Today in History (July 5th):
1687: Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy was published.
1801: Birthdays: David Farragut, the first U.S. Navy admiral.
1810: Birthdays: Showman P.T. Barnum.
1853: Birthdays: British colonialist Cecil Rhodes, founder of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
1865: William Booth founded the Salvation Army in London.
1879: Birthdays: Dwight Davis, founder of the Davis Cup tennis tournament.
1889: Birthdays: French writer and film director Jean Cocteau.
1902: Birthdays: Politician and diplomat Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
1904: Birthdays: Actor Milburn Stone (Gunsmoke).
1916: Children under 16 were banned from New York City theaters, many of which were already closed, due to a summer outbreak of polio.
1923: Birthdays: Hall of Fame football Coach John McKay.
1928: Birthdays: Actor Warren Oates; Actor Katherine Helmond.
1935: U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act.
1937: Hormel Foods introduced the canned meat product Spam.
1943: Birthdays: Robbie Robertson, composer, musician, member of The Band.
1945: U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur announced the liberation of the Philippines as World War II approached its end.
1946: French designer Louis Reard introduced the bikini swimsuit.
1947: Larry Doby became the first African-American player in Major League Baseball’s American League with the Cleveland Indians 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson broke the sport’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League.
1948: Birthdays: Julie Nixon Eisenhower.
1950: Birthdays: Rock singer Huey Lewis.
1951: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Richard Goose Gossage.
1954: Newcomer Elvis Presley recorded That’s All Right (Mama), a song he hadn’t intended to do when he began his first recording session at Sun Records in Memphis and it became an instant local sensation.
1963: Birthdays: Actor Edie Falco.
1975: Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win a Wimbledon singles title.
1982: The Penn Square Bank of Oklahoma was declared insolvent, touching off a bank crisis that affected much of the United States.
1994: The United States stopped accepting Haitian refugees and asked that other countries provide them with safe havens.
1997: Martina Hingis, 16, of Switzerland became the youngest in 100 years to win the women’s singles tennis championship at Wimbledon.
2002: Baseball great Ted Williams died at the age of 83. Williams, who played his entire, war-interrupted but outstanding career with the Boston Red Sox, was the most recent player to hit .400 in a major league baseball season (.406 in 1941).
2003: 16 people died during Russia’s biggest rock concert in Moscow when two female suicide bombers detonated explosives.
2006: Former Enron Chairman Ken Lay died of a heart attack while awaiting sentencing on a six-count conviction in one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history.
2009: A center-right opposition party led by Sofia Mayor Bolko Borisov claimed victory over the ruling Socialists in Bulgaria’s parliamentary elections.
2010: Bronislaw Komorowski was declared the winner in Poland’s presidential runoff with 53.01 percent of the vote, beating Jaroslaw Kaczynski, twin brother of the former president killed in a plane crash with several state officials three months earlier.
2011: A jury in Orlando, Fla., found Casey Anthony not guilty in the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee. The jury of five men and seven women took 11 hours over two days to acquit the Florida woman of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter in a high-profile trial that included 33 days of testimony and more than 90 witnesses.
2012: Republican Party officials said June was a bonanza for Mitt Romney, who set a party record for presidential fundraising in a single month — more than $100 million.
Quotes
“There is no frigate like a book/to take us lands away.” – Emily Dickinson
“If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.” – Isaac Newton, 1642-1727
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” – Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970
“It is not how old you are, but how you are old.” – Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)
“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” – Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian (1892-1971)
P. T. Barnum (1810-1891) U.S. entrepreneur, showman:
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
“Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done.”
“Every crowd has a silver lining.”
“More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing, than by believing too much.”
“Money is in some respects life’s fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.”
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“Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now.”
epigraphy
PRONUNCIATION: (i-PIG-ruh-fee)
http://wordsmith.org/words/epigraphy.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. The study of ancient inscriptions.
2. Inscriptions collectively.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek epi- (on, upon) + -graph (writing). Earliest documented use: 1851.
USAGE: “An example of ancient epigraphy was found by early Bermudians, carved into a rock 70 feet above the sea.” – Local
Historian Debunks the ‘Spanish’ in Spanish Rock; The RoyalGazette (Bermuda); Nov 4, 1999.
