Today in History (June 2nd):
1731: Birthdays: Martha Washington, the first U.S. first lady.
1740: Birthdays: French writer Marquis de Sade.
1835: P.T. Barnum and his circus began their first tour of the United States.
1840: Birthdays: English novelist Thomas Hardy.
1857: Birthdays: English composer Edward Elgar (Pomp and Circumstance).
1862: Gen. Robert E. Lee took command of the Confederate armies of eastern Virginia and North Carolina in the Civil War.
1865: The Civil War came to an end when Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, signed the surrender terms offered by Union negotiators.
1886: U.S. President Grover Cleveland, 49, married Frances Folsom, the 21-year-old daughter of his former law partner, in a White House ceremony. The bride became the youngest first lady in U.S. history.
1904: Birthdays: Olympic gold-medal swimmer and Tarzan movie star Johnny Weissmuller.
1917: Birthdays: Actor-composer Max Showalter.
1920: Birthdays: Hall of fame football executive Tex Schramm.
1924: Congress granted U.S. citizenship to all American Indians.
1930: Birthdays: Astronaut Charles Pete Conrad of Apollo 12.
1937: Birthdays: Actor Sally Kellerman.
1941: Birthdays: Rock and roll Hall of Fame drummer Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones; Actor Stacy Keach.
1943: Birthdays: Actor Charles Haid.
1944: Birthdays: Composer/pianist Marvin Hamlisch.
1946: In a national referendum, voters in Italy decided the country should become a republic rather than return to a monarchy.
1948: Birthdays: Actor Jerry Mathers (Leave It To Beaver).
1949: Birthdays: Political commentator Frank Rich.
1952: Birthdays: NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.
1953: Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in London’s Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
1955: Birthdays: Comedian Dana Carvey.
1972: Birthdays: Comedian Wayne Brady.
1978: Birthdays: Actor Justin Long.
1979: Pope John Paul II returned home to Poland in the first visit by a pope to a communist nation.
1980: Birthdays: Soccer player Abby Wambach.
1989: Birthdays: Soccer player Freddy Adu.
1992: Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton clinched the Democratic presidential nomination as six states had the final primaries of the 1992 political season.
1995: A U.S. F-16 fighter-jet was shot down by a Serb-launched missile while on patrol over Bosnia. The pilot, Air Force Capt. Scott O’Grady, ejected safely and landed behind Serb lines. He was rescued six days later.
1997: A federal jury in Denver convicted Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. He was sentenced to death and executed June 11, 2001.
1999: In parliamentary elections, South African voters kept the African National Congress in power, assuring that its leader, Thabo Mbeki, would succeed the retiring Nelson Mandela as president.
2003: The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to eliminate a rule barring a media company from owning both a TV station and a newspaper in the same U.S. market. U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said in a report that inspectors before the war had been unable to prove or disprove the presence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.
2004: Ken Jennings won his first game on Jeopardy! to start a string that ended after a record 74 wins and more than $2.5 million in winnings.
2005: Israel freed 400 Palestinian prisoners in the second move of its kind since Mahmoud Abbas became Palestinian Authority president.
2008: A Texas judge signed an order for the immediate release of hundreds of children seized during a raid on a ranch owned by a polygamist sect. Parents promised not to interfere with the state’s investigation into alleged child abuse and neglect.
2009: Mauricio Funes, whose political party used to be a guerilla group, was sworn in as president of El Salvador.
2010: A 52-year-old British taxi driver was accused of a shooting rampage in which 13 people were slain and 11 others wounded before he killed himself. Media reports called it Britain’s worst mass killing since 1996.
2011: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney officially opened his campaign for the Republican nomination for president. He was the early front-runner.
2012: U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan said he fears Syria is heading toward all-out civil war.
Quotes
“Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.” – John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors and the most patient of teachers.” – Charles Eliot
“Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.” – Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)
“I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.” – Jose Ortega Y Gasset, philosopher and essayist (1883-1955)
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) English writer:
“A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.”
“A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.”
