Today in History (October 26th):
1775: King George III declared the American colonies to be in rebellion and approved a military campaign to stop the revolution.
1854: Birthdays: Cereal foods entrepreneur C. W. Post.
1881: The storied gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurred in Tombstone, Ariz.
1900: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Judy Johnson.
1906: Workers in St. Petersburg set up the first Russian soviet, or council. Birthdays: Boxing champion Primo Carnera.
1911: Birthdays: Singer Mahalia Jackson; Football Hall of Fame member Sid Gillman.
1913: Birthdays: Bandleader Charlie Barnet.
1914: Birthdays: Actor Jackie Coogan.
1916: Birthdays: French President Francois Mitterrand; U.S. aviator Boyd Wagner.
1919: Birthdays: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran.
1920: The Lord Mayor of Cork, Ireland, Terence McSwiney, died after a 2 1/2-month hunger strike in a British prison cell, demanding independence for Ireland.
1942: Japanese warships sank the aircraft carrier USS Hornet off the Solomon Islands. Birthdays: Actor Bob Hoskins.
1944: After four days of furious fighting, the World War II battle of Leyte Gulf, largest air-naval clash in history, ended with a decisive U.S. victory over the Japanese.
1945: Birthdays: Author Pat Conroy.
1946: Birthdays: TV personality Pat Sajak.
1947: Birthdays: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wife of former U.S. President Bill Clinton; Actor Jaclyn Smith.
1953: Birthdays: Rock musician Keith Strickland.
1959: Birthdays: Bolivian President Evo Morales.
1961: Birthdays: Actor Dylan McDermott.
1962: Birthdays: Actor Cary Elwes.
1963: Birthdays: Singer Natalie Merchant.
1964: Birthdays: Actor Tom Cavanagh.
1965: The Beatles were presented Member of the Order of the British Empire medals by Queen Elizabeth.
1967: Birthdays: Singer Keith Urban.
1977: Birthdays: Actor Jon Heder.
1979: South Korean President Park Chung-hee was assassinated by the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.
1984: Dr. Leonard L. Bailey performed the first baboon-to-human heart transplant, replacing a 14-day-old infant girl’s defective heart with a healthy, walnut-sized heart of a young baboon at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California.
1990: District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $5,000 for his conviction on misdemeanor drug charges.
1994: Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty at a desert site along the Israeli-Jordanian border.
1995: Islamic Jihad leader Fathi ash-Shiqaqi was assassinated in Malta.
1998: One day before NATO airstrikes were to begin, Serbian soldiers and police began what was said to be a significant pullback from positions in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, where they reportedly were killing ethnic Albanians. The presidents of Ecuador and Peru signed a peace treaty, ending a decades-long border dispute.
For men the problem of impotence can be http://respitecaresa.org/event/spring-break-camp/991645798c5cad73c3451e4fa02c539a/ viagra generika removed. Here we enlighten you with some useful canada viagra information about erectile dysfunction and try to avoid it as much as possible. You should avoid intake best buy on viagra official respitecaresa.org of junk foods. This sort of paramount segment invalidates the result of the treatment depends on the teamwork of the patient, relatives, friends, with the health practitioner or group of spe cheapest viagra pricets.
2002: Moscow’s four-day hostage crisis came to a bloody end when Russian soldiers stormed a theater where Chechen rebels had held 700 people for ransom. Ninety hostages and 50 rebels were killed.
2004: A U.N. investigation into Iraq’s oil-for-food program reportedly turned up names of several prominent politicians in France, Russia and elsewhere said to have received illegal Iraqi oil from Saddam Hussein.
2005: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ignited international outrage when he said Israel should be wiped off the map.
2006: U.S. President George W. Bush signed a bill authorizing construction of nearly 700 miles of fencing on the U.S. border with Mexico to better control illegal immigration. Nicaragua’s National Assembly voted unanimously to ban all abortions.
2009: Two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan killed 14 Americans – 11 soldiers and three civilians – on one of the deadliest days of the eight-year war. Construction on a North Korean missile base capable of handling improved intercontinental ballistic missiles has been completed, reportedly designed to handle missiles with a range of at least 3,100 miles, South Korean officials said.
2010: An Iraqi court sentenced Tariq Aziz, a former key aide to Saddam Hussein, to death for crimes against rival political parties. GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug manufacturer, agreed to settle criminal and civil complaints for $750 million, stemming from accusations of knowingly selling drugs with questionable safety standards.
2011: Eurozone leaders claimed a debt-crisis victory after getting deals that cut Greece’s debt in half and increased the main bailout fund to $1.4 trillion. In addition, Greece was in line for a new $140 billion bailout in 2012. Europe’s 70 biggest banks also must raise about $150 billion to protect against loan losses in shaky countries like Greece and Portugal.
Quotes
“Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it but they labor in it because they excel.” – William Hazlitt, English writer
Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) Russian revolutionary:
“In inner-party politics, these methods lead, as we shall yet see, to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a “dictator” substitutes himself for the central committee.”
“Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.”
“Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain – at least in a poor country like Russia – and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.”
“Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”
“The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.”
“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”
“The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces – in nature, in society, in man himself.”
“There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.”
Why is “pound” abbreviated “lb.” and “ounce” abbreviated “oz.”?
Allow me to weigh in on this subject. In Latin, “libra” meant “scales, balances,” as represented in the zodiac sign for the constellation Libra. The Romans also used libra to denote a unit of weight now estimated to have been about 327.45 grams.
Because a pound, at 454 grams, is roughly the weight of a Roman libra, English adopted lb. as the abbreviation for pound.
“Oz.” is an abbreviation of the old Italian word “onza,” now spelled “onzia.” Onza, in turn, is derived from the Latin “uncia,” which meant one-twelfth.
So an uncia was 27.29 grams, which is one twelfth of a libra. Our current ounce (28.35 grams) is quite close to the original Latin uncia. (Uncia, by the way, is also the origin of “inch,” one-twelfth of a foot.)
Is it now common usage to say “different than” instead of “different from”?
I wish I could just say no, but the answer to your question is a little bit too complicated for that.
Almost all language authorities agree that “different from” is the correct choice when two people or things are being compared: “Tom is different from (not ‘than’) Sally”; “My kite is different from (not ‘than’) your kite.”
This preference for “different from” extends to gerunds and noun phrases, even those that include clauses: “Teaching children is different from [not ‘than’] playing with them”; “This project is different from [not ‘than’] the one I proposed during the 1990s.”
But, because “from” is a preposition, not a conjunction, “different than” must be used when the object of comparison is expressed by a full clause: “Teaching children is different than (not ‘from’) it was 20 years ago”; “This project is different than (not ‘from’) it was during the 1990s.”
And, when you find that using “different from” leads to awkward phrasing, rewrite the sentence using “different than.” For example, Awkward: “Some usage guidelines are different from what they were 50 years ago.” Smoother: “Some usage guidelines are different than they were 50 years ago.”