Agency employee, was convicted in Baltimore of spying for the Soviet Union. The verdict came one day after former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard pleaded guilty to espionage on behalf of Israel.
1991: In a step away from apartheid, South African legislators repealed the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936, which reserved 87 percent of land for whites.
2000: Ukrainian officials announced that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, site of the worst radiation accident in history, would be closed.
2003: Officials said U.S. troops would withdraw from the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, bringing an end to 50 years of guard duty.
2004: Ronald Reagan, the 40th U.S. president, died at his Los Angeles home at the age of 93 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
2007: Lewis Scooter Libby, former chief of staff for U.S. Vice President Dick Chaney, was sentenced to 30 months in jail for lying to FBI agents and to a grand jury in the investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA agent to the news media.
2008: The alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States told a military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he wanted to plead guilty to the charges to become a martyr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed said he expected to face the death penalty.
2010: After several unsuccessful attempts, BP placed a cap on a ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well and began funneling crude into a drill ship. The well, off the Louisiana coast, had been spewing an estimated 798,000 gallons of crude a day into the gulf for more than a month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers.
2011: The center-right Social Democratic Party, headed by Pedro Passos Coelho, won the Portuguese parliamentary election over the incumbent Socialists. In Peru, Olllanta Humala Tasso, a leftist former military officer, was elected president in a runoff.
2012: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, became the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election.
Quotes
“Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.” – Alfred Whitney Griswold
“I find bowing to people who occasionally wear crowns rather odd. I’ll reserve my deference for achievement rather than bloodline.” – Robin Ince, comedian, actor, and writer (b. 1969)
“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.” – Ingrid Bergman
While NASCAR is responsible for driver safety, track twomeyautoworks.com order viagra officials are responsible for spectator safety. Instead of needing to go to a local class, depending on cialis 20mg no prescription someone for a ride and working around someone else’s schedule, you can complete the required DEd training online right from the comfort of your own home and you never have to worry about running. If it wasn’t for viagra cialis generic my marriage would probably be over. It is important that you take these medicines 1 cialis properien http://twomeyautoworks.com/item-4387 hour prior to any sexual activities. Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969) English writer:
“At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished.”
“There is more difference within the sexes than between them.”
“There isn’t much to say. I haven’t been at all deedy.”
“Time is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary.”
resile
PRONUNCIATION: (ri-ZYL)
MEANING: (verb intr.)
1. To rebound or recoil.
2. To shrink, withdraw, or retreat.
ETYMOLOGY: From obsolete French resilir, from Latin resilire (to spring back).
USAGE: “Once the needless threats of financial destruction were taken off the table, both parties could finally engage in a meaningful dialogue on how they could resile from their hardened positions and strike a compromise.”
agrement
PRONUNCIATION: (ah-GRAY-mahnt, -mahn*) [the final syllable is nasal]
http://wordsmith.org/words/agrement.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. Formal approval, especially one given by a country to the proposed diplomat from another country.
2. Grace notes: notes applied as an embellishment on a piece of music.
ETYMOLOGY: From French agrément (approval, agreement, pleasure), from Latin ad- (to) + gratus (pleasing). Earliest documented use: 1711.
USAGE: “Relations again deteriorated when Iran denied agrement to UK designate ambassador to Tehran, accusing him of being a spy.” – Shireen Hunter; Iran’s Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era; Praeger; 2010.
claque
PRONUNCIATION: (klak)
http://wordsmith.org/words/claque.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A group of people hired to applaud at a performance.
ETYMOLOGY: From French claque, from claquer (to clap), of imitative origin. Earliest documented use: 1864.
NOTES: Although a claque is usually hired to applaud, sometimes it is also used to heckle at a rival’s performance. Then there are moirologists (hired mourners at a funeral).
USAGE: “The publicist even trained both the singer [Frank Sinatra] and his claques in the art of call-and-response.” – James Kaplan; Frank; Doubleday; 2010.
Explore “claque” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=claque
nickel-and-dime or nickel and dime
PRONUNCIATION: (NIK-uhl an DYM)
http://wordsmith.org/words/nickel-and-dime.mp3
MEANING:
(verb tr.)
1. To drain gradually: for example, by many charges for small amounts.
2. To accumulate gradually.
(adjective), Inexpensive or unimportant.
ETYMOLOGY: Nickel (five cents) and dime (ten cents) are nicknames of the coins of the smallest value, except penny (one cent), in the US. The nickel coin gets its nickname because it’s made of the metals nickel and copper. A dime gets its name from Latin decima (tenth part). Earliest documented use: 1879.
USAGE:
“Both airlines still offer free snacks and drinks. ‘We don’t like to nickel and dime our customers,’ says Chris Mainz, a spokesman for Southwest.” – Will Sullivan; Flying on the Cheap; US News & World Report (Washington, DC); Mar 26, 2007.
“Luke literally nickel and dimed his way to 12 grand.” – Gina Ford; Project Springboard; WEEK-TV; Jul 15, 2010.
Explore “nickel-and-dime” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=nickel-and-dime