Thoughts for the Day

Today in History (November 12th):

1746: Birthdays: French physicist Jacques Charles.

1799: The first North American meteor shower on record took place. Early American astronomer Andrew Ellicott Douglass said, The whole heaven appeared as if illuminated with sky rockets.

1815: Birthdays: Women’s suffrage activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

1817: Birthdays: Baha’u’llah (born Mirza Husayn Ali), founder-prophet of the Baha’i faith.

1892: The first professional football game was played in Pittsburgh. The Allegheny Athletic Association defeated the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, 4-0. (Touchdowns at the time were worth 4 points.)

1908: Birthdays: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun.

1917: Birthdays: Singer Jo Stafford.

1922: Birthdays: Actor Kim Hunter.

1929: Birthdays: Princess Grace of Monaco, the former American movie star Grace Kelly.

1934: Birthdays: Cult leader Charles Manson.

1941: The German army’s drive to take Moscow was halted on the city’s outskirts in World War II.

1943: Birthdays: Actor and playwright Wallace Shawn.

1944: Birthdays: Sportscaster Al Michaels.

1945: Birthdays: Rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Fame member Neil Young.

1948: A war crimes tribunal in Japan sentenced former premier Hideki Tojo and six other World War II Japanese leaders to death by hanging.

1958: Birthdays: Actor Megan Mullally.

1961: Birthdays: Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci.

1962: Birthdays: Writer Naomi Wolf.

1968: Birthdays: Former baseball slugger Sammy Sosa.

1980: The Voyager 1 spacecraft passed Saturn and sent back stunning pictures. Birthdays: Actor Ryan Gosling.

1981: The shuttle Columbia became the first spacecraft launched twice from Earth.

1982: Former KGB chief Yuri Andropov succeeded the late Leonid Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Polish authorities freed Solidarity founder Lech Walesa after 11 months of imprisonment. Birthdays: Actor Anne Hathaway.

1990: Akihito was crowned the 125th emperor of Japan.

1991: About 50 people were killed when Indonesian troops opened fire on protesters in the province of Timor Leste.

1992: Volker Keith Meinhold became the first openly gay person on active duty in the U.S. military when, armed with a court order, he reported to work at Moffett Naval Air Station in Mountain View, Calif., for reinstatement as a chief petty officer.

1993: Pop star Michael Jackson, hounded by allegations that he had molested a teenage boy, canceled the rest of his worldwide Dangerous tour, citing an addiction to painkillers.

1997: Ramzi Ahmed and Eyad Ismoil were convicted of involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. Four other men had been convicted in 1994.

2001: An American Airlines Airbus crashed shortly after takeoff from JFK Airport in New York. More than 260 people died in the crash.

2003: Deaths: Actor Art Carney, who won fame and Emmy Awards as sewer worker Ed Norton on the Honeymooners TV show in the 1950s and an Oscar in 1974 for Harry and Tonto, died at age 85.

2005: al-Qaida named Queen Elizabeth II of England one of the severest enemies of Islam, said to be justification for July bombings in London.

2007: Police in Jokela, Finland, said they believed a teenager who killed eight high school classmates may have had Internet contact with a Philadelphia youth who was arrested for planning a similar attack.

2008: A Taipei court ordered former President Chen Shui-bian, an advocate of independence for Taiwan, detained on corruption and other charges. The ruling came one day after Chen was questioned for six hours on embezzlement, fraud, bribe and money-laundering allegations.

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2010: The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the U.S. Defense Department from discharging openly gay military personnel under its don’t ask, don’t tell policy. A federal judge earlier ruled the policy was unconstitutional and should be ended. Pirates hijacked a chemical tanker with a crew of 31 almost 1,350 miles from the Horn of Africa in waters closer to India than to home base Somalia.

2011: The Arab League voted to suspend Syria because of its reported brutal treatment of protesters and failure to implement the group’s peace plan. Eighteen of the 22 league states supported the suspension. The United Nations said more than 3,500 civilians had died in protest clashes since mid-March.


Quotes

“The sense of wishing to be known only for what one really is is like putting on an old, easy, comfortable garment. You are no longer afraid of anybody or anything. You say to yourself, ‘Here I am — just so ugly, dull, poor, beautiful, rich, interesting, amusing, ridiculous — take me or leave me.’ And how absolutely beautiful it is to be doing only what lies within your own capabilities and is part of your own nature. It is like a great burden rolled off a man’s back when he comes to want to appear nothing that he is not, to take out of life only what is truly his own.” – David Grayson, journalist and author (1870-1946)

“The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows.” – Aristotle Onassis, 1906-1975

“The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.” – Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915

“The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization.” – Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-1887

“I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.” – W.C. Fields


Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) women’s suffrage activist:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”

“I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.”

“Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates, from the center to the circumference, the graduating circles of all thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and woe – the open sesame to every soul.”

“Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility.”

“The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation.”

“The heyday of woman’s life is the shady side of fifty.”

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”

“To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.”


gemutlichkeit

PRONUNCIATION: (guh-myoo-lish-KYT, -likh-, -MOOT-)
http://wordsmith.org/words/gemutlichkeit.mp3

MEANING: noun: Warm friendliness; comfortableness; coziness.

ETYMOLOGY: From German Gemütlichkeit, from gemütlich (comfortable, cozy). Earliest documented use: 1892.

USAGE: “The establishment’s gemutlichkeit is fueled by a low-key, funky decor and the friendliness of the staff.” – Christopher Brooks; Cozy With Comfort Food; The New York Times; Jan 4, 2009.


gothic

PRONUNCIATION: (GAH-thik)

MEANING: adjective: Referring to the Teutonic tribes (Goths) who sacked Rome and provided the final impetus to collapse the Roman Empire from 378-450, hence barbarous, crude; a medieval art and architecture style of northern Europe, from the12th through 15th centuries; fiction that emphasizes the grotesque, mysterious and desolate.

ETYMOLOGY: From Old English Gota, Greek Gothoi, related to Gothic gutthiuda “Gothic people.” The meaning of gutthiuda is taken to be “men, people” judging from the stem gut- or got- in Old Norse, but a definitive etymology of “gothic” is unknown. Parts of the Bible were translated into the West Gothic language in the 4th century (Wulfila Bible). The dialects of Gothic were Crimean Gothic, Ostrogoth and Visigoth. The last speakers were reported in the Crimea in the 18th century. By the way, “vandal” comes from the name of the other Germanic tribe fighting alongside the Goths against the Romans: “the Vandals and the Goths.”

USAGE: “Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus’ is the epitome of a Gothic work. Shelley’s depiction of the Creature encourages us to consider the human condition, the ethics of scientific advancement, and moral responsibility.”


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