Explore “epigraphy” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=epigraphy
bibliolatry
PRONUNCIATION: (bib-lee-OL-uh-tree)
http://wordsmith.org/words/bibliolatry.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. Excessive devotion to the Bible, especially to its literal interpretation.
2. Extreme devotion to books.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek biblio- (book) + -latry (worship).
USAGE:
“Fifty percent of college graduates expect Jesus to be here any day now. We are, says Paul Boyer, almost unique in the Western World in combining high educational levels with high levels of bibliolatry.” – Martin Gardner; Waiting for the Last Judgement; The Washington Post; Nov 8, 1992.
“Bibliophilia: the love, and collecting, of books. No problems there… But watch out. The next step up may be bibliolatry: an extreme fondness for books.” – David McKie; The Baron of Bibliomania; The Guardian (London, UK); May 5, 2008.
Explore “bibliolatry” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=bibliolatry
defenestrate
PRONUNCIATION: (dee-FEN-uh-strayt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/bibliolatry.mp3
MEANING: (verb tr.), To throw someone or something out of a window.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin de- (out of) + fenestra (window).
NOTES: There have been many defenestrations over the course of history, but the most famous, and the one that inspired the word defenestration, was the Defenestration of Prague on May 23, 1618 . Two imperial regents and their secretary were thrown out of a window of the Prague Castle in a fight over religion. The men landed on a dung heap and survived. The Defenestration of Prague (http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=356064) was a prelude to the Thirty Years’ War. See a Lego sculpture of the Defenestration of Prague. Also, check out the defenestration of various articles of furniture in this unique San Francisco sculpture (http://www.defenestration.org/).
USAGE: “When someone in a Joe Lansdale novel is defenestrated, you feel like shaking the glass shards out of your lap.” – Jeff Salamon; The Further Adventures of Hap and Leonard; The Austin American-Statesman (Texas); Jul 4, 2009.
Should Possessives Possess the ‘S’?
Q: Years ago, I was taught that the possessive of a noun ending in “s” was a single apostrophe (Charles’ house). But I recently saw a newspaper use a possessive with an apostrophe “s” (Charles’s house). Is this correct? –Charlie Duncan, Potsdam, N.Y.
A: For newspaper writing, no. Most newspapers and magazines do NOT add an extra “s” to form the possessive of singular proper names ending in “s.”
They use “Charles’ house, Mr. Jones’ room, Dickens’ novels,” etc.
But the editors of books, pamphlets and other non-periodical publications DO add the extra “s” to such names; they write, “Charles’s house, Mr. Jones’s room, Dickens’s novels.” (The second “s” should be pronounced, whether it’s written or not.)
When it comes to singular common nouns, however, most publications, including newspapers, now add the extra “s” to form the possessive: “dress’s color, witness’s testimony.”
But journalists are advised by the AP Stylebook to drop the extra “s” if the word after the possessive begins with “s” — “witness’ subpoena, dress’ style.” By contrast, book editors would use “witness’s subpoena, dress’s style.”
Confused? Me too — just as the journalist who violated the rule for newspapers and wrote “Charles’s house” probably was. Maybe he’s considering a career switch to book publishing, where he can have an extra “s” (but probably no extra “$”).
Q: What is the past tense of “troubleshoot”? Is it “troubleshot” or “troubleshooted”? We are having a heated discussion about this. We are writing a resume and want it to be error free. –M. J. Hales via email
A: So you’re asking me to be a troubleshooter — to step in a resolve a heated dispute? Glad to!
And, boy is this trouble. By traditional rules, when an irregular verb is blended with another word to create a new verb, such as “troubleshoot,” “ghostwrite” and “overspend,” the new verb should follow the same inflection as the original verb.
So the past tenses of these verbs are “troubleshot,” “ghostwrote” and “overspent,” not “troubleshooted,” “ghostwrited” or “overspended,” respectively.
But, in the case of “troubleshoot,” the noun “troubleshooter” is so firmly fixed in people’s minds that the verb “troubleshot” sounds funny. Besides, “troubleshot” sounds as if you might actually have shot someone — probably not something you want to put on a resume.
I’d avoid the verb form entirely by writing, “I have extensive experience as a troubleshooter.” Consider this particular usage trouble shot dead.
Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254
Copyright 2013 Creators Syndicate Inc.