Most arguments, conflicts or feuds can be easily and discreetly purchased cheap tadalafil 20mg view content online. Being tablets viagra a father and a guy can be very taxing for any woman to have to endure. Most of us know that levitra on sale is used to treat erection problems in men. But viagra buy on line the consumption of this medicament should only be done according to the physician using their secure order system. “A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.”
“An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, in blast-beruffled plume.”
“Aspect are within us, and who seems most kingly is king.”
“Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.”
“Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.”
“Don’t you go believing in sayings, Picotee: they are all made by men, for their own advantages. Women who use public proverbs as a guide through events are those who have not ingenuity enough to make private ones as each event occurs.”
“Ethelberta breathed a sort of exclamation, not right out, but stealthily, like a parson’s damn.”
“Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.”
“Fear is the mother of foresight.”
“Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it.”
“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”
palisade
PRONUNCIATION: (pal-uh-SADE)
MEANING:
(noun)
1. A fence of stakes forming a defense.
2. A line of steep cliffs, especially along a river.
(verb tr.), To fortify with palisades.
ETYMOLOGY: From French palissade, Latin palus (stake). Ultimately from Indo-European root pag- (to fasten) that is also the source of peace, pacify, pact, travel, compact, pagan, and peasant.
USAGE: “The many books, manuals, magazines, technical journals, and other reference materials which surrounded Caroline’s desk were all topped by assorted bottles and empty diet-soda cans, forming a sort of palisade which kept anyone from finding easy entrance to her workspace.”
calyculus or caliculus
PRONUNCIATION: (kuh-LIK-yuh-luhs)
http://wordsmith.org/words/calyculus.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A cup-shaped structure.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek kalyx (cup, covering).
USAGE: “It’s attached over the whole inner surface of calyculus.” – Queensland Naturalist (Australia); 1991.
Explore “calyculus” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=calyculus
benevolent
PRONUNCIATION: (buh-NEV-uh-luhnt)
MEANING: (adjective)
1. Characterized by or suggestive of doing good.
2. Of, concerned with, or organized for the benefit of charity.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin benevolens, benevolent- : bene, well + volens, present participle of velle, to wish.
USAGE: “While all initially hoped that the new boss would be more benevolent than the previous one, he turned out to be considerably nastier and cold-blooded.”
paleography
PRONUNCIATION: (pay-lee-AWG-ruh-fee)
http://wordsmith.org/words/paleography.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. The study of ancient writings and inscriptions, dating, deciphering, and interpreting them.
2. Ancient forms of writing: documents, inscriptions, etc.
3. An ancient style or method of writing.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek paleo- (old, ancient) + -graphy (writing). Earliest documented use: 1763.
USAGE: “Yanis Bitsakis, of the Center for History and Paleography in Athens, added that he expects to be busy for years to come deciphering still-unread inscriptions.” – Brian Handwerk; Greek “Computer” Tracked Ancient Olympics, Other Games; National Geographic News (Washington, DC); Jul 30, 2008.
Explore “paleography” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=paleography
Buridan’s ass
PRONUNCIATION: (byoo-RUHD-uhnz ass)
http://wordsmith.org/words/buridans_ass.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A situation demonstrating the impracticality of decision-making using pure reason, especially a situation involving two equal choices.
ETYMOLOGY: Named after French philosopher Jean Buridan (1300-1358).
NOTES: Imagine a hungry donkey standing equidistant from two identical piles of hay. The donkey tries to decide which pile he should eat first and finding no reason to choose one over another, starves to death. This paradox didn’t originate with Buridan — it’s been found back in Aristotle’s time. A hungry and thirsty man cannot decide whether to slake his thirst first or his hunger, and dies. Buridan, in his commentaries on Aristotle, chose a dog, but his critics, in their parody of Buridan, turned it into an ass. So Buridan’s ass was named after a person who neither proposed the paradox nor picked that animal to discuss it. – Buridan studied under William of Ockham (of Ockham’s razor fame).
USAGE: “Unless we felt strongly enough to exert ourselves in one direction rather than another, we would do nothing, but would suffer the fate of Buridan’s ass.” – A.C. Grayling; Though Euphoria Will Fade, Hope Springs Eternal; The Canberra Times (Australia); Nov 12, 2008.