Today in History (June 26th):
1819: The bicycle was patented. Birthdays: Reputed baseball pioneer Abner Doubleday.
1824: Birthdays: British physicist and inventor William Thomson Kelvin.
1892: Birthdays: Nobel literature laureate Pearl Buck.
1898: Birthdays: German aircraft designer Willy Messerschmitt.
1900: Dr. Walter Reed and his medical team began a successful campaign to eradicate out yellow fever in the Panama Canal Zone.
1902: Birthdays: William Lear, developer of the Lear jet.
1904: Birthdays: Actor Peter Lorre.
1909: Birthdays: Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager.
1911: Birthdays: Champion athlete Mildred Babe Didrikson Zaharias.
1917: The first troops of the American Expeditionary Force reached France in World War I.
1939: Film censors approved Gone With The Wind but fined Producer David O. Selznick $5,000 for objectionable language in Rhett Butler’s famous closing line to Scarlett O’Hara: Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
1945: The U.N. Charter was signed by representatives of 50 nations. The FCC began development of commercial television by allocating airwaves for 13 TV stations.
1955: Birthdays: Musician Mick Jones.
1956: Birthdays: Musician Chris Isaak.
1959: U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II formally opened the St. Lawrence Seaway in Canada.
1961: Birthdays: Cyclist Greg LeMond.
1970: Birthdays: Actor Chris O’Donnell; Actor Sean P. Hayes.
1973: Birthdays: Singer Gretchen Wilson.
1974: The bar code, allowing for the electronic scanning of prices, was used for the first time. The purchase was a pack of gum at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio. Birthdays: Baseball player Derek Jeter.
1976: The CN Tower, the world’s tallest freestanding structure (1,815 feet, 5 inches), opened in Toronto.
1977: 42 people died in a county jail fire in Columbia, Tenn.
1980: Birthdays: Actor Jason Schwartzman.
1990: U.S. President George H.W. Bush discarded his no new taxes campaign pledge, saying it is clear to me taxes are needed as part of a deficit-reduction package.
1991: 120 people drowned after an Indonesian trawler and an unidentified ship collided in the Straits of Malacca.
1992: U.S. Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett resigned, accepting responsibility for the Tailhook incident involving the harassment of Navy women by naval aviators.
2000: Two rival groups of scientists announced they had deciphered the genetic code, the human genome.
2002: The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance recited in schools was unconstitutional because of the phrase under God. The ruling was stayed pending appeal.
2003: The U.S. Supreme Court gave a major boost to gay-rights advocates by striking down a Texas law forbidding sexual activity between same-sex partners.
2008: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to carry a gun for private use but said the ruling did nothing to alter the ban on gun ownership by felons or the mentally ill, or carrying a gun into such sensitive areas as schools or government buildings.
2011: Six French mountain climbers were killed when they apparently fell while trying to scale the Neige Cordier peak in the French Alps south of Grenoble.
2012: Officials said the windswept Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado’s Pikes Peak region had forced more than 6,000 people from their homes. Thousands more would be evacuated in the days ahead.
Quotes
“To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true.” – H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
“All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.” – Tennessee Williams
“The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.” – Anonymous
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Pearl S. Buck (1802-1973) U.S. writer:
“A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.”
“Because psychologists have been able to discover, exactly as in a slow-motion picture, the way the human creature acquires knowledge and habits, the normal child has been vastly helped by what the retarded have taught us.”
“Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.”
“Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.”
“Hunger makes a thief of any man.”
“I am mentally bifocal.”
“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.”
“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.”
“If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.”
“In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.”
cavil
PRONUNCIATION: (KAV-uhl)
MEANING:
(intransitive verb), To raise trivial or frivolous objections; to find fault without good reason.
(transitive verb), To raise trivial objections to.
(noun), A trivial or frivolous objection.
ETYMOLOGY: Cavil comes from Latin cavillari, “to jeer, to quibble,” from cavilla, “scoffing.”
USAGE: “Janice, the paper’s art critic, was determined not to be diverted from her main pursuit by cavils or trifles.”
birdlime
PRONUNCIATION: (BUHRD-lym)
http://wordsmith.org/words/birdlime.mp3
MEANING:
(verb tr.), To ensnare.
(noun), Something that ensnares.
ETYMOLOGY: From birdlime (a sticky substance made from holly, mistletoe, or other plants, and smeared on branches and twigs to catch small birds), from bird + lime, from Latin limus (slime). Earliest documented use: 1440.
USAGE: “Some dozen of these villains had her birdlimed inside a shepherd’s hut when our patrol chanced upon them.” – Steven Pressfield; Last of the Amazons; Bantam; 2003.
Explore “birdlime” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=birdlime
versal
PRONUNCIATION: (VUHR-suhl)
http://wordsmith.org/words/versal.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Universal; whole.
ETYMOLOGY: Shortening of universal, from Latin universum (universe). Ultimately from the Indo-European root wer- (to turn or bend), also the source of wring, weird, writhe, worth, revert, universe, verso, versicolor, and animadvert. Earliest documented use: 1590s, in Romeo & Juliet.
USAGE: “She looks as pale as any clout in the versal world.” – William Shakespeare; Romeo & Juliet; 1590s.